It’s battle of the acronyms, as SDS (Stop Domain Subsidies) has issued a brutal press release demanding that KVUE (Erm K-View?) redress its “unfair and biased coverage” of Council Member Jennifer Kim, “coverage just prior to the start of early voting.”
KVUE ran a report on Kim’s 2007 office budget, and asked Kim to talk about it. She, on camera, said it was all legitimate office expenses. But SDS spokesperson Linda Curtis says the piece suggests Kim that spent her $260,000 office budget on treats and nick-nacks, “while leaving out that 86% of that money is for staff salaries, including her own!” SDS head honcho Brian Rogers called this a “quibble about pennies” while the city still plans to go ahead with multi-million dollar tax rebates for The Domain.
Among the groups going after Kim are, not unsurprisingly, her opponent Randi Shade and fundamentalist fiscal conservatives Texans for Fiscal Responsibility (who never met a government program they didn’t hate). Which means anti-one-specific-subsidy SDS are going toe-to-toe with anti-ALL-subsidies TFR.
Most baffled by this is KVUE reporter (and well-known Jennifer Kim-not-look-a-like) Elise Hu, who points out that every local station ran with the same story on the same night, so she’s not quite sure why KVUE is being singled out.
This article appears in April 25 • 2008.
