Annapolis Capital Punishment

The current issue of Inside Annapolis, a local commercial publication, features an article entitled, “Thank You, Mayor Moyer, For Keeping Annapolis Green” which gushingly touts her environmental accomplishments. However, Ray Weaver, the author of the effusive essay is never identified as the city’s public information officer, which essentially means he is the Mayor’s press secretary. Not only does this make the article and its publisher appear questionable, it’s more than a bit disingenuous for a public information officer to do such a thing. As if a city-sponsored web-site, magazine and the office itself does not provide enough opportunity for such puffery!

...post script....
WELL IT LOOKS AS IF THE CAPITAL TOOK A CLUE FROM CP AND WROTE THIS TODAY:

"Ray Weaver, ghost writer?

In this month's Inside Annapolis magazine, Ray Weaver, the city public information officer, penned a column touting the "green" efforts of his boss, Mayor Ellen O. Moyer.

A known tree-hugger throughout the community, most citizens are aware of Ms. Moyer's environmental efforts. The magazine, however, fails to note Mr. Weaver's position and that he does in fact work for the mayor.

"The fact is I wrote it as the PIO and if people want to make an issue out of it, they can," Mr. Weaver said this morning. "It's certainly no secret I'm the PIO and no one was trying to hide that fact or make a secret out of it."

Local blogger Paul Foer even noted the omission of the Mr. Weaver's title in a post to his site, "Annapolis Capital Punishment," Wednesday morning.

"Not only does this make the article and its publisher appear questionable, it's more than a bit disingenuous for a public information officer to do such a thing," Mr. Foer wrote. "As if a city sponsored Web site, magazine and the office itself does not provide enough opportunity for such puffery."

Jimmy R. Hammond, publisher and managing editor of Inside Annapolis, said he never thought about attaching Mr. Weaver's title to the column and that none of the writers have titles or other identifiers attached to their articles. He confirmed Mr. Weaver was not paid for the work.

The lack of title will be noted in the upcoming issue, he said. The online version of the column has already been updated to include Mr. Weaver's title."

ORIGINAL POST CONTINUED....
The arrival of spring, and Greenscapes Day makes this is a good time to reflect upon our Mayor’s “green” credentials. During all of her many years as a citizen activist, alderman and Mayor, Ellen Moyer has provided strong and effective leadership in protecting and safeguarding the natural beauty and environment of Annapolis. She has raised the awareness and consciousness of many, and given support to environmentalists in many ways.

Her work in parks, trails, tree cover and in promoting and furthering an environmental ethic and consciousness may likely be regarded as important a legacy to our city as St. Clair Wright’s on historic preservation.

But “the environment” means everything, and it also means the ability of humans to use and enjoy and gain access to clean resources and surroundings. It’s a lot more than trees alone, and it’s a lot more than hype and pronouncements. CP wonders if in some respects, our green Mayor has actually dropped the ball. CP expects no elected official to have a perfect or unblemished record and will say again, Ellen is plenty green and we appreciate her strong leadership. Among her many accomplishments have been Greenscapes Day, the Conservancy Board and ongoing improvements at Back Creek Nature Park, but in other respects, her work has been nothing more than hype and puffery, as alluded to above.

For example, we have continued to grow and develop and because of political infighting, often from her, we seem unable to get a clear agenda on comprehensive development and adequate facilities. All this with no transportation improvements. Crime has worsened and she again seems to be playing politics with cleaning up our most depressed public housing communities, passing the buck on to HUD and HACA, whom she appoints!

When it comes to air pollution and global warming, she has gotten a lot of political mileage, but in what has it resulted? She has focused her clean air efforts on things with which the City has little control, jurisdiction or impact while ignoring the things that could have been more effective.

For example, she gave a contract (reputed to be sole-sourced at $40,000) to a former Chesapeake Bay Foundation official to write a curriculum for fourth graders on clean air! With so many private and public entities involved in this area all over the world, (and our City runs no schools) why did this happen? It is because Ellen wanted it to happen. Similarly she spent public money to create this ridiculous “Cloud Nine” logo of a puffy cloud with a smile--how ironic! And not to be outdone, she created this silly Lacey Ann Regina character, a smiling flower to grace trashcans. At about the same time, due to her lack of interest and leadership, even though it easily directly tied into her interests, a Chesapeake Bay Foundation grant to start a Clean Commute program faltered and lost support. Yet all the while she has pretty much ignored the promotion of walking and biking and public transit and the most obnoxious--and ultimately one of the most controllable sources of local air pollution--our cars!!! And we still don’t have a computer or electronics recycling program in our city!

If green building and cars are the areas where we can be most effective, it seems that she has done some work in the area of buildings, but other than procuring a few cleaner cars, she has ignored repeated attempts to help get hundreds of city employees out of their cars. She personally dislikes buses and refused to ride a bike, even briefly for publicity purposes (?) on the numerous Bike to Work Days. We don’t even have decent bike racks in our city and the old “tire killer” rack at Market House often has the same old rusted bikes chained to them for months.

As part of her lack of concern about automobiles--the greatest offending sources, she has virtually ignored our ailing public transit system whose management has come under attack for being aloof and isolated from customers (nothing new in that regard…) All the while, we get more buildings, more cars, more exhaust and more concrete.

In summation, she is certainly a “green” Mayor but CP can only give her a “B” until these other areas are addressed. How can we help her? (For the Mayor's official spin on this topic, visit http://www.annapolis.gov/info.asp?page=10237)