Last Friday, the Calderón administration spent some $125,000 creating a 16-page full color supplement dubbed "Report to the Puerto Rican People" that summed up administration accomplishments over its first two years in power. It was inserted in the island’s four daily newspapers.
Also, the governor began broadcasting a weekly, half-hour radio program also touting her accomplishments that will cost some $260,000 this year.
Calderón is doing nothing that her predecessor, former Gov. Pedro Rosselló, did not do. Indeed, the Rosselló administration had taken to new heights the practice by Puerto Rican administrations to spend public funds in boosting their image.
Rosselló spent over $100 million in placing ads in local news outlets during his first four years in power. During much of that time, there did not appear to be a day that went by when some agency was not talking about what a good job it was doing in full-color ads in island newspapers and on paid-for sound bites on island radio and television.
But the difference is that Calderón had entered office condemning the big spending on publicity by the previous administration. Since then, she has repeatedly complained about the dismal fiscal state of the commonwealth government she inherited.
"The Rosselló administration left a great debt and a great deal of corruption," during its eight years in power, the governor said in the first installment of her radio program broadcast last Saturday.
Commonwealth coffers, like states across the nation, have also been hit by the economic downturn, which means tax revenues have not been growing like they were during the boom years of the go-go 1990s.
The state of commonwealth finances was the main reason Calderón increased excise taxes on sports utility vehicles, alcoholic beverages and cigarettes, as well as putting off a marriage tax penalty repeal that would have provided middle class families with some $80 million in tax relief this year.
And the state of commonwealth finances is the main reason now that Calderón’s decision to undertake publicity is a bad idea: it sends the Puerto Rico public the wrong message. The criticism it engenders will also work to defeat its very purpose in making the administration look good.
New Progressive Party lawmakers said the presentations were a "fantasized view" of the governor’s accomplishments and cracked that they would have no problem with a two-page brochure, which would give a more accurate account of the Calderón administration’s production record.
The Puerto Rican Independence Party, which often lashed out at the Rosselló administration, said the promotion "goes against the proper use of public funds. It is against the law…..promoting the image of the governor."
By starting the year "overspending," Calderón will lack power to ask agency heads to tighten belts, officials argued.
The expenditures, paid radio time on every private station and inserts in every daily newspaper, seemed at least an egalitarian use of questionable expenditures. But among island newspapers, El Nuevo Día by far won the lion’s share of the proceeds as its graphic printing subsidiary was given the contract to print the 736,000 inserts.
Not surprisingly, the influential daily provided the most positive coverage on the incident, burying the criticism behind an article quoting La Fortaleza Public Affairs Secretary Jorge Colberg Toro on how the administration planned to cut advertising expenditures.
Other papers highlighted the outpouring of criticism or Comptroller Manuel Díaz Saldaña’s vow to investigate the expenditures.
The Calderón administration defends itself by saying it spends about $30 million annually on advertising, the majority of it aimed at attracting tourists and investors to the island and about half that spent by the previous Rosselló administration.
But that’s a politician’s argument, and Calderón is playing a politician’s game, even if the administration is sticking to the parameters of a Supreme Court decision that struck down certain Rosselló administration ads as political and therefore unconstitutional.
It’s no accident that Calderón has roared into 2003 with the publicity expenditures; the third year is always the one in which governing administration’s ad spending spikes. That’s because it’s right before the State Elections Commission "ban" on central government advertising kicks in during election years, which requires a tri-partisan SEC panel to scan proposed commonwealth ads for political content.
Supporters say that you should not blame Calderón from doing what a long string of her predecessors have done — using the natural political advantage of the governor’s seat. But with widespread corruption and a huge government, that argument no longer is good enough.
The PIP has suggested — repeatedly — that the SEC screening be made permanent.
As an easy-to-implement remedy offered by the only non-interested entity in the debate, it should be taken up immediately.
Gov. Calderón entered the new year putting an expensive shine on her image, which re-ignited long-standing criticism here about the practice by governing administrations of using public funds to tout their accomplishments in office.