Over on the Illinois Mirror (and shared broadly on the Illinois Review), Eric Kohn uncovers a nice little nugget about how much the State of Illinois is paying each year to Rich Miller and his Capitol Fax publication.
In a piece titled "Here's some government spending we can cut, Rich Miller", Kohn writes about how Miller doesn't think cuts are the answer to our problem in Illinois.
So, Rich Miller can’t find any government spending to cut, eh? I think I might have found a place to start:
In FY2013, Rich Miller’s Ahead of Our Time Publishing received $44,000 (UPDATE/CORRECTION: $19,900 in FY2012, $41,000 in FY2013, $34,000 so far in FY2014) in taxpayer money for subscriptions to Capitol Fax.
That’s right, your money is paying for politicos and government functionaries to read his political gossip.
For some context, Illinois per capita income is $29,519, and the media household income is $56,853.
Now, of course, cutting $41k in spending isn’t going to balance the budget or fix our pension crisis. But just remember that when you hear Rich Miller saying that we can’t cut spending without doing great harm, he’s talking — at least in part — about the harm that would come to his bank account.
Listen...this seems like a tempest in a teapot. AKA: cost of doing business in state government. We need our government officials (elected and staff) to be informed, don't we? That costs $40K? So be it.
What about other media consumption? What do the numbers look like for things like Crain's Chicago Business and the Chicago Tribune or....even Comcast cable? Bet there are a lot of cable bills being paid by the State of Illinois from various offices. The whole Comcast Newsmakers program is a built off the vanity of elected officials. But...we still pay them, don't we?
