The Howard Lee story
isn’t surprising. Public officials are seldom content to use low-end
vehicles at taxpayers’ expense. They always seem to gravitate toward
luxury. I’ve seen this in four states and have covered similar stories
myself. One of my favorites was when I was editing a weekly paper in
Virginia. Our county manager didn’t like driving a car (a low-end but
very serviceable Ford) with a county government license plate, so he
got the county to lease him a vehicle that had a private plate (in
Virigina at that time only undercover cops and industry recruiters
could use a “blind” private plate on a government vehicle). Of course,
instead of a low-end Ford he opted for a Lincoln with a car phone, and
this was in 1985 when car phones were exotic ? and expensive. That
Lincoln cost more than three times what the comparable Ford would have
cost taxpayers to lease. There must be some kind of upgrade gene in
bureaucrats.