Doing Harm in Oklahoma City

The Greek philosopher Homer once said, "Once harm is done, even a fool understands it."

The challenge for leadership is to see trouble before it starts and to head it off. Not many people have that kind of vision, apparently.

In the pages of the DAILY OKLAHOMAN this morning, you can get a good look at what passes for leadership so often in Oklahoma - as they're ginning up the "fuel tax increase machine" once again.

You'll be happy to hear that one of the captains of the "raise your fuel taxes" movement - Robert C. Poe, highway engineer and boss of Poe and Associates - heads the firm chosen by ODOT to oversee the destruction of the Union Station Yard as part of the half-billion dollar "New I-40 Crosstown" project.

It's said that doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result is a sure sign of insanity. There's actually a different possibility - it could also be a sure sign of profound, deeply ingrained corruption.

Just a few days ago, THE DAILY OKLAHOMAN crowed in one of its editorials that, thanks to the "clout" of Senator Jim Inhofe and Congressman Ernest Istook, it looks like the I-40 Crosstown project will get three times more funding in the upcoming 2004 Omnibus Appropriations bill than any other project in the country. So much for any claim Inhofe or Istook have on "fiscal conservatism." And the state's largest newspaper - always pushing for "fiscal conservatism" from OTHERS is PROUD of this absurd exercise in raw political power.

Like the vaunted Capitol Dome - on which the people of the state have learned "they still owe" $5 million, and that simply having it there costs them tens of thousands more dollars each year to heat and cool the capitol building;

 like the nearly brand-new, "state of the art," high-rise Oklahoma County Jail - which even the Sheriff now says needs to be torn down (among other reasons, because inmates have discovered they can flood the first floor administrative offices with raw sewage by putting debris down the upper floor toilets - because the jail was built with "commercial grade" plumbing instead of "prison grade"...);

 like the recently completely re-engineered "Ft. Smith Junction" - on which tractor trailers continue to flip over just as much as they ever did;

 like the 1997 "Billion Dollar Highway Bill," sold as a "cure-all" by legislators, but in whose wake state unfunded roadway maintenance expense jumped from $11 billion to $40 billion;

 like the famous "Belle Isle Bridge" on I-44 in north Oklahoma City - up to the time of its construction the most expensive bridge in the history of the state, now a hyper-expensive, maintenance-nightmare, winter-death-trap "bridge over nothing" (Belle Isle Lake was drained not long after the bridge was completed!) -

 each of these famous projects achieved one thing: the transfer of millions of dollars from the pockets of the taxpayers into the pockets of the special-interests who sponsor the state's politicians.

How do the taxpayers stop this sort of nonsense? ACCOUNTABILITY. The politicians and bureaucrats who sell these sort of disasters need to be held accountable for the things they've done.

Maybe they can't all be put in jail - but they can at least be taken out of office and out of their cushy, taxpayer-supported jobs. The outcome of NOT holding them accountable is found in the pages of the morning newspaper: More such schemes being sold by the same shysters to people they've concluded will "buy anything they say."

So far, they're correct.

TOM ELMORE
11-28-03