Dallas, Don't Look to DART Funding for Quick Police Pension Fix

It should be perfectly clear by now that there aren't going to be any easy fixes for the upside-down pension fund for Dallas' police and firefighters. But that doesn't mean that some ideas aren't better than others — or that some aren't far, far worse. The best example of the latter is the proposal City Council member Scott Griggs that would siphon tens of millions of dollars in sales taxes currently dedicated to Dallas Area Rapid Transit to the pension bail-out efforts instead.The proposal would ask Dallas voters to reduce by one-eighth the penny in sales tax currently collected for the transit agency. Mayor Mike Rawlings called it "a terrible idea." DART member Patrick Kennedy, whose appointment was loudly championed by Griggs, isn't on board either. "It doesn't seem to me, obviously, the best idea to make two financial and political nightmares out of one," he said recently.  Continue reading...