Good Friday indeed: News Round-up of unFAIR plan decision
Next stop: Court of Appeals.
It isn’t over until all the appeals are exhausted. but I have to admit it looks pretty good for the schools, the rule of law. and sunshine. I will also admit it looks pretty bad for Maggie, her legacy and reputation, Minarik, local GOP politics of divisiveness, and closed-door government.
The winners here are the voters who also double as taxpayers. Monroe County will be about $30 million in the hole after 5 years of Maggie’s fiscal “prowess.” We will ultimately sell off more of our county assets in the form of one shot wonders. You can bet that some combination of asset sales, loss of County Services, and increased fees and taxes will affect Monroe County Residents.
How is that winning? Well, forcing our County government to properly invest the taxes, fees, whatever and holding them accountable to such investments is what it is all about. In this case, the court agreed that the County needed to share Sales Tax revenue with Schools per an agreed upon formula.
The people need to see that government is more than a pretty face behind the teleprompter or a guy you want to have a beer with. For example, Remember Siemens? Apparently we can give $100 million dollars to Siemens - is this the best use of our tax dollars? Funny, there are probably “a lot of Siemens” out there and in different forms (RenSquare immediately comes to mind) .
Voting has consequences.
Here is a round-up of coverage about the unFAIR plan: Jill Tierreri from the D&C - has an above the fold lengthy article titled Monroe County loses sales tax suit
Linda Quinlan from the Messenger Post titled Monroe County loses FAIR plan battle against schools
RNews has a video titled Court Rules Against F.A.I.R. Plan
City News titled POLITICS: FAIR goes down in the flames
Elizabeth Harness at News8 Now - titled Supreme Court rules in favor of schools on F.A.I.R. plan
13WHAM news titled F.A.I.R. Plan Rejected; Schools and County React
Lila Carney at News 10 titled Taxpayers split on FAIR plan reversal
Apparently News10 is practicing meaningless sample set reporting(tm) and came up with that headline. Must be magic or something.
Who is Quiet on the Issue?
Well, apparently Maggie Brooks is away on vacation and in a place that does not have telephones - so she cannot issue a comment except through the County Attorney. Got that - Her legacy legislation crashes and burns and she can’t pick up a phone to call?
D&C editorial Blog hasn’t found time to “step away from the newspaper’s institutional view and express their personal opinion about, well, whatever.” Apparently that doesn’t happen over the weekend or after noon on Friday.
Great post!
No telephones for Maggie.
Voters doubling as taxpayers-perfect.
A great day for sunshine.
“meaninglessly sample set†™ is a catchy phrase, I think more pundits should use it (giving you full credit) because it immediately destroys the validity of such a study. And maybe (maybe!) some of those reporters who resort to interviewing two people and deciding that opinion is split will learn there are better ways to cover the story.
But is there a typo? Should the first word end with L-Y or not?
“meaninglessly”
Nothing gets by you does it Paige. lol
I will correct it.
It came out of a brainstorming session I had with btp so I’ll take full credit for the typo - btp gets credit for the phrase.
Thanks for pointing it out. -
But you are right - if you scan the headlines all but one have some variation of County loses Appeal.
Following up on the story by Lila Carney entitled “Taxpayers Split on Fair Plan Reversal”, I have to wonder why this particular reporter chose to cover the story in this fashion. Was she taught this technique? Does she really think that it is actual “news” what three different citizens (not experts in this area) think on this issue?
I’ll admit that “man on the street” interviews might have a place in news reporting, but not as a replacement for covering the issues. What this does is to focus in sooooooo narrowly on the opinions of three people that the reporter has avoided reporting on the larger and more important issue of what does this mean and what happens next and why did this happen. And of course, as Stlo7 points out, this is a meaningless sample set. The headline should have read “Opinions of Three Taxpayers You Never Heard Of Are Split…”, as if we care.
This type of reporting is, in my opinion, a total waste of media resources and really gets under my skin. In our “Blogversationâ€ÂÂ, it was mentioned how some of the problems seen in the media are due to lack of resources, and yet the media uses their resources for meaningless reports like this.
There, I’ve ranted long enough. Now back to your regularly scheduled discussions.
[...] we have discussed the concept of Brooks legacy, albeit we nibbled around the edges. She was silent in her inappropriately named FAIR plan court reversal. Silence on the Public defender and so on. [...]