To the editor:

“Politics is a funny, sometimes dirty, raw business” (“Money Talks,” Journal-World, Feb. 24). Many of us would agree that Sunflower Electric Power Corp.’s offer to give Kansas State University $2.5 million is, to say the least, “almost a bribe.” Isn’t it interesting, however, that the editors were silent when Baker University was offered $8.5 million to pretend there would be no environmental consequences to letting eight to 10 lanes of concrete cross the Wakarusa Wetlands!

That agreement with the Kansas Department of Transportation was signed just a few months after the 30-year restrictions on educational use of the wetlands that were taken, some would say stolen, from Haskell expired.

Your editorial is equally critical of the offer of a building as “bait” in a Johnson County deal you do not support, yet when KDOT promised Baker University a building for a “wetlands education center” in exchange for allowing the wetlands itself to become a truckway there never was any talk of “bait.” In fact, the very notion that the SLT would attract significant new truck traffic was dismissed. Just a week ago KDOT announced they plan to “study” the commercial truck traffic that will be generated by the new trucking and distribution centers in Gardner and Ottawa. It is not coincidental that this critical information will surface long after public input to the Transportation 2030 plan ends this week.

Money does talk. It can also buy silence, especially when the bribes and bait in one’s own backyard are viewed as “good for business.”

Michael Caron,
Lawrence