Governor Bill Ritter spent more than $200,000 on TV, photographs and videos of himself, an Associated Press investigation revealed.   According to AP, “taxpayers paid that amount for photos of the Democratic governor signing bills and attending a lavish production for the state film commission.”

Evan Dreyer, the Governor’s spokesman, says Ritter is simply “meeting increased demand” from social networking sites such as facebook and twitter as well as Web sites that are demanding better quality.  As a result:

Ritter’s official state Web page features 31 pages of photos of the governor, and he invites people to download them as well as videos from his galleries. Some were taken by state employees, while others were paid for by taxpayers. Among them: A video of Ritter at the National Western Stock Show that cost $375, and $200 in taxpayer-paid photos of Ritter signing a job creation bill in May.

Is this expenditure going to bankrupt the state? No, but as my boss at the Independence Institute Jon Caldara said, “this shows an arrogance on Ritter’s part that it’s OK to do self-promotion at taxpayer expense.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 3rd, 2010 at 11:51 am and is filed under media, politics, transparency. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.