The Cannon-Fallon Flip Flop
Fallon/Cannon
Opportunists At Large?
Readers will remember that last week’s new government expenditures consisted of about a million dollars of Charlotte-Mecklenburg taxpayer money being given to the highly profitable Cedar Fair, owners of Carowinds Amusement Park. Both the Charlotte City Council and the Mecklenburg County Commission OK’d sizable tax incentives in hopes of guaranteeing an expansion of the park.
No doubt that the votes of City Council Republicans Andy Dulin and Warren Cooksey were highly disappointing, especially considering the approval of the Council was only affirmed via a 7-4 vote. Their two votes could have saved taxpayers a sizable dollar amount had they appropriately voted against such preferential treatment for yet another mega-million dollar company.
That said, the 7-4 vote is interesting.
The four dissenting votes during the open Council meeting consisted of Michael Barnes, Patrick Cannon, Claire Fallon, and Bill Maddalon, who was appointed to the District 1 seat this summer as Patsy Kinsey took over as Mayor.
This open meeting vote, taken shamefully with next to no notice at all for the general public, came following an earlier vote on June 24th that was taken in closed session.
The closed session vote was a little more telling. Here are the minutes for that meeting.
As you can see at the end, the original vote for this Carowinds incentive deal was 9-2.
While Michael Barnes and Patsy Kinsey’s replacement remained consistent in their opposition, both Council Members Patrick Cannon and Claire Fallon changed their votes.
That’s right. Both seemed confident enough in this proposal to vote for it back in June.
What could have changed since then?
It couldn’t possibly be that both are in heated election campaigns and recognize that public votes giving away the money of working families to super successful corporate empires might not be in their best interests?
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