A must-read
If you haven't read the Tribune's Sunday story about the governor's PR machine, make sure you do so now.
With his re-election campaign looming, Gov. Rod Blagojevich's administration has built an unprecedented image-shaping machine, sending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer-funded promotional letters to constituent groups, urging agency directors out into the field and grading the media's coverage of events. [...]
An administration effort this summer to use parole agents to distribute a letter from the governor to various constituency groups, extolling his work to track sex offenders, ignited strong protest from his allies in organized labor and the Democratic Party, who complained it came perilously close to forcing state workers to do political work for the governor. But the parole initiative was just the tip of the iceberg.
Documents obtained by the Tribune show that at least 32 "Dear Friend" letters came from the governor's office between July and August. The letters, signed by the governor and appearing on his official letterhead, discuss topics ranging from women's health care to a new law banning younger drivers from using cell phones. One letter, appearing with the signature of Patricia Blagojevich, the governor's wife, extols a new law exempting nursing mothers from jury duty. [...]
[In July], the Illinois Department of Public Health sent more than 340,000 letters and more than 70,000 e-mails to state recipients of health-care benefits, plus hospitals, doctors, hospices, chiropractors and other groups, the tracking form shows.
There's too much to excerpt. Make sure you read the whole thing. And notice this at the end.
By their standard, Blagojevich had an excellent month in August, according to copies of agency logs obtained by the Tribune. Their count showed that 942 stories were written or broadcast about key agencies under the governor's control. Of those, 906 were deemed "positive," nine as "negative" and 27 were "neutral." For July, the scorecard showed 725 positive, 27 negative and 75 neutral.
So much for the constant complaint that the media is ignoring his message. That's supposedly the reason they have to do all this extra PR work.
I wonder if they're rating individual reporters as well.
In a related story, the guv has spent $130,000 in taxpayer funds to videotape state events that he has attended, which brought this rebuke from the State Journal-Register:
It is a continuing problem with this administration. Rather than rely on the natural good publicity that flows from doing good deeds, Team Blagojevich is driven to prove the brilliance of its leader at every turn and at any cost. It comes across as needy and desperate.
posted by Rich Miller @ 11/28/2005 10:21:00 AM
23 comments
23 Comments...
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The taxpayer IS carrying the burden for his re-election. I've been saying this all along. He doesn't need the $14 million or $20 million or whatever. His real csmpaign chest is billions of taxpayer dollars in state coffers.
Again, however, we brought this on ourselves. It is possible to
have laws controlling this type of thing.
And JBT or yet unknown cnadidate for guv will have to find (civilized) ways of counteracting this media blitz because using state resources to campain for the governship is going to completely legal forever, as no party in power has an incentive to change it.
Isn't there potential for a criminal inquiry if he goes this overboard? Sure, he has the "right" to communicate with the electorate, but not like this! Perhaps reimbursement by his campaign is in order as well.
Where, oh where, is the AG? Off doing the same thing, I suppose.
Unless I'm mistaken, this effort has saved the state money. When the press shops were consolidated, staffing levels were reduced which creates savings from payroll and benefits. There are also savings generated from the press officers sharing resources.
I agree that there are events that are taped that are unnecessary, but c'mon, give the guy a break. He can't take a step without being criticized. In the beginning, his press operation wasn't responsive enough to the press. So they created the consolidated press office to ensure that reporters were responded to before their deadlines.
Then they were hit for releasing contradictory stories. Blago runs a amateur operation demonstrated by his inability to keep the messages from his agencies consistent.
Now he is being hit for creating the office that solves the very problems he was criticized for before. This is not new -- previous governors had events taped for uplink throughout the state. While some will question if each event is worthy of such coverage, the fact remains that the creation of this office streamlined this function of government, reduced headcount and saved money.
Criminal inquiry? Now this is gettting ridiculous.
The so-called Office of Information & Communication, created by the incoming Blago administration, is a very cynical and blatant attempt to get around the law Blago himself signed, banning state-funded PSA's and commercials that feature government officials.
