Trinity River Vision Debacle With J.D. Granger Reaching National Joke Status

It begins to seem as if the reporting on Fort Worth's Trinity River Vision debacle has reached a frequency level hard to keep up with.

As in I don't get around to blogging about one instance when another pops up. Today there have been two, starting with yet another Fort Worth Star-Telegram article, which once again is sort of frustrating to read due to, you know, the Star-Telegram "style" of reporting.

Today's Star-Telegram article about America's Biggest Boondoggle is titled The Panther Island project is getting a deep look, but its CEO won’t be scrutinized.

How can you look at America's Biggest Boondoggle without scrutinizing the ineptly unqualified executive whose chief job was to oversee the project? The Star-Telegram does not ask that question.

The Star-Telegram once again repeats J.D. Granger earns his current $213,000 salary in a publicly funded position. Publicly funded? From which public funds? How much of what has already been spent on this endless debacle have been public funds spent on what would seem to be exorbitant salaries? With the "exorbitant" word used because it seems paying someone so much to get so little done in 12 years seems extremely exorbitant.

Enough with today's Star-Telegram article. This afternoon Captain Mike Facebook pointed me to a Fort Worth Business Press article titled Watch Out River Vision, the world is watching.

I will copy some of this article for your reading enlightenment, but be sure to click the link to read the entire article, and the comments...

The Trinity River project, aka Panther Island, and its Trinity River Vision Authority and the Tarrant Regional Water District are now in the sights of the national media. The stonewalling and no-comment attitudes of those charged with governance will come under the glare of an unrelenting series of questions by folks they cannot duck.

Fort Worth does not need to become a national example of a government project close to being washed up. We do not need to be known as the city that has three multi-million dollar bridges under construction with no water running under them and rapidly diminishing hopes of ever seeing water under them.

We do not need to be the butt of jokes by late-night TV talk show hosts about a city where a powerful congresswoman’s son is running a mismanaged project that will drown unless his mother and taxpayers can rescue it.

No one wants Fort Worth turned into a joke. Government is meant to be practiced in the open. It is time, as they sang back in the revolutionary 1960s, to let the sunshine in.”

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I think maybe it may be a bit late to be able to prevent Fort Worth from being a national joke.

The Fort Worth/Trinity River Vision Boondoggle debacle has been ripe for national joke status for years now.

Just those pitiful little bridges, now in their fifth year of slowly being under construction, trying to connect the Fort Worth mainland to an imaginary island, is national joke worthy.

That imaginary island is also national joke material, even without the pitiful bridges currently looking like some sort of modern Stonehenge art installation...