Not good for neighborhoods: a case of false equivalence as reported in the Tennessean

I was not present at the mayoral candidates debate this week, but Tennessean reporter Joey Garrison, who was there, reported thusly:

Phil Bredesen built an NFL football stadium and a downtown arena. Bill Purcell stuck to sidewalks and community centers. Karl Dean built a new convention center and a minor league baseball stadium.

Legacies of Nashville's last three mayors were presented that way at a mayoral candidates forum Wednesday. Those vying to be the next mayor then answered a simple question: "What will you build as mayor?"

But rather than reeling off big-ticket projects, a few of the contenders on hand turned their attention more to neighborhoods.

Garrison somewhat framed the focus of the debate around future construction projects. Framing is an interpretative, not an objective move. Nonetheless, he seems to say that the moderator, news corporation president Chris Ferrell, cited the three preceding mayors as all building along the identical lines of "big-ticket projects." Giving Garrison the benefit of the doubt, I would argue that Ferrell's own framing is not just subjective, but it skews the facts into a fallacy of false equivalence.

Neither Garrison nor Ferrell (reportedly) mentioned the singular glaring difference between the three mayors as framed: Bill Purcell's projects were Metro infrastructure projects that primarily and directly benefited the people who paid for them and used them. Sidewalks and community centers benefit all Nashvillians, not just the business class. They are neither limited to those who pay admission fees nor excluded to visitors from out of town. They address common goods of the local citizenry.

Both Bredesen and Dean have been primarily subsidizers of the business class. Stadiums, arenas and convention centers primarily benefit the corporations, industries and professional groups in entertainment and tourism. They benefit those industries while Metro mitigates the risk of private investment by committing public taxes to private-use facilities.

Bredesen and Dean at least acknowledged in their more honest moments that the goods to the larger Nashville community in their "big-ticket projects" were secondary. Many would add that they provide only trickle-down scraps to the Metro taxpayers, who are on the hook for all of these venues if they fail to live up to projections. In some cases they obligate Nashvillians even if they succeed: the NFL football stadium transfuses millions of tax dollars every year from public infrastructure services (Metro Water) per the contract signed by former Mayor Bredesen (the contract runs through 2026).

Framing the different capital spending priorities of the various mayors on the flat is not just incorrect, it invites the new crop of mayoral candidates to level all such spending as the same. That is potentially hazardous for the neighborhoods that these candidates claim they will attend to. There is a qualitative difference between a community center and an arena. Both of these news men should acknowledge that difference and hold the candidates accountable for doing so.

Money, influence, Will Pinkston, and Metro Public Schools

Want to see something interesting? Take a look at a spreadsheet that a source put together to help me illuminate some interesting things about the donors of District 7 school board candidate Will Pinkston, who was also one of former Governor Phil Bredesen's hired goons. For my part, I would draw several things out as voters go to the polls tomorrow:

• Bredesen and the Bredesenistas have dumped nearly $10,000 into the campaign of a school board candidate (of all things) in what appears to me to be a naked attempt to prop up the former governor's influence across Nashville's power structures
• 96% of Pinkston's obscene total amount of campaign donations ($52,750) came from outside of District 7, further reinforcing my opinion that the District 7 race is more of a power grab from the outside than a good faith effort to improve our kids' education
• The teachers union and Michelle Rhee's PAC essentially cancel out each other's influence by each giving Pinkston $3,000. The history of union organizing is replete with ironies big and small, so there is no reason to overthink the self-defeating moves of the local teachers union except to point out that they put themselves in the same Pinkston boat with Michelle Rhee, who is consumed with eliminating teachers unions from the education equation 
• The Nashville Chamber of Commerce, which is pro-charter schools and pro-privatization, is going all in on the Pinkston poker game, their PAC splurging with $7,100 and various CofC principals parlaying $3,000. If money is power, then the Nashville Chamber is the power broker here
• An astroturf group with connections to Mayor Karl Dean is also linked to this donors list. Neighbors for Progress, a group designed to aid the Mayor's bid to flip the State Fairgrounds to private developers and to demolish its public facilities, donated $100 to Mr. Pinkston (who also worked for the Dean for Mayor re-election effort). NFP once provided an in-kind donation of over $3,000 on behalf of the council campaign of Bredesen pick Sarah Lodge Talley, for whom Mr. Pinkston provided black ops. Pinkston himself was an adviser to NFP and he donated $1,000 to them. Ms. Talley and her campaign treasurer have donated to Mr. Pinkston. The attorney representing NFP has also donated to Will Pinkston's campaign. Is all of this feeling a bit incestuous yet?
• While Moving Nashville Forward, another astroturf group with Dean connections, has not donated to Will Pinkston's campaign, the lawyer who set them up has donated. MNF received $26,000 from Karl Dean to grease the wheels toward passage of his latest budget
• Prominent state Democratic Party leaders put themselves knee-deep in the muck by donating to this hit man in a race in which they have no obvious investment. For instance, why should a Democrat running for Chattanooga Mayor care to try and help out a Nashville school board candidate?

