Several weeks ago when the vote was finally taken, Mayor Pro Tem Don Hill was the lone dissenting vote on Mayor Laura Miller’s Mercantile downtown development project. You might remember the deal to renovate the old Mercantile building downtown was Mayor Miller’s questionable $85 million and counting effort to jump start downtown redevelopment. Ironically, it was out of town developers, Forest City Partners who sweet-talked the mayor into giving them an unprecedented tax abatement deal. The deal allowed Forest City to begin drawing down money from the city well before other developers are able to as under previous tax abatement programs. It is Forest City’s access to Dallas taxpayers’ monies so quickly that has Mayor Pro Tem Don Hill questioning the latest Forest City deal. News reports last week cited a new Forest City $80 million Frisco development project. Hill and others might wonder is this $80 million Frisco development yet another example of white developers taking money from major racially diverse urban centers and funding majority white suburban developments.

Mayor Pro Tem Hill explained Forest City’s deal with Dallas is unique because Mayor Miller’s negotiated deal with Forest City allows them to go outside the city to do other deals without binding them to do future deals in places like the southern sector. Hill felt Forest City would have undertaken development project in other parts of the city first. He says it is true there was no agreement that binds Forest City to look to inner city Dallas first before going to the suburbs. He felt the spirit of the agreement dictated Forest City look to develop Dallas before being perceived as using Dallas’ money to develop other cities.

The question is why didn’t the city put it in writing requiring Forest City to invest in other areas of Dallas before it invested what some might consider Dallas’ money in areas outside of the city? Hill felt his fellow city council members were intimidated by Mayor Laura Miller and thus reluctant to question the deal. "We all know how badly she wanted the Forest City deal to go through. And frankly, some were simply afraid to question her on the finer points of the deal for fear of being criticized in the Dallas Morning News," Hill stated. I have cited examples in past columns of the Morning News demonizing Dallas City Council members who have dared to question or criticize the mayor.

When I asked why council members would be afraid of a mayor in a city manager’s form of government where the mayor only has one vote, Hill mentioned the Dallas Morning News and the FBI investigation. According to Mayor Pro Tem Don Hill and a number of folks South of the Trinity, the perception is if you speak out against the Mayor, the Dallas Morning News will trash you and the FBI might investigate you. In truth, the FBI has only investigated the Black members of the city council. No white council members have been investigated thus far. But maybe public ridicule at the hands of the city’s only major daily and the threat of an FBI investigation is enough to turn 14-1 into just 1.

South of the Trinity we have no fear of Laura Miller. Those of us in the Black community rarely believe what we read in the Morning News. And the African-American community has had a long history of unfair treatment from federal law enforcement agencies. Therefore, we question Mayor Miller, the Mercantile deal, and $80 million going to the suburbs. And that’s how we see it South of the Trinity.

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