Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Mayor’s P.R. junket to Portland backfires

Channel 5 lambastes misplaced priorities in midst of City’s fiscal crisis
July’s public relations stunt of a junket to Portland by Mayor Mallory and other City staffers to promote the City’s wasteful and ill-timed trolley proposal backfired with the media lambasting Hizzoner for wasting money the City simply does not have to spend.

The day the Mayor returned from his public relations junket on the taxpayer dime, the City announced layoffs of City employees, that resulted in the reduction of 138 persons from the police force.

One example of the media coverage of the junket was this great Channel 5 piece on the wasteful spending and wrong direction of the City.

COAST estimates that the City spent more than $10,000 in tax dollars on the junket that served no purpose other than promoting the trolley proposal that is opposed by 65% of City voters.

3 comments:

  1. Except "taxpayers" didn't pay for his trip, the Business and Jobs Attraction Account did, which was started in 2006 with $750,000 from a Duke Energy settlement. City revenues *did not* fund that account or the mayor's trip.

    The streetcar is all about attracting business and jobs, so this seems to have been a perfectly justifiable use of those funds. Nobody from COAST or NAACP has made the effort to travel to Portland themselves (I did it for well under $1,000), or apparently just to email officials there and get their opinion of their system.

    COAST lies so much, it's hard to keep up with them.

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  2. COAST, maybe you should read the Cincinnati Enquirer a little bit more closely next time:
    http://caast-usa.blogspot.com/2009/08/more-lies-from-good-folks-at-coast.html

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  3. Provost Jake, it's either government-controlled money or it isn't. Who did Duke pay this money to? They either paid it to the government or they didn't, and if it's in government coffers then it's the people's money. Don't lie to us.

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