CITY SCOPE

Just at a time when DART executive director Charles Anderson might have envisioned smooth passage for his rail plan, the attacks on the feasibility of light rail have gone from bad to worse. The biggest blows are coming from an elite corps of business leaders who for a variety of reasons are questioning Anderson and his staffs projections. A task force from the Citizens Council and the Dallas Chamber of Commerce has been studying the issue to decide whether to endorse the still-unscheduled referendum that will allow DART to borrow long-term, or work to defeat it. Their support-or withdrawal of it-could be critical to DART. Last month, a group of task force members journeyed to Atlanta to take a look at that city’s widely respected transit system. Reportedly, most everyone was favorably impressed-with one vocal holdout being Cadillac czar Carl Sewell… Meanwhile, some die-hard Republicans who vowed vengeance after Annette Strauss’s victory apparently meant what they said, because some of them are already working to defeat the DART referendum, which Strauss and other prominent Democrats support. DART loyalists within the GOP are working hard to resist any efforts on the part of their fellow Republicans to force the referendum into a vote of no confidence for Strauss. Think about this: if Republicans openly work to defeat the referendum and lose, what will that do to their already diminished clout in Dallas?



An unsung, and unlikely, hero to emerge from the September city budget slashing is conservative councilman Jerry Bartos, whose determination to cut employees and dollars from the budget obscured the fact that he was helpful behind the scenes in getting votes for Strauss’s efforts to restore funding for the arts program. Strauss teetered on the brink of losing that one, as she did several other votes, but Bartos’s support helped rescue the funding.



It seems there’s been at least one in-house casualty of District Attorney John Vance’s avowed crackdown on pornography. According to our courthouse sources, a case against an X-rated bookstore a while back turned up a computer printout of customers who had rented the raunchy films. On the list was the name of one of Vance’s own prosecutors. The man is now in private practice, though first assistant DA Norm Kinne denies the man was fired or resigned over the incident.