We all know that local government is in crisis, right? Thanks to the recession, not to mention the unavoidable constraints imposed by TABOR, our elected officials are finding it difficult to fund even the basic needs of government, right?  No money for frills-it’s just meat and potatoes at the city and the county, right?

So how, pray tell, does El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa justify paying for an expensively produced, 36 page, glossy magazine titled “2008 Special Edition Annual Report?”

The mag, printed on heavy, glossy stock, with color on every page, masquerades as a report to the taxpayers.  It’s not an annual report,-just as Congressman Doug Lamborn’s equally slick and glossy “newsletters” have little to do with news.

To read the “Annual Report” is to find out that all is well in the Sheriff’s department.  According to Sheriff Maketa, “Every component of our organization achieved higher levels of performance” and “The El Paso County Sheriff’s Office continues to carve a path of creativity, resourcefulness and commitment toward serving our great community.” 

In subsequent pages, every part of the office is singled out for embarassingly fulsome praise.  The mag contains no fewer than 115 color photographs, as well as a smaller number of (largely uninformative) charts and graphs.  There’s a single page of financial information, which consists only of a couple of bar charts and a pie chart. 

Let’s call this “Annual Report” what it really is: a taxpayer-funded campaign piece for Sheriff Maketa.  At least, I assume that it’s taxpayer funded-if it isn’t, if it was paid for by anonymous private contributors, that’s even worse, since it pretends to be an official government document.

In any case, it, along with Lamborn’s taxpayer-funded mailings, are both deplorable.  We don’t need glossy P.R. pieces from our elected officials, telling us how noble, selfless, and dedicated they are - we need the unvarnished truth.  And if times are as difficult as our leaders tell us, how can they afford to squander thousands on fancy print jobs?

To quote the legendary Sergeant Joe Friday of the LAPD “Just the facts, Ma’am.”  Forget the color, forget the pics, forget the puffery - just the facts, Sheriff.

<- Back to CSBJ.com

---

Posted by John Hazlehurst on May 6th, 2009 :: Filed under Uncategorized
Tags :: El Paso County, Lamborn, Maketa

---

Got a fancy, little four-color mailer from Congressman Doug Lamborn in the mail yesterday, decrying the stimulus bill. 

Lamborn wants us to know that he’ll “continue the fight to reduce spending, debt and taxes.”

Admirable goals, congressman, but how does your vow to reduce spending square with your willingness (nay, eagerness!) to spend tens of thousands of dollars upon “information mailings” to constituents?

Have you heard about e-mail? Of press releases via e-mail? Of submitting op-eds to newspapers? Of being interviewed on talk radio shows? 

Of course you have - and you use all of these means of communicating with your constituents. 

This flyer is headed “Public Document-Official Business.”  And beneath the heading are the words “This mailing was prepared, published and mailed at taxpayer expense.”

It’s not an official document, in the sense that a letter from, say, the Social Security Administration is an official document.  It’s just a political puff piece, designed only to bolster Lamborn’s political position.

Lamborn’s predecessor, a principled man unafraid to oppose the leaders of his own party when he believed that they had engaged in unethical behavior, never sent out such puff pieces.  Joel Hefley was an old-fashioned conservative, who believed that actions, not words, defined an elected official.

Lamborn would do well to emulate Hefley, and practice the frugality that he preaches.  But I’m betting that he won’t.

<- Back to CSBJ.com

---

Posted by John Hazlehurst on March 13th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
Tags :: Congress, conservatives, Hefley, Lamborn, Mailer, spending

---

The Pueblo Chieftain is reporting that the Army is close to an agreement with a Denver landowner to lease 70,000 acres near, but not adjacent to, the present Pinon Canon maneuver site.

Area ranchers and members of Colorado’s congressional delegation were quick to condemn the proposed deal, saying that it represents an attempt by the Army to circumvent the congressional resolution requiring the Army to justify the proposed Pinon Canon expansion.

A deal to expand Pinon Canyon to which all parties would agree would be good news for Colorado Springs since it would virtually guarantee that the Mountain Post would remain one of the Army’s most important facilities.  But this proposed lease agreement, if the Chieftain’s report is correct, might do more harm than good.  It could trigger a confrontation between imperious Army officials and imperious members of Congress.  In such a confrontation, the Army will be overwhelmed by superior bureaucratic firepower and forced into a humiliating retreat.

Let’s hope that our now well-connected and powerful Colorado voices in Washington, including Sens. Bennet and Udall, not to mention Interior Secretary Salazar, and Reps. Salazar, Markey, Perlmutter, Polis and Degette, will seize the moment and structure a fair, reasoned approach to expansion.

And if doing so means that they have to embarrass Army bureaucrats and ignore Congressman “Lonely Doug” Lamborn, so be it … we just want them to remember how important Fort Carson is to the regional economy, especially in these difficult times.

<- Back to CSBJ.com

---

Posted by John Hazlehurst on March 12th, 2009 :: Filed under Blog
Tags :: Army, Bennet, Degette, Lamborn, Markey, Perlmutter, Polis, Salazar, Udall

---