Little GEORGE Bus Suddenly Infamous Around the World
The story of GEORGE — Falls Church City’s beleaguered commuter bus — exploded Friday in a shot heard ‘round the world as newspapers, tv, and radio stations featured a one-sided story by the Associated Press.
Los Angeles Times: “Taking taxpayers for a ride: Congressional bus experiment costs $8 per trip”
Washington Post: “Pricey bus test a bust”
The Miami Herald, Boston Globe, and San Francisco Chronicle used the same headline as the Washington Post.
The London Guardian had no headline at all, but ran the same Associated Press story that is all over the United States.
The Ankara, Turkey, English-language Turkish Weekly ran it next to a story on Scottish sensation Susan Boyle.
The editors of the Las Vegas Review-Journal got so exercised that they wrote an editorial assigning blame, starting with President Obama and concluding with Falls Church Councilman David Snyder:
“President Obama now wants us all to ride trains — just like in his beloved Europe — as a means of reducing our carbon footprint.”
Objectivity went downhill from there, with the editorial concluding that Snyder “sounds like a man angling for a spot in the Obama administration.”
As of Saturday morning almost everyone, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Newsday, WTOP, and more than 100 other media outlets had reported it.
The April 17 AP story by Matthew Barakat is more or less accurate, as far as it goes. But by leaving out crucial information it tells only one side of the story.
City Manager Wyatt Shields
Most egregiously, the AP story links to the City’s website for the GEORGE service options presentation. But it’s the March 19 version — not the April 13 version, when City Manager Wyatt Shields revised the numbers and threw out the “$8 per ride” cost to City taxpayers.
The AP story says “Falls Church would have to pay as much as $600,000 to maintain service next year, according to city manager Wyatt Shields. Bus systems in the nearby suburbs of Fairfax, Alexandria and Arlington provide an average subsidy of $2 per ride or less. Shields recommends eliminating the service.”
Shields admitted last Monday at the City budget hearing that the claimed $600,000 cost to the City isn’t true, since half would be paid by state subsidies. And it’s not clear in the story whether the $2 “average subsidy” in nearby suburbs includes federal money.
The AP story leads with a “government waste” theme, built around information coming from an organization known as “Citizens Against Government Waste.”
According to Wikipedia, “Citizens Against Government Waste” was formed in 1984 by industrialist J. Peter Grace and syndicated columnist Jack Anderson. CAGW has generated a little controversy of its own over the years: According to the St. Petersburg Times, the group accepted money from tobacco interests and subsequently lobbied against a federal tobacco control initiative as “government pork.”
A sample from the AP story:
Citizens Against Government Waste spokesman Leslie Paige said GEORGE demonstrates many of the problems with earmarks. Among them is the temptation to throw good money after bad, with local governments on the hook for heavy operating subsidies to justify the money spent to establish the system. “Earmarks become like a seed for even more wasteful spending further on down,” she said.
The AP story concludes with a quote from Congressman Jim Moran:
Moran, a defender of the earmark system who has requested a $2 million earmark in the upcoming budget cycle for neighboring Arlington County‘s bus service, said the federal government can no longer continue subsidizing the GEORGE service, but he doesn’t see the earmark as a waste.
“We gave it our best shot,” he said. “If we hadn’t had this financial depression or recession we probably could have continued. But in tough fiscal times like this, you have to make tough choices. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good idea.”
The AP story fails to note that even if the federal government can’t subsidize GEORGE (even while it provides $2 million for Arlington’s ART), the state government can, and $300,000 subsidy is waiting in the transit trust fund for use by GEORGE, if the service continues. In fact, Councilman Dan Maller is exploring whether even more money can come from the trust fund next year in order to avoid a tax increase to continue operating GEORGE.
The Falls Church Times reported April 7 on the campaign by another industry-funded lobby, the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance, to discredit GEORGE.
Other newspapers, radio, and tv stations featuring the AP story on GEORGE include:
Corpus Christi TX Caller-Times
Elizabeth City NC Daily Advance
Fayetteville, AR, Channel 5 KFSM
Lehigh Valley PA Express-Times
Minneapolis and St. Paul KSTP-TV
Washington Federal News Radio 1500-AM
By George Southern
April 18, 2009
I am so proud to live in such a famous city! Way to go City Hall! This is what happens when you exaggerate and don’t do your homework.
Who wants to bet how long it is until our astute city manager gets a job offer for his ability to find such pork? Little will they know when they hire him that his numbers were plain wrong.
All this could have been avoided if we paid attention and did our jobs correctly……
Add the editorial opinion in today’s Washington Post to the media list. Now I’m starting to feel embarrassed…….like the Rodeo Drive shoppers that want their purchases in a plain brown bag….
We should save the money from GEORGE and use it to pay Fairfax Water (and our lawyers) when the city loses the lawsuit…
[...] Falls Church Times added an interesting post on Little GEORGE Bus Suddenly Infamous Around the WorldHere’s a small excerptThe story of GEORGE — Falls Church City’s beleaguered commuter bus — exploded Friday in a shot heard ‘round the world: Los Angeles Times : “Taking taxpayers for a ride: Congressional bus experiment costs $8 per trip” Washington Post: “ INSIDE WASHINGTON: Pricey bus test a bust” MSN Money , The Providence, RI, Journal , NJ.com , and Breitbart.com used the same headline as the Washington Post. The London Guardian had no headline at all, but ran the same As [...]