Updated: Don't let the mayor's "shiny object" distract you. She is playing fast and loose with city funds

            Editor’s note: This blog item has been updated from one posted earlier today in order to reflect changes in documentation provided by Cheyenne Mayor Marian Orr. The earlier post doubted the mayor’s assertion that an accounting log was proof that she had paid for a limousine ride, not a massage, as indicated by City Council President Rocky Case. She has since provided a digital receipt. But that does not change the theme of this post: that Orr is trying to distract residents from her misuse of city funds.

BY D. REED ECKHARDT

If Cheyenne Mayor Marian Orr thinks her latest foray into political theater will have any impact on her critics, she had better think again. 

And again.

            Because last week’s press conference where she tried to discredit Council President Rocky Case was pure bull manure. It was designed to do just one thing: toss a “shiny object” into the air with hopes that residents will focus on that rather than on her mishandling of public funds. (You can view the mayor’s press conference at https://cutt.ly/vexlq4b)

Does Cheyenne’s

Mayor Orr speaks to the press last week.

mayor really think the people of this city are stupid? That they can be distracted from her own ethical failings by some ginned up tale of a personal vendetta? Apparently so. And this is a reminder – again – of the arrogance that continues to plague her administration.

            For those who missed the mayor’s most recent bit of drama, last Friday Orr tried to first assert that Case – and a local radio station – were dead wrong when they implied a receipt proved she had abused the public trust by using tax dollars to get a massage at the airport in Detroit, Mich. She now has been proven right about that. She now has produced a $64 digital receipt from a limousine company that she said she used, though her initial documentation – an accounting log – was weak at best. 

            But Orr then went on to paint Case as a “momma’s boy,” someone who is out to “get her.” But not because she has been abusing city funds – which she clearly has been doing, at least when it comes to her misuse of the $100,000 Bloomberg grant. Rather, she asserted Case bears a grudge for her getting his mother, former City Council member Judy Case, fired from her position as a staff member at the Legislature.

            Really? 

            This is the strategy employed all too often now by politicians at the national level. Rather than deal with the matter at hand, they throw up some kind of distraction. In that way, the voters’ eyes are turned from the politician’s ethical misdealings and toward something fresh and exciting. The hope is that the ethical matters will quickly fade into the background.

            For Orr, the “shiny object” is her phony story of Rocky Case’s vendetta against her. Her assertion is that the council president is not motivated by a desire to uncover corruption in the mayor’s office but rather by payback for the way his mother has been treated. It is designed to minimize the mayor’s own misbehavior. 

For the record, Orr’s story is filled with errors. Judy Case, the council president’s mother, was not let go at the Legislature “20 years ago” as the mayor claimed at her press conference. Judy Case served on the City Council until 2010, and was still, if memory serves me, working at the Legislature well after that. She also never was censured by the City Council as Orr said, though Judy Case was reprimanded for her behavior at a committee meeting. (Sitting council member Pete Laybourn was officially censured by the council around the same time).

True, Judy Case was let go at the Legislature, and Orr reportedly had a role in that. But the mayor’s story is full of holes. She needs to do her homework before trying to distract the people of this city.

But assume for a moment that this is a personal vendetta by Rocky Case (an assumption not accepted here, by the way). What does it matter what the president’s motivation is? How does that nullify the fact that Orr misspent grants funds (she still has not apologized for that nor for the stain that has left on the city’s reputation)? It doesn’t. 

Orr has “proven” nothing, and that has not undermined Case’s argument that she is misusing city funds for her own personal ends. Indeed, his catching her arms deep in the Bloomberg cookie jar (remember, the city is being required to repay $56,571, at least partly because of Orr’s use of it for such things as airline tickets and bar tabs) tends to support Case, and not Orr, in this dispute. (Check out a post on this concern at https://cutt.ly/iexliXQ)

And if the mayor were to use taxpayer funds to get her nails done or get a massage in Detroit, it wouldn’t surprise anyone. Orr’s ethical failings, such as accepting a gift from a potential city supplier, are a matter of public record that can’t be disappeared by this new “shiny object.” 

Orr is simply hoping the people of Cheyenne will take their eyes off the facts and focus on the process, implying that if the process of revealing the facts is flawed, the facts have to be flawed as well.

But nothing could be further from the truth. The facts continue to mount that Orr is playing fast and loose with city funds. Rocky Case says there is more to come – he has binders of receipts on his council desk that he is going through – which certainly is why the mayor is using the shiny object of Judy Case to distract the voters and taxpayers from whatever might be coming next.

As a piece of theatrical politics, Orr’s press conference was a flop. Rather than diverting attention from her unethical behavior, it has drawn the focus to her ever tighter. Now she knows the people of Cheyenne are watching, which is bound to put a crimp in her lifestyle. Poor baby. She may have to use her own $95,000 salary rather than other taxpayer dollars to pay her bar tabs.

D. Reed Eckhardt is the former executive editor of the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.