There are enough lawyers and lobbyists donating to Will Pinkston to make my skin crawl; but much worse is the probability that the political connections of influence across this donors report reflect a concern not so much with the future of our kids as with the consolidation by the powers-that-be.

Anyway, that's my part. Go read the donors list yourself and let me know what you think. District 7 voters go to the polls tomorrow.

Stand for Children - Tennessee brings in big gun from bygone Bredesen days to lobby its "education reform" cause

You may remember Mack Cooper as the former Bredesenista in so much hot water that he was demoted without recourse to public knowledge of the exact nature of his alleged harassment:

In swiftly demoting his chief lobbyist, Gov. Phil Bredesen proved that his administration will not tolerate workplace harassment ....

Bredesen provided no detail last week as to what persuaded him to demote Robert "Mack" Cooper. The governor's statement concerning the matter said little more than he "will not tolerate any form of harassment."

The only notes taken during the course of the investigation were shredded by chief investigator Kae Carpenter, who acknowledged that the notes could have become public under the open records law.

One of the booster groups of education reform and privatization, Stand for Children - Tennessee, apparently did not think so slightly of Mack Cooper to curb themselves before hiring him as one of their lobbyists [source: Tennessee Ethics Commission]:

Stand for Children - Tennessee has not tipped their hand yet with regard to Nashville schools, focusing instead on Memphis schools. However, they are still listed as the "advocacy" division of "One Nashville" an arm of the education-reform obsessed Nashville Chamber of Commerce that enjoys VIP status at Metro Nashville Public Schools, particularly with Director Jesse Register. Moreover, in other parts of the country they seem hell-bent on backing legislation that scapegoats teachers, promotes school vouchers, and redistributes public money to shadow-government private boards.

So, even in the uncertainty of the moment, a public school dad like me is very concerned about how hard SFC is willing to push these hot-button privatizing issues in league with a hired gun who has a morally ambiguous, inscrutably cloudy background to the degree that even Phil Bredesen--a governor who made "pragmatism" paramount to the slightest bleat of a call of duty--demoted him.

Mayor promises to cut Metro subsidy to Nashville Predators

The Nashville Predators are already soaking taxpayers to the tune of $10 million in sales taxes from non-hockey events that the state quietly authorized them to take. Mayor Karl Dean swears he did not know anything about the soaking, but he now promises to fix the situation:

Dean has said he plans to reduce Metro’s subsidy of the Predators, which is worth an estimated $7.8 million this fiscal year.

The new state legislation, sponsored by Sen. Thelma Harper, would take revenues from the state portion of the sales tax collected at non-hockey events at Bridgestone Arena, as well as the $2,500-per-game privilege tax paid by visiting hockey players, and put those funds in the hands of the Metro Sports Authority. But the legislation is just a placeholder “caption bill” at this point, and an equivalent bill has not been filed in the House yet.

Metro Finance Director Rich Riebeling said the administration hasn’t discussed the details of the proposed change with the Predators yet. He said the city “needed to get a bill filed” before the General Assembly’s session got much further along.

The Predators and their sister company, Powers Management, which operates the arena under contract with Metro, would still be able to use the state money. But the arrangement being proposed – similar to one in Memphis – could offer more transparency for taxpayers.

Hizzoner will have to cut quite a bit of Metro's hockey entitlements to the welfare queens down at Bridgestone to make up for the revenues that Metro has missed and will miss because of the state's irresponsible agreement. Remember the good old days when former Mayor Phil Bredesen promised us pro sports would lavish sales taxes even from non-sport events on our budget if we built an arena & attracted a hockey team?

