State Representative Matt Shaheen has introduced HB 3187 to allow DART’s 13 member cities to use a quarter of the 1% sales tax now sent to DART to fund local mobility issues. Some cities are upset as they pay more in taxes than they get in services, and instead of DART sitting down and talking about the issues, now it comes down to state legislators, most of whom don’t live in Dallas and don’t care about DART or its member cities, who will have to consider legal recourse. Someone in Dallas leadership needs to make this happen, instead cheerleading for the status quo continues from the Dallas City Council Committee and the Dallas Morning News editorial staff plus the small number of riders that continues to be subsidized by ALL taxpayers, something that I and CPA Cliff Long objected to when we established a 501(c)(3) FLAG (For Limited American Government) in 1983 to educate voters, politicians and media on mass transit.
The Dallas Morning News (and Dallas Times Herald at the time) were gracious enough to publish several op-eds that I wrote explaining why DART’s plan would never work and would turn out to be the biggest financial boondoggle in Dallas’s history. I debated all the top proponents except for one instance in which DART failed to show up claiming we were using the meeting as a fundraiser. We charged $15 and provided wine and hors d’oeuvres…do the math! We brought in nationally known experts to Dallas, Robert Poole from Reason and NYU economist Jim Ramsey. When I picked Ramsey up at DFW, he said he had read DART’s plan. He then said, “If they had sat around a table and tried to figure out the worst things to do, they couldn’t have come up with anything worse!”
Most readers weren’t either alive or in Dallas in 1983, so here is what DART promised in their brochures, in meetings and in their written plan:
- Only 25-35 employees
- 450,000 riders
- 50% of the operating costs will be covered by the fare box
- 147 miles of rail by 2010
- No borrowed money
- No federal government subsidies except for buses and HOV lanes
- Reduced traffic congestion……this is a laugher!
Here is what we have today according to DART’s website and financial reports:
- There are 3800 employees.
- The fare box covers less than 10% of just salaries! Just think about that. In every respectable business, the revenue MUST exceed the salary expenses, but DART’s salaries were ten times the revenue, not to mention all the other costs incurred in operating.
- They have 93 miles of rail in 2025.
- They (or rather taxpayers) owe $3.8 billion.
- They have applied for and received billions from a federal government that is insolvent with over $36 TRILLION in debt and counting.
This boondoggle extracted over $800 million from North Texas taxpayers last year according to DART’s latest financials. In 1983 we pointed out the issues surrounding mass transit, not because we were experts, but because we researched the issue by going to the SMU library. I read Department of Transportation studies and books (no Internet then) and got the facts. But facts didn’t matter when proponents had money provided by contractors, consultants, and businesses and cheerleaders in government and the media to promote an election.
For my efforts Bill Murchison, an editorial writer for the DMN, called me a “chicken little”. A “chicken little” is an alarmist, someone who spreads exaggerated claims of doom. When the looming disaster became apparent a few years later, at a dinner party Bill and I were attending, he asked me why they hadn’t listened to me. I told him that, when newspapers and other media become cheerleaders for government projects instead of being fact checkers and questioners, then there is no one to educate voters on the difference between propaganda, ignorance and yes, in DART’s case, actual lies.
The Dallas CBS television affiliate was in my home the night of the election, August 13, 1983, when the misled voters approved DART and its taxes. My CPA colleague read the Peat Marwick accountant prepared projections which contained a six-page disclaimer on the numbers, basically saying, “we don’t believe DART’s numbers either”. When I read this to the Park Cities Rotary Club, there was laughter in the aisles. Little did they know that the joke was on them.
I debated another DMN editorial writer after the election in front of a 300 person women’s group. He started by saying how great DART was going to be…. congestion reduced, energy saved, lots of riders, Dallas being then a great international city because we would have light rail transit. At my first turn, I asked him this: “If you know the solution to traffic congestion, then you must know what causes the congestion. There are four causes, and I’d like you to tell these ladies at your next turn just what those causes are”. He turned white, and then I said, “Well ok, just tell them ONE of the causes.” He couldn’t do it. I wonder who in Dallas knows that answer today.
Unfortunately, the DART proponents didn’t know the answers either. They either didn’t do their homework, or they didn’t care. For sure they didn’t listen. So now, we waste literally billions of dollars that could have been either spent on mobility that residents and businesses actually use or that could still be in taxpayers’ pockets. Not only are those billions gone, but billions more are owed, and if any city wants out, they will be strapped with continued taxes to reduce the debt already incurred. Look at DART financials at dart.org and ask yourself if this is any way to run any organization, private or public? Perhaps we need a Texas DOGE! And think of having the toll roads in the Metroplex without tolls, which is what could happen if the DART boondoggle were curtailed.
The solutions? Well, that’s for another article but it should be apparent that when you’re in a hole you should first quit digging. The chickens have come home to roost….and they are riding in empty buses and rail cars paid for by taxpayers who have never been in them.
Dennis McCuistion is a former banker, co-founder of FLAG, a retired university professor and the host of the McCuistion television program on KERA Channel 13 in Dallas.