Judy stopped doing those, Jesse stopped doing those, they follow the law, but Blago, however, pays people to put the Blagojevich "brand" on everything the state does; it is stealth campaign advertising, following the law in writing, but not in spirit.
And they don't even do it well: What Bernie didn't make very clear was that the amounts they are paying these private video vendors are as much as two to eight times more than the typical cost of such services. All with taxpayer money, not campaign funds.
I wish the Auditor General would look deeper into those contracts to see if they aren't allowing the high costs so the people authorizing the jobs get a kickback from the private vendors. When you pay that much over the going rates, you're either incompetent or running some scam.
Puh-leeze...24 people to watch him go into the swamp! Municipalities, outside of Chicago, Fire districts, library disttricts, park districts, school districts would be CRUCIFIED if they even attempted to do this to make their leaders image more important than the body of public servants.
Are all press shops coordinated centrally now
It seems like DCFS has the same number of press people they always did, at a separate office.
Not that they do much, but it's a source of easy state jobs for Cook County Dem residents...the DCFS main press office is in Cook.
WOW!!Sounds like like anon 11:36 is part of that office.
DOnt forget all the Parole agenst in DOC who were told they had to deliever 5 of these letters a month- using State vehicles on State time.....
11:36
The only money they are saving is from Blagos campaign fund! Targeted mailings? Letters signed by Patty? Pushing parol officers to send out letters saying what a great job the Gov is doing? This has nothing to do with saving money for the taxpayer.
The process/methods used by the Governor's press office appear to be comparable to any measuring metric used by large PR shops. Clients expect and demand accounting for their expense so they get spreadsheet reports like those referenced in the article. Further, private clients demand accountability on whether the message is delivered and received, thus the rating of stories.
If you want state government run like a business, this is what you should come to expect. Even if I/you don't like the message, I/you shouldn't fault the Governor for doing this.
Besides, the media may be squealing only because they are being "rated." Why shouldn't they be subject to the same "critical review" as they perform on public officials.
I think it is just the pot calling the kettle black.
11:38 Anon, you'd be wrong. While the Public Information Officers's are all in one big corral now, there still is no savings. Rich would be the first to tell you, the system is less responsive to public inquiry now than it has ever been. As a reporter, call an agency like DNR now with a question about deer... and the DNR guy who's been there for decades and specializes in the information can no longer talk to you. Instead, your call gets sent to Chicago where someone with no DNR background makes a decision on how to handle it, then calls you back.
Moreover, the person they assign to give you the information can be randomly pulled from the pool, so possibly you'd get your deer information from a person who had no DNR background, reading to you from a prepared release.
The cost thing is an outrage: The River to River footage of Blago doing stretches in his Umbros and jogging past the camera to look testicularly virile lasted about six minutes.
At $5,166, that breaks down to about $861 per minute.
If it got used by a TV station (unlikely the same weekend as the Lincoln Museum opening), they used maybe 30 seconds of it in their sports coverage.
Except that any station that would care enough to run the story would have been a local station, and they already would have sent their own camera crew to the event, thus not needing the satellite uplink. The only reason to satellite that event is to make it available to distant Chicago markets, too far away to make a tourism impact.
I think if promoting tourism was the real motivation for this waste, that money could have been better spent on putting ads in running magazines and radio, newspapers, or TV commercials.
Of course, they would all have Blagojevich's name plastered in large type across the top of them.
Of course the PR staff has always rated the individual reporters.
They've been doing that since he ascended to office. Why don't you look into how much time and money is wasted reacting to the Media's perceptions rather than to the Public's concerns(Isn't that what the PIO's are supposed to do.)?
That promoting tourism talk is a bunch of cow manure.The IDNR is the main agency for tourism and the first thing they done was to gut it.Lay-offs, park closures,service cuts.When they did rehire it was those political appointes and parks that had no one laid off so they could hire Democrats off the street.