At the business end of Guns N' Roses

It doesn't really matter if you like this aging hard rock band or not. Whether you have tickets to see them this weekend at publicly-owned Bridgestone Arena or not, it's all good.

The real question is how much bling do you think the Nashville Predators will make off this non-hockey event that should have been going into Metro Nashville coffers in these tight budget times? How many revenues originally pledged to pay for Metro services like schools, libraries, and parks in order to land an NHL club will be going into hockey club owners' pockets?

Deniable Dean?

Before Thanksgiving I posed the hypothesis that if Karl Dean did not know about the plan to send millions in non-hockey-event sales taxes away from Metro coffers and to the Nashville Predators hockey club then he is either inept of willfully ignorant. According to a late-breaking NewsChannel5 report last week, it looks like more of the latter:

But we've now discovered that they've actually pocketed almost $6 million, and there's another $4 million waiting for them to claim. It's all thanks to a lobbying effort on Tennessee's Capitol Hill.

"I just was a lobbyist, so I put the bill into the legislature," said Nashville attorney James Weaver.

Weaver is the man who went to Capitol Hill to get more of your money.

He's a longtime supporter of Mayor Karl Dean and a former lobbyist for the Nashville Predators.

After the team signed a lucrative new contract with the city in 2008, Weaver now admits he got state lawmakers to send them even more taxpayer money.

"We found out after the legislation had passed," Dean told NewsChannel 5 Investigates.

But his longtime ally had a different suggestion.

"It was a public process," Weaver insisted. "Again, the bill was debated in the House, debated in the Senate, passed by both by large margins and signed by the governor."

Does Mayor Dean really expect us to believe--given general claims that mayors possess specialized knowledge of the ins and outs of financial dealings that we are not privy to--that he had no knowledge of a public process of state legislation that redistributed tax dollars to private enterprise? Karl Dean is a lawyer, for crying out loud.

Reporter Phil Williams also found that former Nashville Mayor, former Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen inserted language into two different state bills that made the transfer of millions to the Preds possible. Dean worked for Bredesen when the latter was mayor, and a slew of Bredesenistas came to work for the Dean administration--at significant cost to taxpayers--after Bredesen's gubernatorial run ended.

The symbiosis between Dean and Bredesen (both of whom are Davidson Co. Democrats to boot) suggests to me that Dean would have had to have known that the fix was in on these bills. He cannot reasonably claim any deniability unless he simply kept himself willfully ignorant.

The part of this investigation where Dean's ineptness may slouch through is NewsChannel5's finding that MDHA hocked a sweetheart real estate deal to a local business in the convention center footprint that also had personal and influential connections at the Convention Center Authority. If the Mayor's Office prompted special assistance for one business it would be corrupt enough, but the very act of putting MDHA back in charge--after their mishandling of the Music City Center publicity deal with Dean ally, PR firm McNeely, Pigott, and Fox--is stupid and incredible.

Under-the-table state deal allows Predators to sap millions from non-hockey sales taxes on city-owned arena

These are exactly the multi-million-dollar under-the-table deals that you have to worry about when the city and the state grants subsidies to pro sports teams:



That part about Garth Brooks is particularly disturbing. The country music star came to Nashville to help the city by raising funds for flood recovery. The Nashville Predators flipped the huge sales tax windfall (which could have gone to the city to help with flood recovery) into private income. On top of that they justified the gain with a lie: that they had to rearrange their schedule to accommodate Brooks after Brooks had worked around to help them. That they would exercise guile about a charity event is particularly loathsome in my book.

But who paved the way in state government? Based on a Twitter exchange I had yesterday with Phil Williams and Scene reporter J.R. Lind, I gather that Tennessee Democrats (Gary Odom?) had some legislative oversight of the bill that hustled these provisions in on Metro's contract with the Preds. But it looks like former Governor Phil Bredesen's revenue department also had a hand in this, although the revenuers seem to deny to Mr. Williams that they have relevant records (much like the Predators' front office denied having the paper trail that CVB had).

And the Dean Administration? If it comes to keeping up with how their home team conducts its NHL business with influential state Democrats they look inept or willfully ignorant. They may not be at fault for the funneling of vast sums of government revenue to sports enterprise, but they also seem to have done nothing to safeguard tax revenues by calling public attention to questions of where sales taxes from events might come and go through the CVB. Then again, Karl Dean has never struck me as the kind of Mayor who wants to count on public attention or support beyond that which he receives at election time.


