Urban Tulsa has published a lengthy interview with former City of Tulsa Street Commissioner Jim Hewgley, who is a co-chairman of the Tulsa County Coalition, the opposition to the billion-dollar sales tax proposal.

The article lets Commissioner Hewgley lay out his case against the sales tax hike and to contrast the concerns about this increase with his reasons for opposing the previous arena proposals. His argument is grounded in his experience with municipal finance and his inside knowledge of convention center and arena operations (he oversaw both, and the PAC, as street commissioner).

The UT interview stands in sharp contrast to Sunday's Whirled article, which edited the opposition's remarks to fit their caricature -- same old bunch with no coherent reason for objecting. By omitting facts that were inconvenient, the Whirled's news editor provided a perfect setup for the editorial board, who condemned the opposition based on the caricature offered on the news pages. This is not the first time the two departments have exhibited such teamwork.

Jim was the author of the original third-penny sales tax for capital improvements, back in 1979. In one of the article's highlights, he explains why that tax failed the first time it was proposed and what he and other city leaders did to fix it so that it would win public support:

“In the fall of ‘79 Mayor Inhofe called what would have been the version of the vision conference back then. We called a summit and we had it at Gilcrease Museum. We invited everybody. We invited, specifically, all those people that were against us.”

At that time there were five people on the city commission who were Republicans. Hewgley says they were sitting ducks. That’s why they invited the heads of the Democratic and Republican parties. “We wanted to get the parties involved. We also had what was left of the Vision 2000 which had created the Greater Tulsa Council. We had these planning teams. We had a lot of everyday people and not very many vested interests. We had a broader base of people.”

The role of the commissioners was to run the meetings. “Everybody knew, including the people at the table and including us, that we were going to be the ones making the decisions, not somebody pulling our strings like is the case today.” At the end of the process he says they still had all the same people involved. The same people walked the precincts. In 1980 the third-penny sales tax was approved by voters.

“We learned that if you keep putting objectionable projects into good issues and they keep getting beat that probably the way to get them passed is to pull the projects out.” The team pulled two key projects out of the third-penny tax: the 71st Street bridge and the low-water dam. “It goes to show you if you have projects that are worth their salt, they’ll get built anyway. The point there is that we can legitimately this call this vote coming up Tulsa Project 3 just because the coliseum is in it. That’s a lesson somebody hasn’t learned.”

Please read the whole thing.