TRU meeting will feature Dennis Schornack.

University of Michigan Center at 3663 Woodward Ave, corner of Woodward and MLK/Mack Tonight between 6 and 830.

Schornack was hired this summer by Bill Rustem, Snyder's Director of Strategy. Rustem was Milliken's enviro point man with the bottle bill as his claim to fame in the '70's.

Schornack worked for years for John Engler to get laws passed on health care and environmental issues. Engler told George Bush 2 to appoint Schornack in about 2001 as the U.S. chair of the international joint commission. That mainly means working in Detroit and DC with the Canadians to maintain Great Lakes commerce and water quality.

The White House fired Schornack over a dispute in rural Washington state where a resident had built a fence for his dogs that encroached on the international border out in the woods.

Schornack is a good listener and reader and knows how to move legislation through the capitol. He has assembled the players in SE Michigan transit and the federal authorities. But there's no evidence that he's asserted pressure on people like L. Brooks and Norm White. Brooks' deputy, Jerry Poisson, is thrilled with the BRT plan, apparently. It will benefit the suburbs and it doesn't require rail.

There's no evidence that Schornack has read Origins of the Urban Crisis, even though he has it on his shelf. And there's no evidence he's trying to use transit as a way of redeveloping our barren city. Rustem too is willing to skip the economic development role that transit can play.