UPDATE:  NewsChannel5 announced today (Wednesday, Nov 23) that reporter Phil Williams will divulge the identity of the individual(s) who leveraged millions in non-hockey sales tax revenues for the hockey club on their 6 pm broadcast.

Dean doubles communications staff "to serve the needs of the media"

The pipeline leading from newsrooms to the pistons of government is alive and well in Nashville, given Karl Dean's hiring last week of Bonna Johnson as his Press Secretary. Johnson left the Tennessean last April to become a Public Relations Manager (no surprise there, since today's brand of journalism many times has more to do with spin and flackery than with critical questioning and unflinching reporting). Now she's carrying Karl Dean's message back to her former colleagues at the Tennessean who will no doubt continue the brainwashing that prompted them to make him their "Tennessean of the Year." At the same time, the Gannett kids will get someone close to the Mayor who can influence things for them if necessary. Looks like there will be a good chance for mutual back scratching.

In the meantime it is reasonable to ask: does Johnson's hiring catapult communications office expenses to unnecessary heights in this recession? Karl Dean has been burning Metro revenues with multiple hires of former employees of Phil Bredesen in an attempt to shore up his administration in preparation for a statewide run in 4 years. Given that the Mayor annually requires Metro departments to cut their budgets, why isn't he demanding the same from his own office? We know what dedicating a single staff member to fondle handle the media will mean to the Mayor's elections aspirations, but are the "needs of the media" really worth what we're going to pay Bonna Johnson to spoon feed newspeak back to us for the paycheck? I guess it beats overpaying those former journos at McNeely Pigott & Fox for shoveling us similar Pablum.

Enclave was first to break this news in February confirmed today: Dean hires another Bredesenista while pressing for department budget cuts

Press release from the Mayor's Office confirms news I broke February 7:

Former Bredesen Staff Member Appointed Chief Administrative Officer
in the Mayor’s Office

How many more former Bredesenistas will Karl Dean be employing in these times of economic downturn and budget austerity?

The Mayor's Office has cut 435 Metro employees and slashed millions of dollars from Metro services in the past 3 years. In anticipation of next year's budget, Karl Dean asked Metro departments across the board to cut 3% more.

Such a dire financial situation of cash flow in full retreat did not stop Mayor Dean from unapologetically hiring Jim Fyke fresh off his stint with Governor Phil Bredesen for a vague part-time position with a payout of $60,000.

And I'm hearing that the Mayor is planning on hiring more former Bredesen big shots for indeterminate part-time positions, some of whom may enjoy some sweet Metro pensions from previous Metro employment:

• Tam Gordon (Bredesen Special Assistant) is said to be slated for the Mayor's Office "doing some stuff"
• Gerald Nicely (Bredesen Deputy) is said to be slated to work in the Mayor's Office
• Emmett Turner (Bredesen fire prevention official) is said to be slated to work in Metro Beautification
• Janie Conyers (Bredesen Administrative Chief)

What a stark contrast between these part-time hires for the increasingly top heavy Mayor's Office and the hundreds of public school custodians at the lower end of the Metro pecking order who lost their jobs in 2010 due to outsourcing. I think my tax dollars were better spent at the lower end.

And what a contrast to the desperate tone Karl Dean set in 2008 when he ordered a Metro hiring freeze and declared, "We have to manage within the resources we have available and everybody, every family in Nashville, every business in Nashville are doing the same thing."

How many struggling families or small businesses would consider loading up with career bureaucrats and Bredesen insiders to shore up their strained budgets?



UPDATE: City Paper confirms Tam Gordon hire.


UPDATE: In a release sent out earlier today [Tuesday], the Mayor's Office vaguely addresses where the money is going to come from to pay Tam Gordon:

Gordon started work with Metro this week and was hired within the existing budget for the Mayor’s Office. Dean said other recent changes in staff and fiscal management made the funds for her position available.

Does that sound accountable enough for you, taxpayers? I'm still stunned at how staff and fiscal management changes can free up money to pay for heavy-hitters from state government when the previous message was that Metro could not possibly afford to pay custodians or hire any other Metro workers. Granted, those messages did not come during election years.


