On November 20, 2009, Ann Arbor SPARK Managing Director of Marketing and Public Relations, Elizabeth Perkins, posted this piece of propaganda to the AnnArborChronicl.com site. It is typical SPARK scat (and not of the Jazz singing variety). Perkins writes,
In a nutshell, our [SPARK's] 2006-2008 ROI:
•101 project successes – $925 million new investment commitments
•7,054 new jobs and 5,740 jobs retained
•155 innovation start-ups through SPARK Business Accelerator
•Leveraged community investments to $32.5 million — through acquisition of Federal and State of Michigan funding and equipment donation to Michigan Innovation Equipment Depot
•Assisted 350 regional companies with employee searches
•Assisted 3000+ job seekers with employment searches
Did you pause at the spot in the ROI fairytale where Perkins has a break with reality and claims SPARK has created 7,054 new jobs and "retained" 5,740 jobs?
In April 2009, LDFA Chair Richard King (the LDFA board members are appointed by Ann Arbor City Council to supervise SPARK) reported to Ann Arbor City Council that SPARK had created 600 jobs since 2006. When the LDFA recently hit up Council for an additional $205,000 to hire a staff member for SPARK to answer the phones and check the email, the November 16th presentation included the number of jobs SPARK has created recently: 60.
So, since 2006, SPARK has created 660 new jobs, according to the Chair of the City Council-appointed Board that oversees the entity, and City Council member Stephen Rapundalo. It was Rapundalo, who sits on the LDFA Board, who brought the $205,000 funding resolution to City Council. First Ward Council member Sandi Smith even gave Skip Simms, the managing director of entrepreneurial business development at SPARK, an opportunity to take credit for creating 7,054 new jobs when Smith asked a follow-up question about the 60 jobs created. Skip didn't correct Council member Smith and say that SPARK had created 7,054 jobs. Instead, Simms answered her question about the 60 jobs created.
So what's going on? Is it 7,054 jobs created or 660 jobs created? To answer that, we're going to have to bring in another character, former SPARK CEO Rick Snyder.
That's the same Rick Snyder, who's now running for Governor, and whose budget reform plan includes:
-Determine priorities in spending
-Create measurable goals for spending priorities
Create a multiyear budget based upon spending priorities
-Publish regular assessments of progress towards goals
-Identify strengths and weaknesses of programs based upon achievement of goals
-Publish all spending online so citizens can ensure their tax dollars are being spent effectively and responsibly
Snyder was the CEO of SPARK from its creation in July 2006, through May 22, 2009, when he left to concentrate on his political aspirations. The movie will be titled: The Wizard of SPARK goes to Lansing. If you wonder how Snyder would do dealing with billions of public dollars, you need only look as far as how he dealt with a few million public dollars as the CEO of SPARK. Annual reports, issued by SPARK while Rick Snyder was in charge claim the "creation" and "retention" of thousands of jobs. Snyder's Annual Reports make for better reading than Melville's Moby Dick—both Snyder and Captain Ahab pursue the White Whale come hell, high water, standard practices of accounting and the inconvenient truth.
In fact, Snyder was still in charge at SPARK in April of 2009 when Richard King went before City Council and (to his credit) told the truth about the actual number of actual jobs that the taxpayers' money had been used to create between July 2006 and April 2009.
This distinction between promised and actual jobs is a critical one, and one that the SPARK Spin-o-matic Machine, devised and set into motion by Rick Snyder, has never found necessary to distinguish. In fact, SPARK's PR Director Perkins and SPARK's CEO Michael Finney, (as did Rick Snyder before them), are in the business of counting their chickens before they're hatched. They're not only counting their chickens before they're hatched, they're telling taxpayers the fairytale that they're got 7,054 chickens. Richard King and the LDFA board that oversees our traveling minstrels and bards from SPARK have told the whole truth—that 660 of those eggs have hatched. Richard King also made clear that those 660 eggs would have hatched without a penny's worth of help from the Ann Arbor taxpayers. So why have our City Council members continued to give money to the LDFA to give to SPARK?
Well, because the lot of them still believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Rick Snyder SPARK Job Creation Fairy.
Here is a perfect example of how Snyder's Job Creation Fairy works. In 2008, Google came to Ann Arbor promising to create 1,100 jobs by 2011. SPARK, then, took credit for having "created" 1,100 jobs. Press releases were written and flashed over the transom to every newspaper this side of Beijing. It's almost 2010, and Google officials will no longer speak to the Press about exactly how many employees the company has or will have at the Ann Arbor office. I'll tell you. There have been about 210 actual jobs created by Google thus far, or 19 percent of the jobs promised. Will Google add 900 more actual jobs during 2010? We can all hope. What no one should not do is go around bragging to people that there have been 1,100 jobs "created" by Google's move to Ann Arbor. That is exactly what SPARK does, and what our local elected officials do. They mislead taxpayers about the actual accomplishments of SPARK so that their friends and political cronies can keep their jobs. Those friends and political cronies then donate money to keep our elected officials in office.
The relationship between Ann Arbor City Council, Ann Arbor SPARK and the LDFA is a classic political circle jerk from start to finish.
I was amazed when I read Snyder's budget reform plan for the state of Michigan. Not because I think his ideas are unique in any way, but rather because he implemented few of those same tools during his tenure at SPARK. In fact, in October of 2008 the Treasurer of the LDFA Board resigned over shoddy record keeping, conflicts of interest, accounting irregularities, and lack of internal financial controls at Rick Snyder's SPARK.
According to the October 2008 piece in the Ann Arbor News, that stick-in-the-economic-development-mud, LDFA Treasurer Mike Reid found, "instances where SPARK employees or family members of employees were paid to consult for their own companies...Mike Reid said he was resigning as treasurer of the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti SmartZone Local Development Finance Authority in protest over what he sees as the board's failure to hold Spark responsible for 'pervasive contractual deficiencies' in its record-keeping and use of funds." Ouch.
In 2007, about 30 percent of SPARK's $2.3 million dollar budget came from taxpayers. By 2008, that percentage had risen to 38 percent of a $3 million dollar budget. On November 16th, City Council voted unanimously to give the LDFA a $205,000 handout of our tax dollars to pass on it's only child, SPARK. All of the money "captured" by the LDFA's TIF comes from our local Ann Arbor public schools. Thus, every dollar the LDFA gives to SPARK is a dollar not available for public education.
I have no doubt that Republican candidate Rick Snyder would rely on the same kinds of tactics as Governor of Michigan that he devised while CEO of Ann Arbor SPARK. Look at his track record: In less time than a single gubernatorial term, Snyder created a legacy of deception, cronyism, and misuse of taxpayer money while at the head of Ann Arbor SPARK. I imagine Rick Snyder would go hog wild doling out political welfare to his political pals, donors and cronies if set lose on our state's multi-billion dollar budget.
Ann Arbor's City Council and Mayor have allowed the LDFA to divert millions of tax dollars from public education since 2006, and kept SPARK on the public dole long enough. It's time for all those Ann Arbor SPARK welfare Mamas and Daddies created by Rick Snyder, and whose six-figure salaries are funded by our local politicos with our tax dollars, to get off welfare and get an honest job. Hey, maybe SPARK CEO Michael Finney can get one of those jobs he "created."