Awakening to inviting touts and suggestive tweets that implied earthshaking revelations in the Sunday edition of the Tribune, I turned eagerly to “Council to appeal DLGF ruling,” expecting to learn how the city’s controller, Kay Garry, has turned the tables on the state’s mandated budget cuts.
Whoa … talk about false advertising.
Conceding that his “attempts to reach Garry were unsuccessful Friday,” Tribune reporter Daniel Suddeath instead treats us to the usual palaver from council president Dan Coffey, who is allowed to jockey for taking credit for whatever it was that Garry did to change the dynamics of the budget situation, which we still don’t know because she didn’t comment and Coffey wouldn’t tell.
Like this:
“I talked with [Garry] at length and she has a good handle on the situation now, and that’s helpful when you get a handle on it and know what the numbers are,” Coffey said.
Note that she has a good handle now, as though she didn’t before, and so we’re ladled more passive-aggressive nonsense from the Wizard of Westside, as enabled by the Tribune. Here’s a question for the editor/publisher:
Is there any chance that this story might have waited for publication until the woman herself was available to be interviewed?
If so, why run it now?
If not, does it really qualify as news?
The remainder of the article recounts the eagerness with which City Hall has removed any reference to the VFW from its downtown master plan document, and its many reassurances that just because the master plan is a blueprint, it “may or may not come to fruition, depending on several factors including financing and public input,” which Coffey knew already from having served on planning and redevelopment, but which didn’t stop him from using as a scare tactic to mobilize opinion against a plan that he detests because it would enrich his council district.
