By Adam Pagnucco.
On top of the county executive’s recommended budget, which has large increases for most government functions financed by a 10% property tax hike, two county council members want to add more money. Their purpose: to buy media ads on behalf of the council itself.
In a memo to Council Member Kate Stewart, who is chair of the council’s Government Operations Committee, Council Members Natali Fani-González and Gabe Albornoz request that $315,000 be added to the budget to finance “a multi-year paid media campaign” with the following elements:
- $166,000 a year for TV media buys targeting multilingual communities.
- $50,000 a year for traditional and digital multicultural media buys modeled after a multi-year phased out County-wide strategy for Thrive 2050 that targeted Equity Emphasis Areas.
- $83,000 a year for radio ads in ethnic radio and digital media targeting Black and Brown audiences, and Spanish, Chinese, French, Vietnamese, Amharic, and Korean-speaking communities.
- $16,000 a year for translation costs for tailoring messages in languages that we are not able to cover in-house.
The council members depict these ads as necessary to “target the County’s BIPOC community more authentically and effectively.” They further comment, “The goals and the topics of these advertising ads will be determined by the County Council as part of the Communications Office annual workplan set to be presented to Councilmembers in July 2023” and “The entire effort will be done in-house, including content production and messaging, based on the Council’s designated guidance and work plan for the upcoming year.” In other words, the council itself will determine what the ads say and where they will be placed.
In evaluating this proposed new spending, consider these four facts.
County agencies already spend more than $12 million a year on communications.
Last December, I totaled up the FY22 communications spending line items of all the county agencies I could find and came up with a partial combined estimate of $12.1 million and 66.8 full-time equivalent positions. But that’s just partial – many more positions are embedded in departmental budgets and cannot be isolated from published budget documents.
The county spends millions more on political campaigns every election cycle.
The county spends tax money on political campaigns for candidates in public financing. In the 2018 cycle, the county spent $4,079,537 in the primary election and $1,077,917 in the general election. In the 2022 cycle, the county spent $3,458,572 in the primary election and $233,514 in the general election.
Council members run additional communications through their personal staff.
Every council member has a personal communications capacity combining email blasts and/or social media run through their personal staff. Kristin Mink even set up a separate website promoting her rent control bill. It’s probably impossible to calculate how much this costs taxpayers.
The council has its own central communications budget which has more than doubled in the last three years.
In FY13, the council set up a non-departmental account called Legislative Branch Communications Outreach which originally relied on cable franchise fees to pay for additional communications capacity. The table below shows the growth of this account since its founding, including huge increases in its budget since FY21.
The following summarizes the additions to this account in the last three budgets.
In FY22, the council added a Multicultural Communications & Community Outreach Manager Position (at a cost of $97,500), a Translator/Interpreter Position ($77,453), a Bilingual Videographer Contractor ($50,000), operating expenses for IT software ($39,900) and operating expenses for Software Solutions/Equipment – Multilingual Broadcasting ($30,000).
In FY23, the council added two Public Information Officers ($192,863), two Information Technology Positions ($172,044) and $250,370 in operating expenses.
In FY24, the council plans to add a “New Position to Serve as Liaison to the Asian American and Pacific Islander Community” ($82,703) and $40,000 for “Translation Services and Culturally Competent Advertising.”
This comes on top of hundreds of thousands of dollars more for “Multi-program adjustments, including negotiated compensation changes, employee benefit changes, changes due to staff turnover, reorganizations, and other budget changes affecting multiple programs.” And this is all before the new media ad buys were requested.
With a 10% property tax hike on the table, the council needs to come up with ways to save money rather than to spend even more of it. What’s clear from the above is that the council has not neglected communications in recent years. They should now focus instead on not neglecting the taxpayers.
The memo from Fani-González and Albornoz can be downloaded below.