A2POLITICO: Paying Attention to the “Public’s Perception”—Grudgingly

by P.D. Lesko

THE COUNTY EMPLOYEES had taken the majority of the chairs out of the waiting room and into a conference room, where a gaggle of them were gathered around a table having a meeting. The waiting room was full of people waiting—standing and waiting, actually. I stopped a county employee on her way into the meeting and asked to have the chairs brought back out to the waiting room. The county employee started, as if I’d suggested she should prance naked down the middle of Washtenaw Avenue. After she recovered her composure, she pointed out that the county staffers were having a meeting—as if I were some kind of cretin without the necessary understanding of the importance of “meetings.”

I stared at her and said nothing. I neither agreed that the county employees needed the waiting room chairs more than the people who pay their salaries, nor did I repeat my request. After a few moments, she said she would try to find chairs for the people in the waiting room. I watched her walk into the meeting and never leave the room, until the meeting was finished. She’d lied.

Over the past several weeks, The Indy has published a series of articles about county employee travel and the use of county-issued credit cards. The newspaper used Freedom of Information Act requests coupled with the analysis of almost 14,000 credit card receipts to identify travel and spending patterns. The March 11 front page article caused a minor panic. I know this because I filed a Freedom of Information Act request about my original request. In other words, I FOIAed county emails which mentioned my own name, as well as the name of the newspaper in a three day period after the March 11 article was published.

It might be amusing to publish the emails:

County Employee 1: “Hey, Someone sent me this article. Have you seen it?” (link to article about county employee credit card use posted to A2Indy.com).

County Employee 2: “No I haven’t. UGLY!!! Thanks.”

However, amusement isn’t the point. There is nothing amusing about public employees who behave as though they’re entitled to jet off to Las Vegas or stay at the Crystal Mountain Resort after the County Administrator gets the Board of Commissioners to cut funding for Head Start and money for services to help the homeless.

One of the emails that caught my eye was a somewhat obvious one which a county supervisor had sent to a group of employees: “Please read the email and the article link below….I am pretty sure that this kind of scrutiny will be ongoing…so keep this in mind when approving travel. While our practices are within county policy, we need to add public perception to our list of considerations.”

In other words, if someone is looking we need to behave differently than we normally would.

This kind of response not only indicates of a sense of entitlement the size of a Great Lake, it was written by a staffer who earns a six-figure salary plus benefits. This person needs all of the chairs from the proverbial waiting room, just because the chairs are there.

The articles about credit card spending by county employees are some of the most popular on our website—as you may well imagine. According to the emails turned over, the newspaper’s analysis and examination of county employee credit card spending was unpopular with some county employees. One employee inquired as to whether County Administrator Verna McDaniel was going to demand a retraction.

How, precisely, listing credit card charges made on dates and times indicated by data posted to the county’s own website might call for a retraction is unclear. What was clear from the email is that this particular county employee felt not only entitled to stay at luxury resorts at taxpayer expense, but that questions about county employee stays at luxury resorts were most unwelcome.

When public employees spend public money it is everyone’s business. The problem, I think, is that local media have for many years been incurious about such matters—or deliberately avoided them. If the media can take notes at the County Board of Commissioners’ meeting, that is a major accomplishment. However, repeating what politicians say at meetings is not reporting; it’s repeating. Politicians say all manner of things at public meetings which they, later, may conveniently forget they said. Some politicians even resort to telling fibs at public meetings. Repeating those fibs is not in the best interest of anyone except the politicians and  their supporters.

In this examination of credit card spending by county employees, it’s important to note that Ann Arbor County Commissioners Andy LaBarre and Yousef Rabhi, in response to questions from constituents, immediately contacted County Administrator Verna McDaniel for more information, applicable policies and other information about county employee credit card spending identified in the newspaper’s March 11 article. To Ms. McDaniel’s credit, she produced a 4-page single-space response within one day. These are all good signs that elected officials and public employees who should be paying attention are doing do.

However, as long as there are upper-level managers employed by the county who feel entitled to stays at luxury resorts on the taxpayer dime, the public is entitled to know about their spending habits.