The Fort Worth Way

By Clyde Picht in the FW Weekly.  What's going on in Fort Worth politics and elections?  Clyde knows. 

Mayor Mike Moncrief brags about “the Fort Worth Way” when extolling the virtues of the council or of businesses that aid the city. But judging by recent revelations in the media, before the city council, before the Tarrant County College board, and elsewhere, the Fort Worth Way is sounding more like influence peddling, cronyism, and unethical conduct, withholding information from the public, obfuscation, nepotism, and violation of the public trust.

The Tarrant Regional Water District is still touting Trinity Uptown as if it were the original pie-in-the-sky project. Not only has the price ballooned, but nothing remains in the original form, from channel width to bridges, from environmental cleanup to catchment basins, from canals to completion dates. If costs increase like the salary paid to J. D. Granger (the congresswoman’s son), which rose from $110,000 in 2006 to $140,400 in 2010, you know we’re in trouble.

Jim Lane is a good choice — having been a target of an ethics complaint before, he knows one when he sees one. Being a water board member working closely with the city on Trinity Uptown (or “up yours” as former councilman Chuck Silcox, used to say) Jim really meshes with Moncrief’s modus operandi. This is real synergy among the “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” crowd.

Lane won his water board seat through alleged illegal mail ballots. The state attorney general was investigating mail ballot abuse in certain precincts at the time but declined to prosecute anyone.

Bottom line is that we have public officials, elected and appointed, who may qualify as pond scum — incompetent, lazy, abusive of the public trust, and in some cases, corrupt. Make your own assignments; it’s the Fort Worth Way.