Mark Puente Had an interesting article in the Wednesday Tampa Bay Times: St.Petersburg RNC costs still murky.

One comment attributed to Police Chief Chuck Harmon caught my eye "The department does not have employees dedicated to the collection of payroll and expense records for RNC events, Harmon added".

Technically he is probably right, they do not have employees dedicated to  collection of costs related to the RNC events.  The key words are dedicated to and RNC events.

The facts are the Police Department Special Events Unit is tasked with keeping track of all costs related to special events, the RNC Party was "special", and the Police Department has its own accounting unit of several people dedicated to tracking all costs.

They know the numbers. They didn't seem to have too much trouble finding the $9500.00 they wanted to blame on a civilian.

Once again the Chief has carefully chosen his words to be just inside the facts.

Why all the reluctance to give the numbers? Unless there is an 800 pound gorilla in there somewhere it is hard to understand. Council must keep pushing the Mayor and the Chief. If they want the facts maybe an outside audit is indicated.

If the Foster Administration stonewalls this much on the RNC Party, just how difficult will it be to get an exact accounting of the LENS costs.

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