Thursday, June 21, 2007

Measure This

OK, I recognize the Chicago-complex Springfieldians have, especially when it comes to the governor preferring to live in the Chicago area as opposed to the Governor’s mansion. But this accounting to the penny of the cost of Rod Blagojevich’s travel between Springfield and Chicago, and the running of the stopwatch to measure to the minute his time on the ground here, is just silly.

Yes, there are good reasons for the guv to stay here while budget negotiations are going on. He should be here while the legislature is trying to craft a state budget. But the $52K or 76K or whatever the figure is, really doesn’t affect anything and is virtually meaningless in the larger picture. I mean, you could come up with offsets to that money from savings realized by the governor NOT living in the mansion, or, say, of the governor not commuting every weekend, etc.

Again, I’m not condoning the seeming lack of attention Blagojevich is giving the budget process, just asking we put down the stopwatch and calculator. It’s really petty.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't know, man. $5800 a day seems like an awful lot of wasted money. Perhaps not in the sense of a billion-dollar budget, but it's still taxpayers' money being wasted for no good reason.

Anonymous said...

It’s not every day, just the days he flies (which is not every day). I spend $12 a day on haircuts but only on the days I get my hair cut.

But my point is, the amount of hype this is getting, including measuring down to the minute how long Blago is in town, is just silly. The bigger and more important issue is that he needs to be playing a larger, more committed role in the budget process.