In his blog yesterday, Connecticut Post Capitol reporter Ken Dixon took a critical look at legislation introduced in that state’s General Assembly that would ban bottled water purchase and bottled water cooler contracts by state government agencies. He’s a little upset, and:
In fact, in 14 years covering state government, I can’t think of too many things that have the potential to be a bigger waste of time, than the idea floated this morning to eliminate the water coolers in the Capitol complex and install seven water fountains.
This is a reporter who did his homework.
You can’t make the schools better and our kids competitive, so you might as well eliminate the water coolers in the Capitol and Legislative Office Building and call it a money-saving and environmentally conscious effort.
…there [are] the phony facts. Yes, we have good drinking water. But her charges of exorbitant expense and environmental impact are half baked, or at least overblown.
He went to a news conference held by the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Beth Bye, D-West Hartford.
She said that in the Legislative Office Building, bottled water costs $11,600 a year “when we have good tap water piped in,” while it costs $460,000 a year in all state office buildings. “This seems silly,” she said. “We have such good water to be trucking it in from far away.”
But before he went to the news conference, he called a facilities administrator for the Office of Legislative Management, which runs the Capitol complex.
He said the contract with Poland Spring is in the first year of a three-year, $32,000-a-year deal, which does not have a cancellation clause.
And Dixon finishes his piece:
Don’t you hate it when the truth gets in the way of political agendas?