UPDATE: In a press release just out Tuesday afternoon, Save My Fairgrounds looks at the probable hiring of Gerald Nicely by Mayor Dean and sees the handwriting on the wall for their cause:

Statement on the Hiring of Gerald Nicely

Nicely Rumored to Head the “Fairgrounds Issue” Despite Mayor’s “Time Out”

Save My Fairgrounds is surprised to learn reports of Gerald Nicely’s pending hire with the Mayor’s office .... Nicely spent nearly 40 years on the government payroll, including nearly 20 years at MDHA, whose office building now bears his name ....

Mayor Dean said he supports the Council’s decision to conduct a master planning process for the Fairgrounds and surrounding neighborhoods. Dean has repeatedly suggested he is “taking a time out” on redeveloping the Fairgrounds, but with the addition of Nicely, he appears ready to shift into over-drive by circumventing the Council and Fair Board.

UPDATE: Channel 4's Nancy Amons confirmed on Tuesday night's 10:00 broadcast that Emmett Turner is accepting one of the "high-paid, unadvertised" openings in the Dean administration.



UPDATE: Tiny Cat Pants ponders how convenient it was to find money for these particular unemployed bureaucrats:

Forget why Dean would do this. Clearly, he has his reasons and eventually the city will pay a PR team to tell them to Gail Kerr, who will tell them to us.

What I want to know is who would take these jobs?! Even if you’re a great candidate, even if you think the city needs really talented people, what kind of person would not see red-flags from this? If the city needs someone to helm, say, a “poverty initiative,” why not advertise for the job and see who’s interested? Maybe the best candidate is Tam Gordon, in which case, great! But maybe there’s someone else who’d be better. We’ll never know because these jobs weren’t posted. They’re not even defined. People became available and jobs were made up for them.

Coal lumps don't compliment pearls

While there may be a lot of venture capital to collect, is there really a net environmental gain in Phil Bredesen's "string of solar pearls" when coal-burning TVA, which is behind the curve on solar financing and leasing, provides power to these green industry producers?

Blue-Dog Wal-mart Degrees and the Absence of Any Foresight

The Governor's proposal of "Wal-Mart degrees" has to be at once the high-water mark of Blue-Dog Democratic initiative and thus the low-water mark of general Democratic vision. The political head of the state party seems to totally lack any kind of prescience or passion for a better life with greater opportunities for all. Governor Bredesen appears to be content with a workforce that simply gets by in the service sector, while the middle class shrinks and the divide between poor and rich grows.

Some might call this "Wal-Mart degrees" initiative lighting a candle rather than cursing the darkness; I would compare it to holding a wickless candle but trying to light the wax regardless. It is a regressive and ineffective agenda for our future. It is a concession to the status quo and to the corporate guardians of this mess that we are in. It is digging the hole deeper for many families who need real opportunities, rather than half-baked ones. Worst of all, it may show that the Republicans no longer have to worry about the Tennessee Democrats, whose hope for the future seems to have gone belly-up.

The End of My Own Personal Boycott of State Parks

We just passed the 161st anniversary of Henry David Thoreau's sojourn on Walden Pond (July 4, 1845 -- culminating in Walden or Life in the Woods), and I now give myself permission to return to Radnor Lake State Park after too many years of missing it. You see I absolutely refused to pay ex-Governor Don Sundquist's entry fees for public parks, since the parks were, well, public and paid for to begin with. Republicans always find a way to tax by other means, but Phil Bredesen has now eliminated those fees; so, woo hoo! My boycott is over.

However, S-townWife just reminded me that we also just passed the 151st anniversary of Walt Whitman's publication of Leaves of Grass (July 4, 1855), and it is time for me to mow the yard again.

If You Work in Government, Then Dealing with the Inconvenience of Democratic Protests Is Part of the Job

Chris Wage has a very fine response to the ADAPT wheel chair protest at Capitol Hill and the Bredesen administration's rather disingenuous attempts to discredit the protest by referring to it as a "national group of professional organizers."

I've already said my piece about using sectionalist sentiment--in this case with the label "national group"--to question the legitimacy of protestors. I think it is both irrelevant and prejudiced. However, the Tennessee official responsible for the above reference, TDOT Commissioner Gerald Nicely, is obviously intending "professional organizers" as an implied smear, too.

But I don't understand where the smear is. Chris took issue with the claim that they were professionals. My response to Nicely would be, "So, what?" So, what if they might be professional organizers who protest at the state house for the rights of their interest group? Is Mr. Nicely implying that if organizers get paid to organize, then their actions are illegitimate? And could we not imply the same of hiring leaders for TDOT? If members of ADAPT desire to use organization funds to pay a smaller group of leaders to represent them (just like Tennesseans choose to pay bureaucrats to run offices like TDOT), where is the harm in that?

