CottonMouth points to a great resource– SeeTheSpending.org, where you can find out what various parts of state government spend, by category, department, or (most interestingly) vendor. Their website promises to put county, school, and city numbers up in the future.
CottonMouth learned of the degree to which the state is funding SuperTalk radio. The State of Mississippi wrote checks of over $6M since 2004 to the company that owns SuperTalk Mississippi, TeleSouth, mostly to buy advertising (the state overall spent $85M on advertising in that period). You can see the records for Telesouth here.
h/t Matt of IpseBlogit (or ipseblogisnt, perhaps).
Update: Kingfish had some of this information from state documents in a post last September, although not the full amount shown on the SeeTheSpending.org site.
And public broadcasting is the problem… Sigh.
Surely some of that state money is related to Ole Miss and MSU athletics being broadcast by Telesouth? If not, something smells.
I mean really? if you listened to supertalk, you would know that if there is a state sponsored ad it is usually for public safety style announcements. for example right now insurance commissioner has a ad where he explains how to safely use a space heater. They are advertisements that the state buys so people learn something about how to be safe! Do you expect telesouth to just give air time for free? oh yea, you probably do. MPB just gets money for nothing! Why don’t you do some real research and find out how much telesouth pays in taxes? Or better yet what telesouth contributes to charity in our state?
I don’t think so, Phantom– that money goes the other way. The money coming to Telesouth is from departments like Health and Human Services.
My data came from MATA section of the DFA’s website. At the time there was no Seethespending and if I was going to cite authority, I’d use MATA over a third party site. My whole criticism is does the state need to be spending any money advertising with any radio station right now?
@kingfish
I agree with you that the state is wasting it’s money. But this is a very small part of that bigger problem.
Listening to that gang reminds me of a story my grandmother told me a long time ago about wrapping a good biscuit in wax paper and dunking it a few times in the cesspoool. She said the biscuit was still good since it was protected by the wax paper, but she did manage to make me wonder if it would still be appetizing considering where you had to go to get it.
Such are these good “public safety announcements” the State purchases. And I’m willing to wager that the vast majority of the people the State should actually want or need to reach are not listening to the line-up on Telesouth.
Telesouth I never heard … or heard of. But, just drilling around in the Seethespending website, I noted a few items that make me squint … e.g., AMMUNITION expenses for: Attorney General? Department of Revenue? Finance & Administration? Gaming Commission? Office of the State Auditor? If the taxpayers are buying bullets for those agencies, we musta bought them guns, too. Right?
So … why?
TeleSouth has the sports marketing and advertising contract with Ole Miss athletics. And I have seen video ribbon board ads at Ole Miss football games and other sporting events by state agencies —eg MDOT. I have no idea why a state agency needs to pay for such general advertising with our state tax dollars — especially MDOT. Why? Does MDOT have a competitor? I don’t want to deprive Ole Miss of advertising dollars, but it appears that those dollars are not going to UM, but to TeleSouth instead (per the contract).
And if state agencies are paying for advertising on a radio station, then I would think it should be heavily scrutinized to determine if reasonable and necessary. I think the public service announcements by some state agencies are probably appropriate —- eg messages against drinking and driving by the MS Dept of Public Safety. But, in tight budget times, even those types of paid advertising are really not necessary for the government to function and provide good service to its citizens.
I have also read that state tax dollars have been paid to lobbyists by state agencies for lobbying services. Now why would a state agency need a lobbyist? And why would such expenditures be necessary? —- eg MDOT, I believe, has paid for lobbying on its behalf with state tax dollars. Are they lobbying the state legislature, or Congress, for a bigger cut of our tax dollars? No wonder our government budgets are fat and inflated, and we have a spending problem.
I am not seeing the direct connection between SuperTalk radio (and its content) and our state tax dollars. IF state agencies must advertise (and I think such is dubious), then there is no legal obligation (nor should there be) for a company like TeleSouth to provide such advertising for free. This is not the same as the past federal tax dollar funding of NPR — which I am opposed to. And if there was such direct government funding of private radio, then I would be against that as well. Let them stand on their own with their advertising and other revenues. If there is a market for it, then it will survive.
I just love the movement toward more government sunshine. Ignorance, in this case, is not bliss. Public disclosure of back room deals and previously “under the radar” expenditures are enlightening, and for some, embarassing. Good.
As a partial response to Ben’s question above, I think the MS Ag’s office has units involved with federal law enforcement for the purpose of jointly going after drug trafficers (drug kingpins), as well as units involved in security and other areas of law enforcement. These units undertandably need firearms and ammunition. Now, as to exactly why some of these other agencies need firearms and ammunition, I can’t offer any potential rational explanation — it sounds dubious to me as well — sounds like some folks getting to fund their target practice hobby with state tax dollars.