The Tulsa Whirled editorial board gave us a taste of the tone they plan to adopt in the recently commenced "Forfeit 4 Tulsa's Future" debate. In a classic example of projection, the Whirled editorialists whine that anyone with doubts or concerns about the wisdom of this package are the whiners and their concerns are not worth answering.

Far from whining, those of us urging the County Commission to split the higher education projects from the sports arena worked constructively to repair the problem, first raising the concern with elected officials last month. Concerned that Tulsa's leaders should avoid the mistakes of the 1997 and 2000 sales tax increase attempts, some of us spent many hours over the weekend trying to persuade elected officials to use their last opportunity to repair the problem, and to let Tulsa County voters make rational, meaningful choices among very different types of projects.

I personally have been involved for the last two years as part of Tulsa Now, trying to help guide the process to a genuine vision that a broad cross-section of Tulsa-area residents could embrace. This is the behavior of a whiner?

It would be fun and easy to pick apart this childish editorial line by line, but I don't feel like wasting my time. It's clear the Whirled would prefer to holler "nanny nanny boo boo" than to engage in rational, grown-up debate with people who care about this region's future but have a different opinion about how best to secure that future.