Hamden Daily News - Your hometown cyberpaper

January 20, 2008

Park This

By Sharon Bass

OK, so first readers of the New Haven Register get a botched-up, misleading endorsement for Mayor Craig Henrici last fall. Even when notified via letters to the editor of the black-and-white mistruths in the endorsement, I was told the Register editor said nothing further would be printed in the paper about the Hamden mayoral race until afterwards. The mistruths will stand.

OK, then I read the Register’s Jan. 16 editorial headlined, “Mayor uses own car, saves town money,” with the subhead, “Henrici’s elimination of town cars pays off.”

My head is spinning. What does allegedly saving the town money have to do with the controversial mileage logs the mayor has been submitting since July 2007 (the real point of the Register’s editorial)? Why, that’s the same illogical explanation the mayor’s spin team has been feeding the local media. (Click here, here, here, here and here for background stories.)

The NHR editor has to know those two statements are unrelated, but uses them anyway to buttress his opinion that people should mind their own business about Henrici’s mileage logs. They’re asking too many questions.

Such as, why were the logs withheld for over three months (and after the November election, where Henrici had a tough battle)? The Hamden Daily News began sending Freedom of Information requests in early September ’07 and also filed an official FOI complaint. The logs arrived in mid-December. That doesn’t make a news outfit suspicious?

Instead, the editor tells “Henrici’s critics” to park the mileage issue. Nothing was done wrong. Leave the mayor alone. After all, he did start that ambulance service for seniors.

Oops, that’s right. There is no municipal ambulance service (one of Henrici’s ’05 campaign promises). In the Register’s endorsement, it praised the mayor for establishing that service. One of the uncorrected mistruths.

Like the endorsement, the “leave the mayor alone” editorial is also faulty. For instance, it says the 48.5-cents-a-mile reimbursement Henrici is supposed to get for business travel does not include gas.

Come again?

“He pays for his car’s insurance, maintenance and gasoline,” writes the editor. A quick call to the Internal Revenue Service or a discussion with any of the millions of American workers who have been reimbursed for business trips would have pointed out that the 48.5 cents not only covers insurance, maintenance and gas, but also wear and tear, depreciation and the cost of a lease.

The ongoing dispute over Henrici’s mileage logs is about the way he submitted them. He jotted down, and was reimbursed for, every mile put on his car each month instead of itemizing business trips, as is required. His spin team said he didn’t know what to put on the forms (click here to see the ridiculously complicated town-issued mileage log), and that he was told to do the best he could, and that the legislative council never specified which miles should and shouldn’t be claimed.

Back to the Jan. 16 propaganda piece. The NHR editor writes, “The Legislative Council sets the rules for the mileage reimbursement. Under them, Henrici only lists his beginning and ending odometer readings each month. Critics of the practice say there should be more detailed information about the mayor’s travels.”

Like proof that he put in more than 20 or 30 actual business miles a month instead of claims he made of up to 1,700? As for being on call 24/7 -- another explanation being used for the scantily filled out logs -- I’d like to know if Henrici has ever responded to a business emergency after work hours. I’d also like to know about the business trips he’s made since July 1, 2007. He should be forced to divulge that information. This is the public’s business, even if the Register doesn't agree.

The Reg editor is also wrong when he says council rules only require “beginning and ending odometer readings each month.” There are no such rules. In fact, the council did state during last spring’s budget deliberations that the mayor would be reimbursed for business miles. Business. I remember hearing that. Councilwoman Betty Wetmore told me she remembered it being stated. Unfortunately, budget-deliberation meeting minutes are not recorded verbatim as council meetings are.

The media are charged with bringing out the truths no matter whom they piss off. To dig. To question. Not to park it. We owe it to the public. Nothing will change if the truth is not sought after and revealed.

I think the New Haven Register should park its own corporate butt to rethink its editorial mission -- and to consider using facts, instead of spinning wheels, to support its opinions.

A President Says His Piece

The 39th president at Quinnipiac. Photo/Sharon Bass

When Democrat Jimmy Carter was up for reelection in 1980, my father, a lifelong Democrat, told me he was voting for Ronald Reagan because “Carter hadn’t done anything” during his first and only term in office.

Well, dad, change takes time. And with the ushering in of Republican Reagan, change is what we got -- a huge shove further right, culminating into our current nightmare of a White House, the kind of which I never thought I’d see in my lifetime.

So when I heard Carter was going to speak at Quinnipiac University yesterday, I was psyched. A needed breath of fresh air. He came to talk about his “longtime hero,” 1952 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr. Albert Schweitzer, and the humanitarian’s call for an end to nuclear arms proliferation. (Carter holds the 2002 Nobel.)

Probably a few thousand college students, professors, ambassadors and others (the event wasn’t open to the public) crammed into the recreation center. People were excited. We were about to be soothed and comforted.

David Ives, director of the university’s Albert Schweitzer Institute, got to introduce the 39th president. And Quinnipiac president John Lahey gave Carter the first Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award.

It was truly awesome seeing one of the few men I’ve always admired (particularly after he left the White House). He is the ultimate gentleman who has stuck to his guns in his fight for peace. A noble humanitarian.

He warmed up the crowd (actually, it was boiling in the room; folks were sweating bullets) with a little joke, which I can’t completely recall. Then talked of having been the first U.S. president to visit Hiroshima, on a mission of peace.

Carter rightfully blasted the Bush Administration for working in the opposite direction. He said there are 30,000 nuclear weapons in the world. And the White House better work on its diplomacy skills.

“Tragically, the U.S. hasn’t honored any” of the nuclear nonproliferation treaties, which many other countries have, he said in his familiar Southern drawl. “Arms control and disarmament have now been abolished [in the United States]. And none of these issues has been mentioned in the ongoing political debates” between presidential candidates.

Ives then asked Carter a few questions written by students. The first asked what the former president thinks needs to be done about the emerging threat from Iran, and if that country is building a nuclear weapons program.

“I hope not,” Carter said of weapons production. And diplomacy “is the best way to deal with Iran.”

Another student asked if as much is now being done to promote peace as when Carter was in office.

“No,” he said. “When I was president we tried to prevent threats to peace. Since I left office, the U.S. has been involved 100 times in conflicts around the world.”

The last student query asked the U.S. peace president what he would do about the Iraq nightmare.

He pointed to the Iraq study report, produced by a bipartisan committee, that “came out with a clear recommendation” to withdraw U.S. troops; let the Iraqi government know about the withdrawal and that it needs to gets its act together; and ask surrounding nations to agree to help the Iraqi people, when U.S. soldiers have left their soil, to gain control of their own economy.

“As you know it was immediately [turned down]. It won’t be addressed substantially until this administration is out of office.”

Then Carter walked away from the podium and people leapt to their feet, clapping their hands as enthusiastically as stoned hippies at a Dead show.