Chron overview of GOP County Judge candidates

The Chron today has candidate profiles of GOP County Judge hopefuls Ed Emmett and Charles Bacarisse. They had a similar set of stories last Sunday for the GOP candidates for DA. I certainly hope this means that at the very least we'll also get such stories for the candidates in the three contested Democratic countywide non-judicial offices - if they're doing these one Sunday at a time, there's not a lot of these left before March 4. I suppose it's too much to hope for profiles in the judicial races, the State Rep races, CD10 (I seem to recall there's been one for the CD22 GOP jumble), the various constable and JP races, and of course the Senate, Railroad Commissioner, Supreme Court, and Court of Criminal Appeals races as well. Lots of decisions need to be made, and there's not nearly enough information out there.

Be that as it may, one thing caught my eye in these stories, from the piece on Bacarisse:

For Bacarisse, the future of county government should involve cutting property taxes, reforming juvenile justice, forcing Metro to alter its mass transit plans and looking for ways to lessen the financial burden of health care and other services provided to immigrants, legal and illegal.

Forcing Metro to do what now? Unfortunately, the article doesn't mention Metro again, and a search through the Chron archives for Bacarisse and Metro yielded zip. Admittedly, there's been plenty of other things for the County Judge candidates to be talking about, but still. This sounds like a major thing to me, and I'd like to know what he means. The one clue I could find is from Bacarisse's webpage, in which he outlines his platform:

As county judge, I pledge to use every tool at my disposal to demand that METRO either (1) adhere to the clear terms of the 2003 Referendum, or (2) take a revised plan to the voters for their consent.

Now, that sort of language used to be code for "No rail on Richmond!", but since Metro has made its announcement of the route for the Universities line, it would seem that this is a dead horse issue. Not that there aren't still people fighting over it, of course, which makes me wonder if it's his intent to be a roadblock to Metro until they do something about that decision. There were other items on the 2003 referendum, including things to do with bus service, so perhaps this is what he has in mind. What I'm saying is that it would be nice to have some clarity on this. I'm going to contact the Bacarisse campaign to see if I can get a statement as to what, specifically, he means by this. I'll let you know what I find out.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on February 03, 2008 to Election 2008