This morning's paper (MRT) tells us that the organization Freedom from Religion Foundation made an open records request to the city of Midland, Texas, about the payout of $50,000 of taxpayer money to the promoters of Rock the Desert, the Christian rock concert. And the paper provides a convoluted explanation of why the payment is justified. Click City leaders: Rock the Desert receives funds because of visitors it brings to read it for yourself and note the link to download a PDF of the contract between the city and RTD where you can get to the nut of the agreement.
Basically, the contract says the city will pay RTD to hire and feed security and emergency personnel, put up porta-potties, and pick up the trash. So the city is paying them to do what any other concert promoter would be required to do, except the part about providing food. But there's also a vague requirement that Rock the Desert publish and distribute material promoting the city.
The excuse the city provides, according to the MRT, is that the city pays money to the promoters out of funds obtained through the motel/hotel tax on the theory that the promoters are bringing in outsiders to spend money in the city and not because of the religious nature of the event.
Sure there's the religion issue, but that's only part of it. What we have is the concept of taking money from one set of taxpayers and rather than applying it to real city needs, the money is doled out to handpicked businesses and individuals at the whim of the city council.
Nationally the trend is moving toward a smaller government and fewer government payouts, although there is obviously some very strong resistance to those notions. Nonetheless, the trend is there. Midland has always been a few years behind most trends, and this one seems to be slow in coming here too. But there's hope. There's hope.
So how did the MRT discover that an open records request had been made? The article says a few individuals had written to the MRT about it, although my tired eyes aren't keen enough to have spotted any such missives in the letters to the editor section. The article also mentions that a guy wrote a whole blog post about it at the Friendly Atheist. So maybe the MRT cruises atheist websites. Who knew?
There's also the possibility that one of the city council members alerted them to try to get their side out there in case a law suit gets filed. But that's conspiracy theory stuff, and we can't go there.
Whatever.
Post Script. Regular readers of this blog may recall This Town Needs More Atheists which noted how the council seems to bend over backward whenever a church asks them for something and which also noted the $50,000 contribution to RTD. Commenter Andy said he notified the FFRF about it. Others saw the post, too, that's for sure. This blog typically gets a few hundred visits per day, but that one post attracted almost 9,000 visits over a two day span.
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