One thing: This money really could have been better spent

Do you remember Gov. Rell’s “One Thing” campaign that asked every Connecticut resident to do one thing every day to conserve energy? I don’t either.I only bring it up because it’s one of many costly projects developed for state agencies by outside public relations and advertising firms that the agencies could have done on their own. Or better yet, not done at all. Once Gov. Malloy and his people settle the $3 billion deficit matter, they might want to look into this contribution to that deficit.“One Thing” had Rell saying that if all 3.5 million Connecticut people did one thing to save energy, “that would be 3.5 million One Things,” according to the surviving “One Thing” website. The campaign was typical of the feel-good projects that kept Rell’s approval unnaturally high. It seemed as if the governor was always on the radio or TV to tell us what was good for us, like using seat belts or getting flu shots. This sort of thing started with John and Patty Rowland appearing on TV ads paid for by the state to encourage Connecticut viewers to vacation in faraway Connecticut. Imagine Ribicoff, Weicker or Grasso doing something like that.“One Thing” was pointed out by Gregory Hladky of The Hartford Advocate when he reported that Connecticut state agencies paid more than $20 million to private advertising and PR companies in the past three years. Its price tag was over $1 million.The story didn’t attract the attention it deserved, possibly because it broke as we were distracted by the current governor’s efforts to deal with that multi-billion dollar deficit. But even though the cost of these consultants was just in the millions, “a million here and a million there and pretty soon you’re talking about real money,” as the late Sen. Everett Dirksen famously noted in urging frugality on a spendthrift government. Roy Occhiogrosso, one of Malloy’s top advisers, acknowledged that hiring these private outfits seems wasteful but added state PR people aren’t always equipped to create TV campaigns to tell people what to do in a flu epidemic or stage a campaign to increase breast cancer awareness. You could argue that a flu campaign requires nothing more than the governor looking into the camera and urging people to wash their hands and get a flu shot. If the Health Department’s communications director can’t do that, there is a problem. Nor is there anything wrong with the state increasing breast cancer awareness, of course, but it’s already being done and done well by numerous other groups competing for support for their causes. But Hladky’s report did leave me wanting to know more about that campaign to get everybody to do “One Thing.” Raymond L. Wilson, a state energy official, told the newspaper the state monitored website hits and press coverage, but if there was press coverage, it’s disappeared. He also said there was no way to know how much energy the project might have saved. It abruptly ended, according to Wilson, when the governor ordered state officials to shut the whole thing down not long after what was billed as a “spectacular” One Thing Expo was held at the Hartford Civic Center.I wondered why and found a clue on an environmentalist website that made the Expo, costing $474,000, sound somewhat cheesy. Customers had to pay $8 to visit what seemed like a very nice Connecticut Science Center exhibit, along with a few others described by the environmentalists as “the only reasons worth going.” But much of the Expo was devoted to rented exhibit space with booths hawking vinyl siding, Wal-Mart and Home Depot products, including “bags made in China, Carnival Cruise giveaways, unsustainable household products and overpriced junk food.” The governor probably realized that even in Hartford, this does not sound like much fun for $8 and called the whole (one) thing off. Simsbury resident Dick Ahles is a retired journalist. Email him at dahles@hotmail.com.