Body Snatchers

She said she was dismayed when she saw what the city was really doing with the $246 million in city bond funds since the 1998 election: "They sat me down at the Oak Cliff Chamber—Halff and Associates, the road engineers who designed it, which is your red flag right there—with all the transportation folks and floodway folks. At the end of two hours, I said, 'I have only one question: Where's the water?' Because they'd talked to me for two hours about the roads."

So here in what was basically an "advertorial" edition of D magazine paid for by public works contractors and law firms as a promotion for the river project, we have Laura Miller admitting that the city, which had promised the voters lakes and parks, turned the whole project over to road designers.

Miller said she asked city staff, "Would you bring me all the backup data on how we got to $246 million? I mean, clearly we have the details. The dredging is this much, the levee is this much. Bring it to me.

"Four days later, they brought me three sheets of paper, which were the brochures that Rob Allyn [a political advertising agency] had done for the river. And I said, 'This isn't what I'm talking about. I want the archival stuff from the public works department.' They said, 'Well, there really isn't any. We just came up with a number.'

"At the time, I was just shocked. It was a fantasy. And what was really strange is that, if you're going to create the largest urban park in America, you should have some urban planners working on it."

Yeah. Guess what. They had no intention of building the largest urban park in America. It was, indeed, a fantasy. Or, as I like to call it, a lie. It was the lie they had to tell the voters in order to get the voters to approve the bonds.

The story two weeks ago in the Morning News was perhaps the most bizarre newspaper story I have ever read in my life—a supposed investigative piece by Bruce Tomaso intended to show, I think, that there was never a bait and switch by the city. To prove his point, Tomaso quoted from a pile of brochures and documents in which a toll road was mentioned before the 1998 bond election.

All of his points were sort of courtroom gotchas. You know, like exhibit A, paragraph four, line 3. At no point did he call anybody who actually knows about politics and ask, "What would constitute a bait and switch in political terms?"

I know why he didn't make that call. Because anybody with a normal hat size would have said, "Bruce, it's not a question of technical gotchas. It's the general impression you create in the voter's mind. If after you talk to them the voters come away expecting a lake with sailboats, and you don't deliver a lake with sailboats, you lied. Politically, you lied."

He even quoted me. He quoted a single line from a near-biblical-length story I wrote about the project in 1998 in which I said highway funding was a key ingredient.

But, Bruce, the point of my story 10 years ago was that all of this was a scam. Your point then, I take it, is that if I knew it was a scam 10 years ago...well, then...so therefore...yikes. I can't even finish the thought. The hair is starting to stand up again on the back of my neck. I hear the Tuvans.

"Nobaitandswitch, nobaitandswitch, nobaitandswitch."

For this fine piece of Woodward and Bernstein journalism, Tomaso started calling me the Friday afternoon before his story was to run on Sunday. It worked. I was gone fishing, so he could report that, "Mr. Schutze did not return telephone calls or e-mail messages seeking his comment for this story."

But when I tried to reach Tomaso for this column, he e-mailed me: "If you're calling and e-mailing because you want to quote me on something (unlikely, but who knows?), I have no comment."

Bruce, I ask you: How is this fair?

I actually do know the answer to this. Morning News reporters are not allowed to speak to us here at the Dallas Observer for attribution. They can call us and ask us questions. But if we ask them questions back, they have to hang up. And do you know why that is?

They're pod people.

You know what the pod people finally tell the guy in the 1956 Body Snatchers? I remember it word for word. They can only turn you into a pod person while you're sleeping. So they tell him: "We can't let you go. You're dangerous to us. Don't fight it, Miles, it's no use. Sooner or later, you'll have to go to sleep."

Not me. I can stay awake forever. Every time I start to fall asleep, I just think of Tomaso.

RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!