The ever-amusing War of the Receipts between the Cambridge Chronicle and Cambridge Mayor Ken Reeves got a fresh installment yesterday on the Chronicle’s extremely excellently titled WickedLocal blog.
After a Chronicle investigation on spending at the mayor’s office last year, Ken Reeves started saving the receipts for the lavish taxpayer-funded meals he continues to charge to his city-issued credit card. But the mayor still refuses to reveal the names of his dinner guests.
The newspaper reports with breathless TV-evening-news-style drama, that an exhaustive review of the Mayor’s expense records reveals … that he spent $11 for a wash of his city-owned car, and $35 for a steak at a business dinner.
This is getting absurd. Reeves appears to be in full compliance with Cambridge’s expense record keeping requirements, such as they may be. Even the Chronicle makes no contrary assertion. If the newspaper wants the city to change its disclosure requirements for elected officials, that is where they should focus their ire. In the meantime, Moby Dick makes better reading.
The point is that the public deserves to know who Reeves is dining with in order to substantiate his claims that he is conducting city business. Here’s a different excerpt:
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Chronicle: On March 11, Mayor Reeves spent $548.92 on a City Council dinner for seven people at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse in Washington, D.C. Which city councilors were there?
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Reeve’s spokesman John Clifford: We’re not going to comment on who he’s having dinner or lunch with because we don’t want them being harassed.
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Chronicle: How would the city councilors be harassed?
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Clifford: We’re not going to comment on who he’s having dinner or lunch with because we don’t want them being harassed.
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Chronicle: City councilors are public figures. Could you tell me why the mayor is protecting the information on which city councilors were present at the dinner?
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Clifford: We’re not going to comment on who he’s having dinner or lunch with because we don’t want them being harassed.
independently call each city councilor and ask if s/he was present at the dinner? in not, then they are not serious about finding out the truth. (i realize that i could read the article and maybe find out, but bigger fish to fry, and all that.)
The Mayor of Cambridge doesn’t answer to you, he answers to the people of the city through their elected representatives. Reeves is apparently in compliance with city rules. If the Cambridge Chronicle in its infinite wisdom thinks those rules should be changed — for example, to require the public disclosure you seek — then that is what it should demand. Of course, the two aren’t mutually exclusive, but the almost exclusive focus on the minutiae of Reeves’ car washing bills etc. suggests that what this is really about is a
obsessive quest for the great while whalepersonal vendetta against the Mayor.…Reeves is pulling a Dick Cheney, refusing to name the people that he meets with supposedly on the city’s tab. It strikes me that that gives rise to reasonable suspicion that all isn’t up to snuff.
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Goose, gander.
I’m with Bob. As much as we all want transparency, our “right to know” (do we really have a “right” to know who eats with whom?) has to give way to reason at some point.
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Let’s assume we find out the mayor ate with 16 people, only 9 of whom were city counselors, does that change things? What if only 7 of them were fellow pols?
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And what did they talk about? If they sat around talking about the Sox, does that make it an official meeting?
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Issues like this take away from honest-to-god actual issues about transparency and government responsiveness to constituencies.
If a major Republican were to spend several thousand tax payer dollars dining with powerful strangers BMG would be angry, instead since he is both black, liberal, and gay I guess Reeves gets a pass. I like Reeves but he has a history of double dipping, abusing public funds, and running the city like a fife. And its also odd that we have a system where Reeves gets to be Mayor even though he got the least amount of votes for City Council, ridiculous.
that the guy was black, liberal and gay. i don’t live in cambridge. so i’m not skeptical because of bias for the guy. I’m skeptical for the reason i stated above: apparently no one really cares whether the council members were at the dinners, because no one has bothered to ask them! if you get statements for councilmemebers that non of them were present on any of those dinners, then i might care.
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That’s what they call “bullshit,” my friend. You lump yourself in with some of BMG’s finest trolls with that comment. (Hello, Republican Rock Radio Machine!) Also, using the word “both” before a list of three items is a grammatical no-no. Sad — University of Chicago used to be semi-respectable.
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And what about this?
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Gosh, sounds like he’s a bad guy. Yet you say you “like” him. Why? Does his being “both” black, liberal, and gay have anything to do with it?
I actually agree with the Chronicle insofar as I think the accounting and disclosure requirements set for the Mayor by the City Council in Cambridge are absurdly insufficient. The fact is, however, that the City does have its rules, and Reeves appears to have followed them. Indeed, arguably he is being heroic by refusing to bow to pressure from a self-righteous newspaper elected by no one. If the Chronicle is really concerned with principle, however, they should inveigh against all of the Councilors and the existing disclosure rules with the enthusiasm that so far they appear to have reserved for the Mayor’s $11 car washes.
City Manager Bob Healy, Superintendent Thomas Fowler Finn and Mayor Ken Reeves are the only Cambridge officials who have city-issued credit cards.
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Cambridge City Council members do not.
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Healy’s and Fowler Finn’s records list their dinner guests. Reeves’ records do not.
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The Chronicle’s first article on this issue (maybe about 8 months ago) started with a look at credit card use by all three card holders. In the earlier story, Reeves did not even supply receipts, the two other did. After that article, the council created new rules requiring receipts. The council should now go back and require the disclosure of dinner guests. There is no good reason why this information should not be transparent.
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The media is often criticized for having a short attention span and not following up on a story. This story was a follow up looking to see what, if any, changes occurred following the rules change.
…way more money than the other two?
Fowler Finn: $2,806.67
Healy:$2,537.65
Reeves: $17,000 plus
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http://www.wickedloc…
and running the city like a fife*
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Seriously, if the city’s newspaper is really interested in exposing Reeves, and if Reeves is being uncooperative, they should hire a private investigator to follow him around.
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It does seem to me that complaining about a US$11 car wash on what I presume to be a city-owned (or leased) car is a bit petty.
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*sorry, couldn’t resist the pun.
The car wash was mentioned only to illustrate the large and small items that had been charged. Read the story and you’ll see that this is about Reeves’ refusal to admit who he’s dining with on the public’s dime.