Dueling Referenda?
In yesterday's Comical, Kristen Mack and Ron Nissimov reported further on the referendum duel on municipal revenues that Houston voters will face this fall. I had wondered in a previous post where the KSEV crowd might come down on these matters, hoping the CB folks might get in gear and follow up on it. Instead, they get scooped by the Comical with regard to Paul Bettencourt's position:
The revenue-cap proposal requires all revenue raised in excess of the cap to be returned to citizens and businesses. It does not mandate cuts in basic city services, supporters say.
RevCap, the group pushing that proposal, kicked off its campaign at the Post Oak Grill Monday evening, with Bettencourt emceeing the event. The group counts among its supporters council members Michael Berry, M.J. Khan, Toni Lawrence and Addie Wiseman. The group's organizers expect White's team will be able to raise more money.
"He will have arm-twisting ability with contractors, that gives them the advantage," said RevCap co-chair Jeff Daily. "We are expecting to be outspent." Daily said RevCap hopes to raise $500,000 for the campaign.
Bettencourt and fellow conservatives all seem to be lining up behind the more stringent revenue-limitation proposal, which is hardly surprising.
The most interesting battle to come will be the ballot language, as the reporting points out.
Near the bottom of the article is this interesting line in reference to the Proposition One measure passed earlier this year:
Most of that campaign money came from banks, energy companies, engineers and law firms that have a vested interest in the city's financial well-being.
They could have ended that sentence at "law firms" and been done. Why the editorializing? And what is meant exactly? Those organizations may have a general interest in the city's financial well-being, but one suspects their own well-being trumps that interest. And by "vested," do the authors mean to imply "have lots of contracts with the city and want to curry favor with municipal leaders?" Sounds a little different when put that way, huh? I don't know exactly what it means, but it probably should simply have been struck.
(Update) The Houston Business Journal has coverage here. More from KHOU-11 here.
(08-26-2004 Update) Paul Begala (sitting in for Edd Hendee on KSEV radio this morning) had on councilman Mark Ellis, who helped put together the referendum supported by Mayor White, and who supported both referenda. An interesting point he made is that these are competing referenda, meaning that if both pass, the one with the most "Yes" votes actually becomes law.
(08-26-2004 Update 2) The Comical just posted their coverage this morning.
(10-28-2004) I see this post is linked in a number of places. Unfortunately, it's a little old and the information a little out of date. A quick recent synopsis can be found here.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 08/25/04 21:29 | Houston | Technorati
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Comments
That's what made KSEV so unique - the focus on local issues. And now that focus seems to have been pushed aside. There are plenty of national radio shows where I can hear national issues. I used to count on KSEV for some local flavor. Same with CB. Who knows where it went? And this loss of a local focus has made both outlets much less interesting.
It would be great to see Paul Bettencourt make some more apprearances on KSEV. He did a show a couple of weeks ago and he was terrific. KSEV should try to get him his own show - that would be worth tuning in for!
Posted by Anne @ 06:24 on 08/26/04
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