Though it may seem hard to believe, the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District is seeking corporate sponsorship. Last Friday, they made the $90,000 consultants report available on their website, just three months overdue. I downloaded it from a link that says"full report" on the GGBHTD website, and I was SHOCKED at how little substance there was--basically, it was a lengthy request for more money. Upon surveying the papers, I realized that the bridge district only made the executive summary available, citing attorney/client privilege (it contained protected secrets of the marketing firm). Was this reassuring? Not really.
Maybe they did get something for their money, after all, we just can't tell because the report is not available. But is it really necessary to withhold the entire report from everybody? Couldn't they just omit these mysterious secrets?
One SF director remarked: "No one from the public had a copy of this. I've never seen something that so lacked transparency in all my years of being involved," the supervisor said. "I think that's a terrible abuse of the public process. The public doesn't know what's going on. There was not a single person from the public who spoke out for it." (quoted in the SF Chronicle)
Anyway, the scenario is this: they could spend about $500,000 on consultants to MAYBE get $8mil in money from corporate sponsors, minus a hefty commission. This could add a drop to the bucket of their financing, and delay higher tolls for about 18 hours. Sheesh.
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