Rewind: Metro Money used for cops

[ricco67]

I have been diving into the archives as of late and came across this little item.

Link

The beginning of the end for Rail in that era.

Wasting no time acting on his main campaign promise, Mayor Bob Lanier on Friday announced a police overtime program to put up to 200 additional officers on Houston streets starting Monday. It is the beginning of Lanier's pledge to add the equivalent of 655 officers within 90 days of his inauguration Thursday, with the bill eventually to be paid with Metropolitan Transit Authority rail funds.

Since the Metro money is not yet available, Lanier will use $560,000 in seized drug money, earmarked for undercover operations and investigations in targeted high-crime areas, to pay overtime for 200 officers through the end of January.

[IHB2]

coming out of the 1980s, the worst economic times Houston ever saw = years of low tax revenue for the city, and saddled with a quantifiable crime wave driven by big increases in juvenile crime, few Houston taxpayers complained when Lanier took tax $$ from wherever he could get them to fund public safety and street repair. METRO had a big pot of tax $$ and rail was at the absolute bottom of the city's needs, so using it to fix streets so he could fund more cops was politically brilliant. His 92% voter approval rating wasn't b/c of his good looks.