Jon Margolis is VTDigger’s political columnist.
What an outrage!
Everybody calm down.
Both reactions are appropriate after hearing the news that a state agency paid $2.8 million to a hot-shot Washington spin doctor firm – or, as its own website says, “societal problem solvers (and) experts in engagement communications” – for advice on how best to thump its own tub.
The outrage is not just the money. It’s also that a literate Vermonter would seek public relations advice from an outfit staffed by someone who wrote the word “societal.”
Who writes that word is not a good writer. A Vermont official, then, decided to pay a bad writer for advice on how to communicate.
What we have here is a failure to communicate.
And come to think of it … “engagement communications?” Does that mean anything at all.
You’d think somebody at the Department of Vermont Health Access (DVHA) would have wondered just what the agency was paying for.
The “everybody calm down” response has three parts. First, most of the $2.8 million wasn’t for public relations advice. It was for outreach services that may even have been worth the money. The PR part was about $500,000. Second, even $2.8 million isn’t all that much money. Too much to waste on useless prattle, to be sure. But even if it were all state money, spending it would not raise and saving it would not lower anybody’s taxes. In the great scheme of things, it’s a little more than a rounding error, but not much.
More importantly, there is absolutely nothing wrong with officials at DVHA (and its sister agency Vermont Health Care Reform) trying to find out how they can communicate better with the public. They are trying to create a complicated new health care system for the state. This is a democracy. The better they keep the public informed, the easier that task will be. Therefore it’s perfectly sensible for them to try to answer some questions: Are we informing the public? Are we getting across to them? Are we doing a good job in communicating with them?
They are not.
That reply did not cost $2.8 million, or even the $500,000 that went for the “earned media plan” part of the contract.
But it was just as reliable because it (a) came from someone in Vermont; (b) was untainted by being paid for; (c) was in plain English.
None of which can be said for the answers provided by the GMMB consulting firm.
The outrage, then, the corruption, is not personal. It’s systemic. There is no basis for thinking that either Mark Larson of DVHA or Vermont Health Reform’s Robin Lunge was guilty of wrongdoing when they agreed to the contract. They were guilty of falling into today’s common assumption – the default position as the computer nerds would say – that questions are best answered by hiring a high-priced consulting firm.
Perhaps an easier trap to fall into when the feds are providing the money for the firm’s fee.
$12,600? How many editorial boards are there in Vermont? A literate person with a computer, a phone book, and a phone could arrange those meetings in a day, and unless that person was making $1,575 an hour, for less.
What Vermont’s health care officials should have done a couple of years ago was hire a public affairs expert. On staff. Not a flack (though he or she could have answered reporters questions, too) but someone who understood both policy and politics, who could advise Larson, Lunge (and earlier, Anya Rader Wallack of the Green Mountain Care Board) what the public thought, how reporters were approaching the state’s health care changeover, what the officials could do better, perhaps what they should not do at all.
That staff person would have cost a whole lot less than $2.8 million.
Or they could have contracted out some tasks to local folks. There are Vermonters who know how to stage a news conference, write news releases, even produce television commercials. Probably for a whole lot less than GMMB cost, considering that its price for providing journalists emails and phone numbers was $8,600 and it wanted $12,600, to arrange meetings with editorial boards.
$12,600? How many editorial boards are there in Vermont? A literate person with a computer, a phone book, and a phone could arrange those meetings in a day, and unless that person was making $1,575 an hour, for less.
The juiciest revelation was that for the apparently modest sum of $18,235, GMMB would provide health care officials with an assessment of how their efforts were being covered, which would have included classifying reporters as favorable or not so favorable to Vermont’s impending universal health coverage plan.
This does have the whiff of a Nixonian enemies list, with, for instance, an assessment that Vermont Public Radio’s Bob Kinzel “has written more cutting pieces addressing penalties expected to negatively affect small businesses” than other reporters.
But as far as anyone knows, no one in Vermont asked for this. It seems to have been the brainchild of someone at GMMB.
Besides, it’s inevitable that Larson, Lunge and their associates would wonder which reporters and which news organizations were more sympathetic to their task. This is not Nixonian; it’s human nature.
But it doesn’t require spending 18 grand and getting some K Street (it really is on K Street) outfit to do a LexisNexis-shmexis search. In this case they could have … well, here’s one idea: They could have taken Bob Stannard to lunch.
For those too sane to have spent much time at the Statehouse while the Legislature is in session, Stannard is a former lawmaker who recently retired after a long career as a lobbyist. He is a fan of universal health insurance. He follows Vermont news coverage on the Web, on TV, and even on old dead trees. He knows reporters. He is not averse to candor.
It wouldn’t even have been an expensive lunch; Stannard has lost a lot of weight in the past few years, making it unlikely he’d gorge like a trencherman.
And five will get you 10 the word “societal” would not have passed his lips.
