Mayor Cherelle Parker spends a lot on state-sponsored propaganda

A few months ago, the USPS delivered to me a full-color, slick magazine touting the services of the City of Philadelphia, and especially the mayor and City Council.

It was beautiful, I thought, as I thumbed through it, briefly wondering why I had received a brag book, when it wasn’t even election time, because it sure looked like campaign material.

I tossed it out without thinking more about it.

I should have, and the Inquirer did my thinking for me.

The glossy brag book was part of more than $2 million wasted spent by the city on outside firms using my tax money on mind control  to tell me how great my elected officials are. In addition to the magazine were mailers, billboards, digital, TV, radio and newspaper ads.

That’s a lot of state-sponsored propaganda paid for by the victims citizens of Philadelphia. 

This self-generated applause was made even more bitter after sitting through Tuesday public comments on the proposed budget and hearing from citizens about how desperately needed services — from rec centers to housing — are not being funded. 

And this 48-page, $83,000 grandiose preening was funded. Talk about civic priorities.

It seems needy, and narcissistic — praise for “public servants” underwritten by the taxpayers.

And it’s not chump change, according to reporting by the Inquirer.

“The mayor, City Council, and other city agencies employ nearly 70 different communications, media, or PR staffers, with combined salaries of $5.3 million annually.”

The mayor herself has a nine-person, $1.1 million flack staff, about 20% more than her predecessor, Mayor Jim Kenney.

If you think a larger staff means faster action, you are wrong. (And I won’t make a big deal that the 11 drones that I pay for don’t respond to my legitimate requests for information.)

Part of the problem goes back to Parker’s demand that the dozens of other communications people in other city offices have to route media requests through the mayor’s office, otherwise known as the bog. This pernicious policy was the brain child of brain-damaged Jim Kenney. 

Why have spokespeople at other offices if they can’t speak for themselves? Good question.

Parker has a history of wanting to confound or muzzle the press.

Back when she was a candidate in September 2023, Team Parker was caught red-handed belittling the press and plotting how to “manage” news requests.

Parker was “pissed” after such emails were reported by the Inquirer after her staffers made the amateur mistake of accidentally sending internal campaign communications to Lawrence McGlynn with the Philadelphia Hall Monitor, a nonprofit news organization, in response to an interview request.

“But the exchange shed light on how the campaign manages Parker’s public image and led to accusations that it favors larger media outlets over smaller publications and diverse journalists,” the Inquirer reported.

You can read more about it here. 

Parker press secretary Joe Grace, a chalk-white former Daily News colleague who gets paid $180,000 a year for spraying gloss on mayoral turd, admitted to me early on, when I complained about the press office’s lethargy, that there were a lot of new people, young people.

So I started making my requests directly to him, and soon after he started ignoring them. I know some good communications people, but Grace is not one of them. Any journalistic urge to provide swift, accurate information evaporated a long time ago.

I am not the only reporter with a gripe, but the others clam up because they think they need him to open gates.

So what’s worse — that the city has scores of people paid to communicate for it and aren’t allowed to, or that it has to go to outside sources for help? Worse yet — a firm with a $120,000 contract isn’t even in the city. It is in Erie, P.A.

Grace defends the splurge contract. “As year two of the administration unfolds, we want to do even more,” said the man who does less. “Tell more stories, and inform the public even better on all of the dynamic and positive work of the Parker administration.”

🤮

And the eleven staffers can’t do that?

Maybe because of the bottleneck created by Parker’s “run everything past me” me policy. “Grace and his team have frequently struggled to respond in a timely manner to media inquiries, including requests for basic information,” the Inquirer wrote.

The bloated office isn’t even good at the mind control they aim for.