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April 23, 2008

Dale Mabee's Curious Definition of "Special Favors"

If a million-dollar interest-free loan, no-bid land options, & free property don't count as "Special Favors", I'm damn curious to know what does.

'Course, Dale Mabee plays fast n' loose with the facts & language surrounding the transaction. Note that he cites River City Company as the author of the RFP (clever). It's true, RCC did develop the RFP, but the Mayor and the CDRC made the decision on whose proposal was accepted. RCC, being the experts, are often contracted in this manner. Take the Wheland Foundry property, wherein River City is handling the public process & planning aspects of the project (and perhaps eventually the RFP), but the property owners will make the decisions on which developers actually enact the plan (and where and how).

Dale cites his "higher bid" as warrant for his receiving the project. Who wouldn't be comfortable bidding higher on a piece of property if they knew the seller was going to front the cash, and without any personal liability.

Further, as Dale makes mention of later his project was much larger than his competitor, hence the price difference. It wasn't as if Dale was offering to pay more; he was offering to do more (on the taxpayer dime). The price difference is functionally irrelevant.

Dale also calls the alley in question (aka the "Free Property") "non-exclusive" given that were Dale not to exercise his exclusive option on the adjacent property that someone else would have rights to use the alley. Well, of course, but the option is exclusive and Dale would gain sole rights/ownership of the alley if the did exercise the exclusive option.

Finally, Dale states:

"...at no time did we ask for or in our opinion receive any special terms that would not have been given to our competitor if he had bid more money for the property and had been chosen to build his proposal."

What Dale is "arguing" here is that since he didn't call the terms of the agreement "special", they aren't. Right. Further, Dale offers the dubious claim that had he not gotten the project, his competitor would have been given the same terms. Right.

Any Baylor students out there taking Informal Logic who want to guess which fallacies Mr. Mabee has committed?