What Would You Do With a Million MUNI Dollars, Mr. Mayor?

Some days you don’t have to do much to write a little blog about MUNI…it just sort of writes itself.
KCBS had a report about the Mayor’s eagerness to spend MUNI dollars on expensive staffers for his office, to the tune of about a million dollars. This is on the heels of an article in the Chronicle covering the issue, but with a slightly different take.
It’s funny how we were just asked to give MUNI dedicated resources as part of a “reform” measure (which just saw its campaign committee fined for ethics violations), and right away, the only thing our Mayor can think to do is give out big pay raises to the bosses, and take money away from MUNI and give it to people in his office. After all, it’s not like it’s his money out of his pocket, right? And clearly, San Franciscans like him so much they must think this is ok.
Funnier still, when you read the experiences of everyday people who don’t buy their girlfriends $100,000 rings, you wonder if perhaps the Mayor could have complied with his own directive to “cut spending” by starting with his own office, instead of giving out big pay to more city employees, and getting them plasma TVs to watch Project Runway with.
Of course, all would be forgiven if they decided to say, raid the MUNI fund for a $150,000/year job for folks to blog about how great the new plasma tvs are, but that’s probably not happening….
UPDATE: Rachel Gordon at the Chronicle has another story detailing the expenditures, the spin and whatnot. Oh and that blogging job pays only $85,000 after all….given how much the staffers get paid over there, I’d say the guy is getting shortchanged.