Yet Another Bailout by Mayor Baker and the St. Pete Times
December 21st, 2007 by Alex Pickett in Flashbacks & Updates, The Morning PapersAs today’s Times reports, the Florida International Museum received yet another bailout from the St. Petersburg City Council yesterday, this time to the tune of $260,000. The Mayor praised the unanimous vote and, once again, the Times editorial staff was on the winning side.
But if you look deeper into the coverage of this seemingly benign agenda item, something is amiss.
On Wednesday, a Times editorial supporting the forgiveness of a $260,000 city loan to the museum stated: “The relationship between the city and museum is complex and goes back a ways.”
You don’t know the half of it.
Back in 2001, Creative Loafing’s John F. Sugg reported on the “complex” relationship between the museum, the Times and Mayor Baker. He detailed the Times cheerleading of the museum’s opening. He uncovered Baker’s connections to the museum, in which he served as lawyer, board member and chairman. And Baker’s push for a $5.4 million bailout in the mid-90s.
Read Sugg’s story here, then re-read the Times coverage this week and tell me something isn’t amiss.
December 23rd, 2007 at 11:31 am
Perhaps it would help if anyone actually knew where the museum was. I never heard about it again after the Lady Di exhibit and it was torn down. I did drive by a store front that said something about St. Pete City College and International Museum, But nothing that said, Hey, Here is a Museum. It looked more like the enterance to a college library… is that it?
January 10th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
I recently called the times about using tax payer dollars being used to trim Mayor Bakers trees.The story was called Oh No The Mayors Done It Again by Aaron Sharockman but he failed to mention the Fact that we paid to have his trees trimmed they also failed to mention the fact that I called the mayor himself and he called codes on himself instead of just complying with his codes.In doing so he succeded in wasting more tax payer dollars.The times did successfully make me look like a petty tax waster by not reporting the whole story.I do not believe a word the times prints and I can think of alot better uses for the trees that are cut down to print that RAG!
Joe Pazourek