If you were listening to Dan Patrick's show yesterday you may have heard Paul Bettencourt discuss Mayor White's office putting out a news release in which the city government campaigns against Proposition 2.
Proposition 2 is the ballot measure that Chronically Biased, the Harris County GOP, Let the People Vote, Citizens For Public Accountability, and thousands of Houstonians are supporting. It will limit the growth in the city's expenditures to increases in population and inflation.
In a nutshell, the news release is based upon a letter from the Federal Aviation Administration, which Mr. Frank Michel from the Mayor's office agreed was based upon a faulty premise. The faulty premise is that the FAA was told that airport revenue could be used for property tax refunds. According to Mr. Bettencourt, and Mr. Michel agreed, this is not correct.
Dan and Paul talked about the campaigning aspect of the news release with Mr. Michel on the air yesterday. Mr. Michel expressed the opinion that the letters did not constitute campaigning by the Mayor's staff.
Well, I wouldn't want to tell you what to think. You can go look for yourself. We have copies of the news release and the letter from the FAA that the city is distributing in an effort to scare voters into defeating Proposition 2.
I scanned in a high-resolution version and a low-resolution version for those of you on dial-up connections. When you click on the links below, some versions of Internet Explorer will compress the image so it fits completely within your browser. This makes it hard to read. Put your cursor over the image and wait for a button to appear in the lower-right corner of the image. Click on it to make the image expand to its full size.
City of Houston Press Release (Page 1 - high res)
City of Houston Press Release (Page 2 - high res)
City of Houston Press Release (Page 1 - low res)
City of Houston Press Release (Page 2 - low res)
Posted by Rob Booth on October 20, 2004, 06:20 AM | News and Views - Houston | Printer-Friendly
