Hampton Branch Library
Shades of Cokie Roberts
RECEIVED Tue., July 5, 2011
Dear Editor,
I don’t know what to do with you, Wells Dunbar. Often you’re just clueless, other times you look as if you’re catching on. Then you disappoint with misdirection and cluelessness. In that regard, you remind me of Cokie Roberts. I guess from your perch inside the Austin beltway you just can’t see the effects of council action on real people.
Your uncritical quote of former Council Member Randi Shade’s parting cry regarding the Health and Human Services budget; she is “sorry I can’t see it through,” implies your agreement [“Tovo Takes Up (White) Lodging,” News, July 1]. But Shade presided over the most draconian assault on those afflicted by her choices in recent memory.
I had the painful experience of sitting through the only meeting of the HHS Committee at which affected agencies could speak to the potentates making decisions and plead their cases. I can’t describe the agony of watching these good people coming before the satraps of fund cutting. And they were lied to. Told that the large numbers who had not had a chance to speak would be given a hearing at the next meeting, they weren’t. Instead, a work session was held where only Shade, staff and council members could speak. There was no provision for public comment about these very public issues.
These potentates divided up the council's largesse by funding agencies at 70% for a “starting point,” after Shade’s ego and arrogance deprived us of $500,000 that might have significantly salved the “shortfall.” In other words, Shade’s “leadership” resulted in the total abdication of the role. A leader doesn’t simply carve up a reduced pie. As a leader, she might have made serious efforts to make the pie larger, particularly when the lives of real children, real women, and real men are being effected, changed, influenced, and manipulated.
I don’t know what to do with you, Wells Dunbar. Often you’re just clueless, other times you look as if you’re catching on. Then you disappoint with misdirection and cluelessness. In that regard, you remind me of Cokie Roberts. I guess from your perch inside the Austin beltway you just can’t see the effects of council action on real people.
Your uncritical quote of former Council Member Randi Shade’s parting cry regarding the Health and Human Services budget; she is “sorry I can’t see it through,” implies your agreement [“Tovo Takes Up (White) Lodging,” News, July 1]. But Shade presided over the most draconian assault on those afflicted by her choices in recent memory.
I had the painful experience of sitting through the only meeting of the HHS Committee at which affected agencies could speak to the potentates making decisions and plead their cases. I can’t describe the agony of watching these good people coming before the satraps of fund cutting. And they were lied to. Told that the large numbers who had not had a chance to speak would be given a hearing at the next meeting, they weren’t. Instead, a work session was held where only Shade, staff and council members could speak. There was no provision for public comment about these very public issues.
These potentates divided up the council's largesse by funding agencies at 70% for a “starting point,” after Shade’s ego and arrogance deprived us of $500,000 that might have significantly salved the “shortfall.” In other words, Shade’s “leadership” resulted in the total abdication of the role. A leader doesn’t simply carve up a reduced pie. As a leader, she might have made serious efforts to make the pie larger, particularly when the lives of real children, real women, and real men are being effected, changed, influenced, and manipulated.
Leslie Aisenman