When I pulled up to the Arlington Park Recreation Center Tuesday night, I was greeted by Mark Ferguson and Robert Todd of the Stemmons Corridor Business Association (SCBA). The SCBA sent out invitations for a “community information meeting” for a “Trinity River Project update and facts” presented by city employee Rebecca Dugger, director of the Trinity River Project.

Of course, I knew this wasn’t an ordinary community information meeting because I was about to see a city employee give a one-sided presentation regarding the proposed Trinity Turnpike. This is why I showed up, although Ferguson and Todd were fine hosts.

I’d seen Dugger’s song and dance before in Lake Highlands, although there was no interaction with the audience or media because representatives from both campaigns were there. Dugger has been doing her presentation all over the city. Sometimes with her buddy Craig Holcomb, sometimes at a debate where both sides are involved and other times all by her lonesome.

I thought it was good timing since Dugger had some time to cool off after my column linking her to the Trinity Commons Foundation. I could ask her a question or two and most importantly, I could see how she handled any questions from citizens.

So after meeting Ferguson, chairman of the SCBA board, and past chairman Todd, I walked in to find the ratio of media to community members slightly out of whack. OK, it was more than slightly out of whack. It was silly. There was me, Jim Schutze and Sharon Boyd, along with Ferguson, Todd and two people from the community. I think some guy who worked there poked his head in for a while, so there were times when a whopping eight people were in the audience.

Dugger, wearing her city employee badge on her pants, then proceeded with her PowerPoint extravaganza. When she got the part about the road, Boyd was first to jump in. She said, “I’m confused,” when a slide came up titled “Did the voters know the Trinity Parkway would be a toll road?” Dugger stopped Boyd and said this was the presentation she usually gives.

“This is the only presentation that has been approved by my attorneys. I do the same one all the time,” Dugger said. “These are questions that people typically wanna know when I go out and do presentations.”

Boyd also asked Dugger about Brad Watson’s report on Channel 8 showing the road going into Trammell Crow Lake.

“We actually talked to the NTTA consultants today [Tuesday] and they said a couple of things,” Dugger said. “One, it’s not finished. Two, he was using string. And three, they are going to miss Crow Lake.”

“So him using string is relevant why?” Boyd said.

“You’re stepping it off as opposed to doing an actual survey. They haven’t done any surveys at all. There’s been no detail on that,” Dugger said. “According to what the NTTA has told us, it won’t get into the lake. They can design anything they want.”

As Dugger tried to regroup and get through her presentation, Schutze asked if moving the road off the levees should be a concern to people. Dugger shrugged her shoulders, laughed and said, “I don’t know.” Before I even had a chance to let that sink in, she had moved on to the next PowerPoint slide.

This one really miffed me. Dugger, an engineer and director of the city’s Trinity River Project, doesn’t know if citizens need to be concerned about moving the road further into the park? It defies logic.

Then Schutze hit on something that I had planned to ask Dugger at the end of her presentation. “What would the upside be of not having the toll road between the levees?” Schutze said.

“Well, I guess it depends on whether or not if you’re telling me that there will be a toll road somewhere,” Dugger said. “I need to have some conditions.”

Schutze rephrased his question, essentially challenging Dugger to come up with any positive results of removing the toll road from inside the floodway.

“Again, I would need to know what the other conditions were. I think that if we have a toll road somewhere and there wouldn’t be any traffic congestion and the City of Dallas could flourish...I mean, my only thing about…(long pause)…there’s just too many caveats there. You know,” Dugger said. “You put the toll road somewhere else and it relieves traffic, then I think you have a good overall system, but I don’t know.”

This cuts right into the heart of why Dugger’s presentation is biased and wrong. She provided plenty of information about why the toll road is needed, why it should go in the floodway and how voters knew it was a toll road when they voted on it. Yet when put on the spot to name what possible benefit there would be to removing it from the floodway, she failed miserably.

Speaking of voters knowing this was a toll road, Dugger’s part of the presentation about the road begins with clippings from The Dallas Morning News. As I’ve mentioned before, my favorite one is an ad from the opposition to the road that read, “Proposed eight-lane tollway inside the levee would increase pollution.” Dugger and the Vote No campaign have used this to not only say the word “tollway” means voters knew what they were getting in 1998, but the road has actually gone from eight lanes down to six.

