It turns our that after the voters of Colorado Springs rejected a tax increase for the city, the city’s politicians ordered their public relations staffers to bad mouth the city and to cast a negative light on the city in national media. Basically, since they didn’t get their tax increase, the politicians were determined to make the city look as lousy as possible in a sort of I-told-you-so campaign that would make the voters sorry for not submitting to their betters.
According to the Colorado Springs Gazette:
After much probing by us, it became clear that [PR Director] Skiffington-Blumberg was given direct orders, after the defeat of the proposed tax increase, to tell the outside media about the most negative aspects of Colorado Springs. The campaign may have cost our city countless tourists and jobs. The Gazette was unable to reach [City Manager] Culbreth-Graft for comment.
“Our strategic plan was to paint a picture of the dire straits of our city budget. If we could not do so locally, we would do so in the regional and national press — though I’d have preferred that it not play out with Diane Sawyer,” Skiffington-Blumberg said, referring to one of several media giants who blasted Colorado Springs.
After she admitted the existence of this scorched earth campaign against the city, by the way, Skiffington-Blumberg was forced to resign by the City Manager.
In the past I’ve noted that Colorado’s constitutional requirements for popular votes approving tax increases have created a sort of local cottage industry in which politicians and their agents manufacture hysterical little narratives in which Colorado is the worst in the nation on everything ranging from education to city parks to traffic. “We’re worse than Mississippi” is a sort of local mantra of the local pro-tax crowd. The voters haven’t drunk the Kool-Aid on this of course, and neither has most of the country’s population since demographic data shows sizable net population gains for Colorado in recent years.
But if this latest story is clear, politicians will say just about anything to get a tax increase, even it it means waging a PR campaign against their own city.
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Standard procedure. Lay off a few teachers and cops to scare ‘em into compliance.
This is like what is happening in California. Jerry Brown really wants his tax increase. So since the public seems to be against them in general, the state is now trying to make the situation look desperate. We have furlough days, teacher layoffs, water rationing, and maybe most absurd of all, bathrooms at beaches are not going to be cleaned anymore!
Yeah, I’m not kidding. That is how they try to scare us into voting for tax increases, by not cleaning the bathrooms.
It’s amazing that those states never mention meaningless expenses first. For instance, California is funding an organization called the Senior Legislature. It’s purely made up of senior citizens who vote on things that have no legal bearing. It’s just a club, but California sees fit to give it a few million each year for operations.
A good way to begin the budget cutting process is to use the man on the street method. If you ask 10 random people in a random shopping center what something does, and none or even just one of them knows what it is or does, then cut the program whole hog.
Us versus them. It’s that simple.
They are also looking for “tax loopholes”
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/02/california_moves_towards_amazon_tax/
A California bill that would require Amazon and other online retailers to pay taxes to a state reeling in financial crisis took another step towards passage this week when it was approved by the state Assembly.
“Each year, California loses over $1.145 billion in revenues as a result of unreported use taxes,” wrote California State Assembly majority leader Charles Calderon in support of his bill, AB 155. “A large percentage of this use tax gap is attributable to out-of-state Internet sales.”
The “Amazon Tax”, as it has come to be known, is intended to enforce compliance with California’s “use tax” law. This tax, ** established in 1935 **, is levied on the purchaser – not the retailer – when purchases are made out of state and brought into California for “storage, use, or other consumption”.
So the PR manager was forced to resign for admitting that there was a campaign to malign the city, but the city manager, the one who issued instructions for the campaign to proceed in the first place, was not heaved over the side…..? How does that work?
Sione
Seems like it works the same way it has always worked.
“Hey, you fall on this sword for me, that’s a good minion.”
Well I live in Colorado Springs, and this city is terrible. There’s trash everywhere, no parks and recreation (aka parks arent cleaned, cared for or lit), (amazingly) not enough cops, street lights turned off.. The city seems to be in atrophy.. the downtown area certainly is, and no one here cares to do anything about it.
Basically, I can’t wait to leave.
Leave for where? Some place where people are more compliant victims?
I am not from Colorado Springs. I moved here less than a year ago. This city isnt as bad as LA (imho) but it’s pretty bad.
On the plus side, they just installed some trash and recycling bins in the downtown area.
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