Saint Paul 2008

Good news for Minnesota taxpayers - we won’t be footing the bills for the ridiculously large police presence necessitated by the 2008 Republican National Convention.

Well, won’t be footing the majority of the bills, anyway; I expect the city’s planning and preparations can blow thru the agreed-upon $300,000 pretty quickly. It’ll be interesting to see whose budgets get cut in the next year or two to subsidize this exercise in disaster management.

Also, local establishments are not going to be reimbursed for their own expenses, as far as I can tell; preparations and security planning are evidently going to be up to the businesses. That’s probably how it should be, truth be told, but it probably hurts a lot of the small businesses that won’t see a dime of extra profit from the convention to have to plan and prepare for their premises’ survival in urban warfare…