“County to pay $250,000 to advertise lack of funds”
This headline from the Register-Guard paper in Oregon has been making rounds on the internet as a humorous example of government waste. And if you know me, you know that I found it quite funny. :-)
But if you know me, you know that I had to look into it some more. First (using my favorite search engine) I found the actual article. After reading the first sentence, it’s obvious that the headline is misleading. The county government actually just approved spending “up to $250,000″.
Also, according to the article, $200,000 of the total would be “contributed” from the budgets of other departments at the discretion of the department’s supervisor. What government bureaucrat would actually give money to another department?
Lane County has a population of just under 340,000 people, which means the advertising allocation is roughly 75 cents a person. That doesn’t cover all that much.
The Lane County annual budget is slightly more than $500 million. This makes the advertising allocation just 0.05% of the budget. To put that in perspective, a small business should generally spend 5% of the previous year’s gross on marketing.
Despite this, it’s still pretty wasteful. At a basic level, if the county can’t convince people it needs more money without marketing, it probably doesn’t need it.
Keep in mind, marketing is the art of making someone want something they don’t need. So if your government is advertising… well you can figure the rest out. :-)
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