I have no doubt that members of the Bredesen administration meet regularly with lobbyists who are hired guns for corporations and manufacturing groups. Are mercenary lobbyists for big business better than generally low-paid (the annual salaries that I see advertised for organizers are in the high $20's) professional organizers? Nope; they're worse. ADAPT may be in your face, but corporate lobbyists are behind your back. Does Commissioner Nicely paint those high-paid lobbyists ugly with the same brush he tars ADAPT? I doubt it. Lobbyists are monied interests; all ADAPT has is protest and civil disobedience.

If Mr. Nicely thinks that salaries that probably average on the low end of the scale are enough compensation to make people sit in the cold rain, face derision from some state workers who just want to go home after a long day, become the subject of Bredesen's scorn in the mainstream media, and eventually be dragged off in cuffs quite possibly to jail, then he has been spending too much time in smoke-filled rooms with the lobbyists who are infinitely worse than a small band of annoying protestors who shut down traffic on a couple of streets. Like them or not, those people have some sense of conviction that is their compensation for what they are doing; and even if we disagree with them they deserve our respect. And they deserve more honest treatment from this administration.

And government employees, among whom I would include Gerald Nicely and Phil Bredesen, better get used to social protests when government services to common people get cut, while well-mannered lobbyists win special consideration for their clients behind the scenes. You folks are just going to have to deal with it or move on to something else. To paraphrase the insightful thoughts of one no less inconvenienced government worker to a TV reporter: it's the democratic way. She understands her line of work. But those who want to work free of protestors (professional or not) ought to find a more tame career in the private sector.

Ain't No Sunshine For Us Pawns

Apologies to Bill Withers. The genesis of the whipped up alternative ethics bill--which did little to change the damaging influence of lobbyists over political campaigns--was a secret nonpublic meeting between Governor Phil Bredesen and legistlators. Sunshine Laws? Only darkness every day.

With $4.95 Million Riding On Their Wager, Did You Really Think The Lobbyists Were Going To Sit By Lose?

Lobbyists around the state house are denying any influence over a Republican "alternative" ethics bill--supported by Democrats in the House and Democratic Governor Phil Bredesen (who all but scoffed to a reporter on the recent Nissan relocation that making deals is more important than having ideals)--that would gut the original ethics bill's intention to limit the ability of lobbyists to pay off legislators in return for favorable votes. They can deny to their hearts content, but the Tennessean obtained a "list of concerns" of the lobbyists. It's on there. At least one legislator says that lobbyists approached him about the issue. Lobbyists with the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce and Industry sent off a newsletter to its 2,000 members urging business leaders to contact legislators on the matter. But even without the Tennessean's evidence, it doesn't take much to connect the dots between truckloads of lobbyists' money and their influence over a Republican-initiated and Blue-Dog-Democrat-supported bill designed to kill ethics reform and make the state safe for unfettered private profits.

But how does the Republican sponsor justify the killing? By the ridiculous charge that, since lobbyist groups would have to hire a person to monitor and to assure ethical behavior, they would be paying a "hidden tax." Cry me a river of tears. God forbid that they take some of the money to pay monitors from that $4.95 million per year that they dump into legislators' laps. Call it a tax if you like; I'd call it a small price to pay for ethical business leadership. I guess the lobbyists believe that ethical conduct just costs too much money; it doesn't make good business sense.

But given their overeager profit motives, might the shadier lobbyists be most concerned that hiring ethics monitors might cost them even more money when they have to bribe those officials to look the other way? That would amount to "double-secret-taxation."

Tennessee Discovers Trash

Well, the litter around the state employee parking lots on 5th Ave., North has finally been picked up. I drove by the lots on my way home today and I searched in vain for the six-month-old garbage that I documented in previous photos.

It looks as if the Governor’s no doubt steadfast quest to keep public lands clean has finally come into its own. I guess we can anticipate the next litter pick-up as early as next fall; that is, if he follows the same leisurely schedule as 2004 for sprucing up public grounds around Bicentennial Mall.

Since I have been critical of the state’s seeming unwillingness to clean up rubbish for half a year, I felt led to give it credit now that it seems willing. I just wish it would strive for extra credit in the future.