Interesting dispatch from the Bill King Campaign:
Turner: It will cost you $2.8 Million to find out how I spent $400 Million of your tax dollars. Bill King Blog
Under City rules, the mayor can sign contracts up to $50,000 without Council approval. In January, we got a tip from a City employee that Turner was aggressively using this rule to benefit some of his cronies and that if we were to file an Open Records request for those contracts, we would find some very “interesting” expenditures. So, we filed a request for all contracts the City had entered into since Turner took office but had not been approved by Council.
Under the Texas Public Information Act (“TPIA”), the City is entitled to recover its costs in producing any documents. Last week we received a letter from the City Attorney stating that the cost of copying the contracts would be $2.8 million and if we would send over a check for 50% of that amount, they would begin copying the contracts.
The cost estimate stated that it would take 155,000 hours to assemble the documents. That is 75 people working full-time for a year.
The only possible reaction to this, if you're not a hopeless partisan or someone who's profiteering off the public trough, is "Wow"
Just Wow.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: There is no greater criminal enterprise in modern America than big city politics. It enables and entire courtier class of hangers-on and leeches who serve no public good and whose only job is to seemingly heap praise on the current emperor, provided said emperor is willing to swear fealty to the existing ruling structure.
It is quite literally the greatest scam in American history, it has run our cities into the ground, possibly damaged our cities beyond repair and has done more to devalue the existing American system than almost any other institution in the US.
And it's entirely legal.
Our cities are debt-ridden cess-pools, and our leaders are giving away money like it's so many carnival baubles.
And we have done this to ourselves by continuing to listen to local media and other bad-actors who are so tied into the system that their opinions are nothing more than press-releases for the status quo.
We have done this to ourselves. The only way to undo it is to elect leaders who won't partake in this type of behavior. The problem is almost EVERY candidate runs for election as a reformer. Almost none turn out to truly be.
A lot of money and power are difficult things to resist. Especially when changing things would require changing the laws that allow you to do it. It's much like Congress at the State and Federal levels. Licenses to steal.
If you read this and think "Wait a minute, he's calling the entire American political system corrupt here"
You're right. I am.
