Tarrant County GOP Will Assist Effort to Oppose Stadium Deal

Tarrant County GOP Will Assist Effort to Oppose Stadium Deal

By

James Scott Trimm

Early on in his campaign our new Republican County Chair announced his intention to get the Tarrant County GOP more involved in municipal issues.  At the 9/12 Candidate Forum Tim O'Hare said:

One of the things I want to do if I am the county chairman is I want to make sure that every Republican that goes to go vote in a school board election or a municipal election knows the voting records of the candidates.  And lots of people will say "those races are nonpartisan.”  Well here's the deal: I think we have figured out that when Democrats go to vote in school board elections and city council elections, they know who the Democrats are. People in this room probably know who the Republican candidates are.  But for the general masses, they don't.  And we need to change that.  ... we have got to make sure that we elect good strong Conservatives at the school board level and the City Council level.

(Tim O'Hare; Fort Worth 9/12 Candidate Forum Aug. 17th 2015)

While municipal elections are billed as “non partisan” and as such voters often do not know with which political party a candidate affiliates and thus what their underlying political philosophy is.  This is a serious problem because as conservatives we have a core set of values and beliefs about the limited role of government, and personal liberty, which serve as our guide.  And these principles are applicable on every level of government, including municipal government.  Unfortunately it is often on the municipal level that government intrusion on our rights occurs most.  Oftentimes our conservative State Representatives will defeat an intrusive piece of legislation, only to have our city governments pass the same intrusive measure as a city ordinance with the city council complaining that the state had failed to do anything.  Of course choosing not to do anything, or to kill a bad bill, is choosing less government and more freedom. 

Because of the fact that liberals have so often come in the back door in Tarrant County and infiltrated our municipal governments, we have ended up with tax, borrow and spend city councils.  For example my own city council in Hurst has run up 100 million dollars in debt!  Lets illustrate home much money we are talking about in physical cash. If you laid the bills from end to end, they would reach from Hurst City Hall to the International Space Station… and back… forty one times!  If you laid it out end to end the Hurst debt would reach from Los Angeles to New York… and back… TWICE!  Or from Hurst to London… and back again! 

Folks, the tax borrow and spend machines in our Tarrant County cities must be stopped.  If they keep expanding this massive debt, the math will eventually crush us with interest!  As Ronald Reagan once said:

Balancing the budget is a little like protecting your virtue:

You just have to learn to say “no.”

(Remarks at Kansas State University at the Alfred M. Landon Lecture Series on Public Issues (September 9, 1982))

The time has come to apply our conservative principles to our municipal governments in Tarrant County, and it is time for the Tarrant County Republican Party to get directly involved in City politics. 

The Tarrant County Republican Party Executive Committee took a profound step in this direction this week by passing a resolution officially taking a stand against a proposal in Arlington to replace the perfectly good ballpark “Global Life” stadium with a smaller new stadium with fewer seats and a retractable roof, as follows:

Whereas, the 2016 Texas Republican Party Platform Preamble states: “We understand that our economic success depends upon free market principles;” and,

Whereas, the 2016 Texas Republican Party Platform Principles state that Texas Republicans believe in a “free enterprise society unencumbered by government interference or subsidies;” and,

Whereas, the 2016 Texas Republican Party Platform states “We encourage government to divest its ownership of all business that should be run in the private sector and allow the free market to prevail. We oppose all bailouts of domestic and foreign government entities, states and all businesses, public and private. We oppose local government handouts to businesses and other private entities in the name of economic development;” and,

Whereas, the 2016 Texas Republican Party Platform further states “We believe that the borrower truly is a slave to the lender, and so long as we continue to increase our tax and debt burdens we will never be a truly free people;” and,

Whereas, the Arlington City Council has voted to place a proposition entitled Proposition One on the November 8th, 2016 ballot which violates all the above, and further offends good government principals to be good stewards by allowing Globe Life Park to be demolished and replaced by a far more expensive and smaller stadium that will be funded primarily by more than $500 million dollars from taxpayers; and,

Whereas, Proposition One adds debt and taxes to private citizens and principally offends Republican core values and our platform,

Be It Therefore Resolved, the Tarrant County Republican Party opposes Proposition One as it will appear on the November 8th, 2016 ballot in the City of Arlington, and directs our County Party Chair to utilize reasonable Party resources to assist efforts to oppose this government handout.

(In full disclosure, I was one of the precinct chairs who votes in favor of this resolution).

The passage of this resolution is a major coup for the Save Our Stadium cause!  With the passage of this resolution the Save our Stadium cause can now expect official support from the Tarrant County Republican Party.  The Tarrant GOP can now help by doing things like issuing a press release, sending out an email asking for volunteers and donations, providing meeting space and opening up use of the TCGOP phone banks.

Meanwhile the Arlington Tea Party has taken hypocrisy to new levels.  This supposedly “Taxed Enough Already” group is now advocating new taxes, recently voting to turn their back on conservatism and support the crony capitalism of the new stadium proposal. 

The group pushing for the new stadium has made many statements that are patently false in their political advertising.  They have claimed that Arlington must build this new stadium to keep the Rangers from leaving Arlington.  But the truth is that the Texas Rangers cannot leave Arlington for the better part of a decade even if they wanted to do so, because the still have eight years on their current performance contract with Arlington.  Moreover no one has presented any evidence that the Rangers have threatened to leave in the first place.  The group pushing for a new stadium has also put out campaign materials claiming that the proposition includes “no new taxes” in direct contradiction to the statement on the Arlington Texas city website.  In fact the only reason this stadium is going up for an election is because it involves new taxes, if no new taxes were involved the Arlington City Council could have done this without an election.

Of course the current stadium does not need to be replaced.  In fact when the original Arlington Stadium, which was (unlike the current stadium) in poor condition and needed to be replaced, was torn down and replaced.  The city spent extra money to build the new stadium so that it could last a hundred years without having to be replaced again.  Yet now they want to waste that money by scrapping that new stadium after an even shorter lifetime than Arlington Stadium had! 

This is not just an Arlington issue.  If you eat or shop in Arlington this is a tax on YOU.  Also this proposition would change how property is used that would lower property tax revenue to Tarrant County which affects everyone who lives in or pays taxes in Tarrant County.  Cities are themselves creations of State Government as well, so if you are a Texas resident, what Arlington does is your business, because Arlington itself is a creation of your State Government.  So if a creation of your state government is going to raise taxes on things you buy (when you shop or eat in Arlington) and also impact your counties budget, they that is absolutely your business!  Do not let anyone tell you that if you don’t live in Arlington this is none of your business!