When I posted a few weeks ago about why Texans should vote "no," or even more loudly, "NO," on just about all the constitutional amendments on next month's ballot, I promised to do more in-depth breakouts on a few, and here we go.
The main reason I oppose this, Prop. 14, is Fairfield Lake State Park — and the several other state parks in similar circumstances. Tis true that the ballot language talks about "creation and improvement" of state parks, not just "creation." But, buying the currently-rented land, the land surrounding cooling ponds at old coal-fired power plants that's the basis of several other state parks besides Fairfield Lake, isn't as "sexy" as creating new parks. It should have been mandated in the ballot language that TPWD do that first. (Of course, that might have led the power companies to hold TPWD hostage.) Given TPWD's dilatory actions, aka fuck-ups, on the whole process of eminent domain re Fairfield Lake, a process that looks like it was deliberately designed to fail, it's not trustworthy.
Per that last link, there are FOURTEEN state parks with the same situation as Fairfield Lake. FOURTEEN. And, this amendment says nothing about TPWD acquiring ownership of their land before buying sites for new state parks.
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