A Times Editorial
 

Byrd's preening

© St. Petersburg Times
published February 12, 2003

House Speaker Johnnie Byrd is not the first Florida politician to preach fiscal austerity while shoveling tax dollars into self-promotion. He's just the first to make such an extreme sport of it.

Byrd has spent six years in office reciting his antigovernment manifesto to anyone who would listen. His mission, he says, is to "seek and destroy government waste." He insists the state "live within its means," supports cutting taxes even when the result is cutting schools and child welfare programs, and seems to think the only good government worker is a laid-off one.

So Byrd is displaying a rather splendid free-form hypocrisy as he builds up a public relations budget for his office that is without modern precedent.

At latest count, Byrd has employed a communications staff of 13, at a cost of roughly $600,000 in salaries alone. He hired a Republican National Committee operative, at a salary of $92,000, as his chief media adviser and managed to find a Plant City recreation referee, at $39,000 a year, to do communications research. He is spending tens of thousands of dollars on photo studios and video productions, with one company charging the state $600 a day. He is also seeking companies that will dial out his message at a rate of 50,000 30-second phone calls an hour and a cost that could easily reach six or seven figures.

Senate President Jim King, Byrd's counterpart, provides a useful frame of reference here. To serve his communications needs, King employs one $44,000-a-year spokeswoman and a part-time student intern.

Byrd is unapologetic about his "Enhanced Member Communication Program" and even offers a theory for why some might question it. "Because we are moving toward the ability to communicate directly with our constituents without the 'filter' of the media," he wrote to his House colleagues, "there has been some expected media criticism about the prospect of better communication with constituents."

The "filter" thing must certainly serve as a continuing source of aggravation, given that it involves tracking the tax money Byrd is spending to feed his ambition for higher political office. Byrd won't answer when reporters ask whether he fancies himself as a candidate for U.S. Senate in 2004. Why should he? He's too busy preening for his own television camera crew, grinning through the rose-colored filter he is billing to Florida taxpayers.