What Happened With 'Chronicle' Endorsements

Dear Editor,
    I typically check in with Chronicle “Endorsements” [News, Oct. 26] for an election cheat sheet when I've not done my own homework, but you missed one with Proposition 4. When a local news channel called this the "parks and prisons" proposal I knew something was awry. Indeed, the earmarks in this hodgepodge allow for "the construction of up to three new high security prisons" according to the League of Women Voters. "Parks and prisons" is akin to "make love and war." Texas has the highest incarceration rate on the planet, giving Austin an international rep as leader of the pack called the Prison Industrial Complex. Catching the obvious irony that belies the submerged hypocrisy used to be a mainstay of the Chronicle. Wha' happened?

   [Editor's note: Proposition 4, as Grady Hillman writes, would issue bonds to underwrite funding for prisons, among other things. According to the official figures, about 38% of the $717 million would go to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for construction of new facilities as well as repair of existing ones and another 28% to the Department of Public Safety. The bond also includes roughly $250 million for the Texas Building and Procurement Commission, the Parks & Wildlife Department, the Department of the Adjutant General, the Department of State Health Services, the Department of Aging and Disability Services, the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, the Texas Youth Commission, the Texas Historical Commission, and the Texas School for the Deaf. Voters should indeed consider whether the funding of more new prisons is a poison pill too toxic to endorse spending on all these other state needs.]