It's quite the reunion this morning: Ex-Dallas News-er Emily Ramshaw, now at the Texas Tribune, sits down with ex-Dallas Observer-er and former Dallas Mayor Laura Miller, now director of projects for Summit Power, which is in the clean-coal (big) business. Miller, who hasn't done many sitdowns since leaving office, opens up about a number of subjects -- including her thoughts on natural-gas drilling in Dallas (she was for it till she turned against it), the state of the Trinity River Corridor Project, husband Steve Wolens's maybe running for office again ("I'd be a great campaign manager for Steve") and whether or not Mayor Tom Leppert's doing a good job (she won't say).
Too many excerpts from which to choose. So, closing eyes and picking at random, let's go with this one:
Q. What are your sentiments about the Trinity River Project, one of the biggest triumphs of your time in office, which has now hit delay after delay?
A. My biggest disappointment about the Trinity since I left has been the [U.S. Army] Corps of Engineers, only because I met with the Corps of Engineers every single month when I was mayor. When they came out shortly after I left office and said, "We've got big problems, and everything has to stop," it was shocking. Obviously they knew things when they were meeting with us. There was just no reason for that. For the one entity that can stop the project to suddenly come out and say "there are problems" is really disingenuous. If I was still at City Hall, I would've been very frustrated with the corps not communicating better.
