Judy Lubow’s July 27 guest opinion was right on, and just her writing it (and the T-C publishing it) is very revealing about the skullduggery occurring in the upper bureaucracy of RTD. Her witness about the RTD’s immoral and illegal treatment of Longmont tells me that its mean-spirited, abusive policies have not changed since the early 1970s when I first encountered them.

Did everyone understand that Ms. Lubow serves on the RTD Board of Directors? Her guest opinion indicates that the “big guys” at RTD do not respect her as a Board member and certainly they do not care about us “hilbilllies” in Longmont.

“Just send us your tax dollars and shut up, Longmont. No, you are not getting service from our state-of-the-art FasTracks, no matter what we promised you.”

In the late 1960s and early 1970s I lived in Greeley and RTD was trying to include all of Weld County in its district. In the 1970 election, I actively supported two men running for re-election to the Colorado House of Representatives. Both had risen to chairmanship of important legislative committees and both had helped block RTD’s efforts to take in all of Weld County. That’s a huge county.

The big Denver newspapers and other shills for the RTD backers gave the Weld County legislators a rough going-over. The two local guys responded logically, saying that RTD could never serve New Raymer (home of one of the legislators) or Johnstown (home of the other one). In fact, it was doubtful that RTD would serve Greeley, the county seat.

More abuse was dumped on the two, and finally they made a simple, clear statement that everyone understood. They said, “This is all about money. RTD wants Weld County’s large tax base and its tax revenue. It just wants money, our money.”

There was more thunder and lightning from Denver, but the Weld County voters got the message. Reps. Showalter and Younglund were re-elected by a substantial majority.

I have narrowed my opinion to the upper bureaucracy of RTD, including the invisible bean counters. Without exception, every working man I met; every bus driver, phone clerk or maintenance person at RTD — all have been stand-up guys. Some of them have been abused, too. The corporate arrogance sometimes knows no limit.

Longmont and Boulder County generally has some smart people living here. I am confident that if they got together over a cup of coffee they could assemble a plan that would put an end to this imbalance and unfairness.

However, if nothing changes, nothing changes.

Tom Aron lives in Longmont. He is a former water court referee in Montrose and Greeley who worked on water cases in northeastern Colorado.