The Powerful Citizens Association - Part II

Yesterday I rehashed the Citizens Association's pay for play endorsement process. On the surface it seems innocuous enough. The CA does send out mailings with sample ballots to registered voters. Printing, mailing and maintaining a voter database of addresses isn't cheap. The CA argues that they are a humble little organization without the funds to do such things on their own so they rely on candidates reimbursing them for all that marketing expense. Fair enough. Let's say I accept that premise (which I don't). Why does the CA feel they need to be in the marketing/publishing business in the first place? If it's such a financial hardship to mail bomb every voter in the city, why not just allow endorsed candidates to place the CA's ubiquitous "Sweep 'em out" broom logo on their own literature? Let the candidates deal with their own printing/mailing expenses. No need to funnel all that money through a third party, right? Wrong. Let's dig back into the CA's 8 day report again. This time class, I want you all to turn to page 8. This begins the Expenses section. 1-23-07 O'Neill Communications Postcards $275.74 Hmmm. Couple hundred bucks for some postcards. Not too exciting. Let's turn to page 9. Hey, there's that name again. 1-29-07 O'Neill Communications Billboards $8000.00 2-13-07 O'Neill Communications TV Ads $19,000.00 Wow! In less than three weeks O'Neill Communications racked up $27,275.74 in business from the Citizens Association. Not a bad gig. I wonder how you get a hookup like that? Maybe it's just a one time thing. Maybe it's the lowest bidder? Being such stewards of integrity and reform, I'm sure the CA shops around for the best possible value for their hard earned contributors' money. Let's check the 2003 city elections and find out who the CA used last time. Uh oh. I'm seeing a pattern here. 2-18-03 O'Neill Communications Postage $10,764.03 2-25-03 O'Neill Communications Brochure & Postage $17,171.35 3-10-03 O'Neill Communications Consulting $3,500.00 3-10-03 O'Neill Communications Postage $10,764.00 $42,199.38 in business! Once again, nice gig if you can get it. Probably just a coincidence. At the most there's probably some good old boy connection with some of the power brokers on the Citizens Association board and one of the principals with O'Neill Communications. Just friends doing business with friends. Happens all the time. No big deal. Probably untraceable, right? Ehh, just for fun let's run over to the Citizens Association website and see if any names pop out. It's a long shot, but what the heck.... Uh oh. Citizens Association Board Members: Jerry Adriano, Norine Accurso, Thomas B. Becker, Cheryl L. Bisbee, Janet Blauvelt, Meghan Badwey Conger, Richard G. Cushon, Billy Cutchlow, George Eib, George E. Hicks, Richard Holwick, Jonathan Kemper, Robert V. Lewellen, Kelley M. Martin, Hila "Dutch" Newman, Pat O'Neill, James D. Rice, Michael Short, Mike Sturgeon, Kevin Thomas Draw your own conclusions. It's often said that perception is 90% of reality. The owner of a communications company sits on the board of an organization that does thousands of dollars in business with his company. Tomorrow, the final installment of this three part series. More money and more connections than you can shake a broom at!