Reality based politics is apparently something that Connecticut will sadly, not ever experience. Last week, Hartford was atwitter over water. Lights, camera, action type atwitter because it was the legislature that was galvanized to do something, anything, about water. Because we all stay awake at night thinking about how Hartford drinks. Other than kool-aide of course.
From the Courant:
State Rep. Beth Bye, a Democrat from West Hartford has a simple idea that promises to promote health, cut costs of state government, help the environment and reduce our thirst for petroleum: Encourage state workers to drink tap water instead of the bottled variety.
During a press conference last week, Ms. Bye said that if the state Capitol and adjoining Legislative Office Building replaced coolers using bottled water with tap water, the buildings would save $11,600 a year. If all state agencies did the same, she says, Connecticut could save more than $450,000 annually.
Funny thing about those numbers is that Connecticut Post reporter Ken Dixon did that old journalist trick of making some phone calls and:
Let’s not let the facts get in the way of our attitudes, I always say. So I called Brian Flaherty, director of public affairs for Nestle Waters of North America, Inc., which owns Poland Spring.
Flaherty, who is a former Republican member of the state House, knows the name of the game, so he wouldn’t impugn Bye’s motives. He did say, however, that those 5-gallon jugs get refilled up to 35 times before they are recycled and cost between $4 and $4.50 each. So that’s less than a dollar a gallon. Uh….what’s gasoline going for these days? Is someone having a gas sale we should know about? Flaherty said that the average cost at the supermarket, for all sizes of water, is about $1.61 a gallon.
Before I went to Bye’s news conference I called Eric Connery, facilities administrator for the Office of Legislative Management, which runs the Capitol complex. He said the contract with Poland Spring is in the first year of a three-year, $32,000-a-year deal, which does not have a cancellation clause.
Don’t you hate it when the truth gets in the way of political agendas?
Of all the things the state legislature should be working on. Nothing on getting GAAP adopted so that Connecticut can rightfully be declared bankrupt, and not just of ideas. Or how about actually doing something about taxes and revisiting property tax reform? Instead we have these opportunistic nonsense events.
source: Connecticut Post, Lawmakers Save Pennies, Spend Dollars Like Water, By Ken Dixon, February 20, 2008
source: Courant, Weaning Off Bottled Water, Editorial, February 26, 2008
