“The first thing I’m going to do is to make sure I put together a survey or questionnaire for input from people about the issues they want to see as priority number one,” Kath said.
After door knocking the district for 2 months before the election, talking to voters at the candidate forum, the Steele County Fair, half a dozen house parties, and every social event in either town, Kory Kath needs to send out a survey to see what they want him to do.
If that were the extent of it, you could just call Kath the political version of a willow tree, blowing in the wind and worried about taking a stand on anything without taking a poll. But here's where annoying cowardice turns into misuse of taxpayer dollars-the poll will be printed, mailed, return mailed, and processed at taxpayer expense.
With 13,815 households in district 26A, the cost to print surveys will be about $2275 for a basic survey. The cost to mail them will be $3,868. Given a 20% response rate, that is another $375 for return postage. Excluding the cost for a staffer at the House to process, collate, and interpret the data, that means $6,518 for the survey.
Our representative Kory Kath is so clueless about why his constituents returned him to office, that he will spend over $6,500 in tax money to ask you. No wonder we have a billion dollar budget deficit, and no wonder the Republicans kicked out so many Democrats from the legislature this year.
