Angela Hunt is gumming us again

Angela Hunt never misses an opportunity to take a symbolic, if not a realistic, high road. This time she has announced she will no longer use city funds to travel on city business. Sure. Fine. Whatever.

Dave Levinthal of the Dallas Morning News nailed it when he said Ms Hunt's latest stunt is "a move that's perhaps more symbolic than anything." Levinthal's report also said the council members with the highest travel budgets last year were Ron Natinsky who spent $14,925.75, Carolyn Davis who spent $13,388.75 (much of it on a trip to Belize to study, I guess, the habits of people visiting beach resorts for when Dallas gets a beach and a beach resort), Tennell Atkins who spent $12,790.60 and Pauline Medrano, $7,941.95.

Look, here's the deal. Each City Council member is allotted $4,000 annually for "any city related travel purposes." Hey, that seems like a good deal to me. If Ms. Hunt is really serious saving tax payer money, I suggest she introduce a resolution for a full vote of the City Council that restricts all council members from using any other funds, especially their office expense fund, for travel, so that all members will be limited to the $4,000 a year set aside for them for city related travel purposes.

Oh, if she really wants to get tough, then she should go this route. According to my rough calculations, city council members spent an average $2,310.45 each on travel. Now, Ms. Hunt, here's what I would like you to do: Introduce a resolution for a council vote that puts an absolute cap on all taxpayer-funded city travel at $2,500 per council member. Any amount over that must come from the council member's own pocket (campaign funds are permissible to use). If a council member uses less than that, the council person in question gets to pocket the change.

Now that would put some teeth in her message.