Anon at 12:28 clearly has no idea what he/she is talking about. In addition to saving considerable money, the state cut significant personnel in the PIO area. When staff resources are consolidated, a smaller staff is needed because of cross-agency or multi-agency coordination. Sounds smart, sounds simple to a cost-conscious business person. But it becomes a conspiracy theory to government types. Give me a break.
12:22 I would love to see the state run like a business, but not like a business model that looks like Enron.
Anonymous 12:45 wrote:
I would love to see the state run like a business, but not like a business model that looks like Enron.
I would like to see the state run like a good government, because that's what we should expect.
Government are not businesses, and should not be run based on business incentives. That doesn't mean that governments should be inefficient and wasteful. It just means that governments have to operate with a different goal than business.
Moreover, I don't see any particular benefit to operating government like a business. Private jets, expensive executive junkets, and seven-figure salaries: these are hardly models of efficiency.
And this particular example of "operating like a business" is one that is incompatible with good government. Unfortunately, too many people feel so alienated from government that they will not recognize that these practices are an anomaly for well-run governments.
Taxpayers expect their dollars to be spent more efficiently... That is the bottom line. We see story after story about government waste...government has never been known to be a model of efficiency. Now its unbelievable that media even criticize efforts to cut costs.
A few things: One, there is very little in the Trib report that was not in previous reports from AP we've read. Two, it's truly comical to see that the goob's press office rated 99% of all stories "positive" in the given time frame. What planet's coverage were they monitoring? And finally, I really loved the huge banner hanging over the elevator bank in the Thompson Center last week. It read something like, "Illinois celebrates Native American Heritage---ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, GOVERNOR." Perhaps an office could be created to produce similar banners for other "holidays": "ROD celebrates Boxing Day!" "ROD celebrates Kwanzaa!" "ROD celebrates Pearl Harbor Day!" etc. etc.
You're an idiot. The day ends at 4:30 pm for state employees? I'd love to see you tell that to nurses in a vets' home, prison guards on the cell block, attendants in a mental health hospital, state police on the highway, toll takers on a traffic-choked plaza, snowplow operators in a blizzard, rangers in a state park - need I go on? Think before you open your silly trap and insult the hard work other people do - for you.
Dude,
Don't be a moron. Walk by *any* building in the Chicago Loop and you'll see employees talking and smoking.
Sounds like someone's a little bitter after being fired from their state job ...
Rich --
Thanks for pointing this out. I hadn't read it. I'm glad I did.
My response: ARE YOU FREAKIN' KIDDING ME?
Rod Blagojevich has his faults, believe me, but the Chicago Tribune is the last publication that should be getting high-handed about elected officials using their office to shape public opinion.
I could point out that The Tribune was suspiciously silent for 26 years while REPUBLICAN GOVERNORS SOLD EVERYTHING THAT WASN'T NAILED DOWN so they could raise campaign cash to buy public opinion the old fashioned way. But I won't.
After all, why dig up ancient history if you don't have to? Especially since The Tribune has been silent for the past five years while GEORGE BUSH, LIED, BULLIED AND MISLED AMERICA TO WAR. Oh yeah, how about the tens of millions in taxpayer dollars he spent on everything from his "Mission Accomplished" banner to yetserday's polling so he can manipulate us even better?
I understand the Tribune despises Blagojevich because they consider him a pompous hypocrite. The Chicago Tribune should take a good look in the mirror.
Finally, if Rod lied, atleast no one died. Can't say the same for George Ryan or George W. Bush.
To respond to the poster who saw state employees smoking or talking or taking their lunchtime walks, please note that they have two 15 minutes breaks a day and a lunch hour to use as they see fit.
Regarding Communications staff, one of the Springfield print shops just got a postcard job to print on the QT to be sent out to Illinois residents touting AllKids. The designer put it together, sent it back to CMS Communications for final approval and got it sent back with the AllKids logo removed and the Rx logo inserted. Talk about a bunch of doofuses.
The governor is using state workers and office supplies and equipment as campaign tools and he isn't paying a cent for it. No matter how his supporters spin it, it's just plain wrong. And we, the taxpayers, are footing the bill.
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