Polygamist Case Cost to State? $5.5 Million.. So Far
About $5.5 million in the last month. That's what state agency leaders reporting to the Senate Finance Committee this morning estimate is the total cost of goods, services and "things at Walmart and Target" for the Eldorado raid and response. (That's $5.3 mil not budgeted for in the agency budgets, and already invoiced. There's another two million or so that they expect to be filed in the next few weeks.)
Ongoing monthly costs are expected to be about $1.7million a month, assuming all the children remain in state care... these are foster care placement costs, staffing, etc.
"We haven't even talked about the legal costs, and that's going to be a big number," said State Senator Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, who chairs the committee.
Councilmember Kim Loves The Sharper Image
Each member of the Austin City Council gets a budget of about $260,000 a year, most of it for the member's salary and salaries of his/her staff. The rest goes for office expenditures like notepads, city-related travel, etc. A 2007 review by the Austin American-Statesman showed that Jennifer Kim spent more on non-payroll expenditures than every other member. But what exactly did she buy?
Kim's expenditures, obtained from a TPIA request, show that she is a big fan of The Sharper Image. And traveling. And the self-help book, Discover Your Strengths.
Some notable uses of taxpayer dollars:
$921 for a three-night stay at the W hotel in Manhattan
$700 for a membership to Continental Airlines' 'President's Club'
$550 for a Sharper Image air purifier
$400 for 20 copies of Discover Your Strengths
$232 in Crane and Company brand stationary
$86 in Vera Wang barware
$67 for a Steam Wizard from The Sharper Image
$59 each for "Executive Rollerball" pens from The Sharper Image
"I spend what I need to out of my budget to be able to do the job. And in the beginning, it was a brand new office, a brand new staff, there were a lot of things that we needed," Kim said when asked about the expenditures.
See the full expense report from 2005 to present.
The video story's at six.
