Bill McCollum came out swinging to defend himself from his wasting of our money to run TV ads starring himself. The same old defense about this not being taxpayer dollars appeared in the Miami Herald article today:
In his most extensive comments on the ads since The Miami Herald wrote about them last week, McCollum emphasized that they were bought not with tax dollars, but with money from settlements with companies accused of hiding the costs of cellphone services. The ads run by Crist and Sink were funded with taxpayer money.
Okay, for all reporters covering this story over the next few weeks, this line is complete crap. As we pointed out earlier this week, Bill McCollum called the exact same fund "taxpayer money" in an interview with the same paper just a few weeks ago. He did it when promoting a proposal of his own, the outside legal fees cap that cost Robiana his chairmanship:
''It's good public policy,'' McCollum said, adding it will save taxpayers money. ``I just can't imagine anybody having to go above the $50 million fee cap."
The settlement money from the AT&T suit goes into the Legal Affairs Revolving Trust Fund. That fund regularly funds large parts of all of Attorney General's office's units including the Cyber Crime unit. That fund is where any legal fees not paid to outside council would go. So it's money that goes towards actually catching criminals; its money that could have gone anywhere with legislative approval. And, it's even taxpayer money according to Attorney General Bill McCollum.
So, press people, stop letting him make this ridiculous claim.
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