Friday, April 14, 2006

Guardino chickened out on Measure A debate

"I'm not the campaign spokesperson, I'm running the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. That is a full-time job. I'm volunteering with this when I can." Carl Guardino stated for the San Jose Metro on Wednesday as his excuse for not participating in a debate on Measure A scheduled for April 25.

Despite being one of the master planners behind the flawed and dishonest Measure A, Guardino has kept himself behind the scene. On the day when the Supervisors voted to place Measure A on the ballot, Guardino was absent at that meeting. His transportation aide, Laura Stuchinsky, spoke on behalf of SVLG in support of Measure A instead. Recently Stuchinsky temporarily resigned from the VTA's Citizens Advisory Committee to focus on the Measure A campaign.

Back in 2000, while still having a "full-time" job running the SVLG, Carl Guardino was the chief campaign spokesperson for the 2000 Measure A. Why is Guardino refuse to publicly campaign and debate in support of Measure A this time around? Is he afraid to show that he has inconsistent and unfair positions on sales taxes: supporting sales tax exemptions for corporations and sales tax increases for everyone else? Or is he afraid to state his intention of transferring a large portion of the revenue from the sales tax increase to VTA, despite its record of inefficiency and dishonesty, as well as VTA's selection to build wasteful projects like BART at the expense of cost effective Caltrain and local transit improvements?

What else do Carl and SVLG have to hide?

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