What I find absolutely fascinating is how this sentence was intended to dissuade people from passing the bond based on the road increasing pollution. Dugger wants everyone to look at that sentence and believe it was factual, while disputing the validity of the overall statement made.

“If you’re asking people to buy into that what they were reading in that ad should be fact, shouldn’t the other part of that sentence be fact as well?” I said.

“Well, as far as increasing pollution, it doesn’t do that either,” Dugger said. “Which part do you want me to address?”

“You would debate the fact that it causes pollution, yes?” I said.

“I would give you some facts about it,” Dugger said. “I wouldn’t debate with you, but I would give you some facts about that.”

“OK. That’s what I’m saying,” I said. “You’re using that sentence, but you’re only using one word [tollway] in the sentence.”

“Well, I did have some slides in another presentation that addressed pollution on that,” Dugger said. “That particular presentation didn’t make it to the city attorneys for approval.”

Dugger then proceeded to tell me her facts about pollution, including saying the road “reduces annual emissions by about 84 tons a year” and how storm water runoff will go through a treatment facility that no other road in the City of Dallas has.

Wait a second. I thought the city attorneys didn’t approve her part of the presentation that addressed pollution. She said it didn’t make it past the approval process, which is very telling, and then proceeded to tell me the information anyway? I couldn’t believe what was going on.

Schutze told Dugger it seemed touchy for a city employee to talk about an election. He then asked how her presentation wasn’t a campaign speech.

“This is a factual speech. I don’t tell people how to vote. If you want to dispute anything that I put in here as far as it being factual, then we can talk about that, but that’s all it really is. I’m giving you the facts, and you’re free to vote. I don’t tell people how to vote,” Dugger said. “I never tell people how to vote. I just basically give them this information and then they can go and get information elsewhere. I’ve been doing this particular presentation for months and months and months now and again, it has been approved by the city attorneys.”

During Dugger’s presentation, I asked about a rendering (pictured) she used to describe the NTTA’s funding of access roads. I pointed out several roads running in the park and asked if they were funded. She said those roads weren’t funded. So after Schutze’s question about it being a campaign speech, I followed up with this.

“Don’t you think by omission of certain information though that it leans toward a certain way?”

“I don’t know…I mean, what information would that be?” Dugger said.

“Well, like when you showed that graphic with all those roads and stuff that aren’t funded and I had to ask about it,” I said. “By showing graphics with unfunded roads like that without me asking that question, isn’t that giving the appearance that this is what you’re getting?”

“Well, the Balanced Vision Plan, if you look at that plan, it’s got a ton of things in there that aren’t funded,” Dugger said. “It’s a master plan and master plans do that.”

I found Dugger’s presentation and responses shocking and contacted Angela Hunt to get her take on Dugger’s activities. Hunt said she’s been troubled by the participation of city staff in the Vote No! campaign. She mentioned the “very cozy, close” relationships between top-level city staff and representatives from the Vote No! campaign.

“We have city staff out making PowerPoint presentations to constituents that are presented as if they were entirely fact based when in fact, they are promoting the Vote No! side. There is no question about that,” Hunt said. “It’s unfortunate because our taxpayers’ dollars are essentially being spent to promote a political campaign. That is not a good use of our tax dollars, and it’s not a good use of staff time either.”

This is an ethics violation going virtually unnoticed in this campaign. Dugger is clearly biased, and her presentation wraps factual information about the Trinity Project as a whole around a toll road presentation that cannot be construed as anything but a way to encourage voters to vote no on the referendum.

This speaks to the dangerous lengths that the Vote No! campaign and Mayor Leppert are willing to go to influence the outcome of this election. Leppert has not only given the public false and misleading information about this proposed road, but he continues to turn his back while council members and city staff cross the line.

I urge Mayor Leppert to condemn Dugger’s activities and issue an apology to the citizens of Dallas for allowing her to conduct these one-sided presentations using taxpayers’ money. Dallas deserves better than this and if Leppert cannot admit his mistakes, Dallas deserves a better mayor.

One final note. Maybe I’m just paranoid, but if you noticed something fishy about the three photos of Dugger above, your eyes didn’t deceive you. She certainly picked an interesting finger when pointing to the screen.

Take a look at Dugger’s PowerPoint by downloading it from the city’s FTP site. The one she used Tuesday is labeled “final presentation.ppt” and one including pollution information is labeled “updates & facts.ppt.”

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