Taxpayers likely to get $17,113.03 Cheney tab

Spokane police have computed the cost of overtime from Vice President Dick Cheney’s April 17 visit at $17,113.03, which puts it on a par with the visit by President Bush in 2004. Apparently there’s no discount for bringing the No. 2 guy. Or maybe any savings was eaten up by inflation.

In any case, that accounting has resurrected the conversation Spokane has whenever a high-level politico drops in for a campaign visit: Who’s going to pay the bill?

If the past is any guide, the answer is: City taxpayers.

That’s the way it should be, said Republican senatorial candidate Mike McGavick, for whom Cheney made the little jaunt from Fairchild Air Force Base to the Davenport Hotel last month.

The McGavick campaign did reimburse the federal government for some of the veep’s travel costs, as required by federal law. But the city’s cost for such a visit – traffic control, crowd management for the protesters outside – are usually borne by the community, he said.

“In the end, all of us benefit from having officials be in contact with local communities and local ideas,” McGavick said. Seattle isn’t going to bill the People’s Republic of China for President Hu Jintao’s visit.

Spokane City Councilwoman Mary Verner said the city probably got some benefit from the visit. The city was mentioned on the national news; some folks exercised their free speech rights outside the Davenport; others heard Cheney inside or talked to him in a roundtable discussion, although a ticket to the speech was $500, and a seat at the table was about four times that.

So it wasn’t like either event was open to the public, said Verner. She wonders if this all pencils out to being worth $17,113.03.

With the city budget being in the shape it’s in – which is to say, so bad that a thousand bucks here and a thousand bucks there adds up to real money – Verner would like the council to at least ask McGavick’s campaign to chip in. She doesn’t know whether she can get three other council votes to make the request.

“It’s not partisan. It’s not even political,” she said. The city should consider the same type of request when a rock star comes here and needs traffic and crowd control.

If he gets a request, McGavick said he’ll reiterate that the city benefits from getting its issues out, and national politicians benefit from getting out of that other Washington.

“All of us want these public officials to travel, preferably extensively, so they see what’s going on in the local communities,” he said.

Bearing the costs

While Councilwoman Verner was working hard to be apolitical and nonpartisan on the question of veep costs, Washington state Democrats were working to be neither.

If you can imagine that.

State Ds want to whip up indignation over McGavick’s failure to reimburse the city, and pointed to reports on KREM and KSKN a couple days after Cheney blew town. The two stations, which use the same news staff, said McGavick told a reporter he would pay the cost of the trip, or maybe all the security costs.

Kelly Steele of the Democrats’ combined campaign said McGavick now isn’t shooting straight with folks by avoiding the security costs.

McGavick and his staff say he was talking about paying travel expenses for Cheney. The station applied his answer on a specific point to a more general question of total expenses, contends campaign spokeswoman Julie Sund, who was present at the interview.

The line between what the candidate said and what the reporter reported is a little hazy after a month, and the station did later clarify that McGavick believes he was talking about travel costs.

The station’s video clip has him saying: “For the expenses that are borne directly by the vice president when he does political things, the party and we have to actually bear those costs, so they’re not borne by the taxpayers.”

Expenses borne directly by the vice president – or technically his office, because Cheney doesn’t have to whip out his platinum Visa card – are travel costs. Federal law says campaigns pay a proportional share, based on the amount of time at “official” events, like Cheney’s visit to Fairchild, compared with “political” events, like his stop at the Davenport.

Federal law also specifically excludes reimbursement for the cost of things like security. All those Secret Service agents with the dark suits and the wires coming out of their ears are on the taxpayers’ dime.

So, it would seem, are the guys in blue from Spokane’s finest. The difference being that the pool of taxpayers for those overtime bills reaches only to the city limits.

On the other hand

County taxpayers, meanwhile, won’t be shelling out anything extra for the help that sheriff’s deputies provided for the veep visit. Sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Dave Reagan said the extra cost was “so negligible that we didn’t even bother to track them.”

“That’s what we do,” he added. “We protect people no matter who they are.”