Victory Without Honor - Part II

         by Ron West

        The monarchy of North Richland Hills, Texas remains in power but such power was achieved without honor and with a discarding of touted NRH "values".

        Those who challenged the establishment knew up front that the battle for the Council seats would be tough, but no one imagined just how tough!  Naive as we were, we still assumed that honesty and truth would at least be partially honored by the incumbents, only to find we were wrong.

        The incumbents and their spokesman launched a multi pronged attack on the challengers with distinct objectives:

            1)    Complete character assassination of the challengers by gross misrepresentations of minor facts and

            2)   Total avoidance of the issues that the challengers were campaigning on.

            3)   Character assassination of Ron West and his website

        As the vote count indicates, they were successful in winning the election but at the cost of truth, honesty and honor.

        If you look at their program of character assassination, you will see several dishonorable tools used:

            a)    Labeling:  The challengers were labeled Libertarians but had no association with the Libertarian Party.  Local races are supposed to be non-partisan but this did not stop the incumbents.

            b)   The challengers were also labeled as disciples of Ron West who was labeled a "liar", "trouble maker", complainer, political terrorist, "Mr. Negative", "against everything" and incompetent.  All of this was done without any supporting documentation but with many words and allegations.

            c)    All of their advertising was negative indicating that the opposition was nothing but ill-informed complainers who were negative about everything.                          

            d)  JoAnn Johnson again sent out slanderous lies about the http://www.taig.org/ website just in front of the election.  This was similar to the tactic she used last year in a similar slanderous piece.

            e)  NRH4U Pac sent out a slanderous mailer with a picture of a junk car parked in a driveway in Dallas indicating that this was the type of city that the challengers wanted to create.  This group also created and maintained a website that was filled with misinformation and outright lies on behalf of the incumbents.

       Early in the campaign the challengers published a list of "issues" and then tried to campaign on Open, Responsive and Honest local government.  The incumbents never even discussed open government at all.  They claimed to be responsive (but only if you agreed with their edits for you).  They formulated their campaign on calling everyone else liars and ignored any calls for correction of their published lies such as the requirement that the library be moved because of Highway 820 expansion which is patently untrue.

    One of the saddest outcomes of the election was probably triggered somewhat by my own identification of the problems with TIF#2.  Residents of Hometown NRH became enraged at the possibility that all citizens of NRH should have had a voice in the location of the library.  This issue caused the north part or more affluent sections of the city to oppose any "change" in the leadership of the city.  The challengers all stated support for the library initiative that was promised to the Hometown residents but this was lost in the rhetoric of venom coming from the incumbents camp.  There should not have been the citizen versus citizen division that was deliberately created to gain votes for the incumbents.

    Part of the TIF issue that was lost was the fact that - through no actions of Hometown NRH residents - their property taxes are being diverted from the General Fund of NRH in order to fund "civic development" in the Hometown area.  As a result all other citizens of the city must pay enough taxes to cover all required city services for the Hometown area for the next 25 years (appx.).  The tax money paid by the (new) Hometown residents is controlled by a closed board that can spend their money without any input from the Hometown residents who are paying their taxes and without input from the citizens who are supporting city services to Hometown with their taxes.  This board can also obligate the entire city for debt without voter approval.  Was this an important issue that deserved discussion?

    Open government was never discussed in our city where all new laws and changes to existing laws are made without any provision for citizen review or comment prior to enactment by the City Council.  Open meetings are routinely violated without any real threat of accountability to the law.  The sign ordinance was violated deliberately on election day by the incumbents and the city officials permitted them to violate it.

    Mayor Trevino and City Manager Cunningham are facing the outcome of an illegal electioneering complaint before the Texas Ethics Commission with the results expected in July.  In spite of this, during the next to last Council Meeting before the election Mayor Trevino turned the meeting into a campaign even by allowing 40 minutes for campaign speeches by supporters of the incumbents.

    The incumbents steadfastly refused to investigate or question the huge slush fund accounts that contain over $3,000,000 for sundries.  Answers provided initially by the City Manager do not add up and do not account for all the funds.  Calls for answers are still being ignored. 

    For myself, I was saddened by the returning of the incumbents to their offices - not because I do not like the incumbents - rather because the issues were ignored, the voters were mislead and because we will now have more arrogant, unresponsive and discourteous government for another year.  It is truly sad that Whitson, Compton, Lewis and Welch will now face all citizens for the next two years with this type of campaign required for their election.

    Victory without honor is really not victory.