Kentucky Perking...

Justice (Random Thoughts of a Weary Traveler) has an interesting post this morning about a $36,300 grant from the Department of Homeland Security to a State of Kentucky Agency concerned with monitoring “Bingo Operations” in that State.
It brought to mind my brief brush with the State of Kentucky over thirty years ago as a meeting planner for an Ohio State University Research Project gathering information on how State Education Policy was made in different states.
My part of the project was to set up 5 one day regional meetings around the USA involving 10 states each for key players within those states to give feed back on certain governance models the project was developing.
As part of my duties I would pre research within each of the fifty states who the key people in each state making such decisions were and then prepare a list of invitees to the conference. My formula for choosing the invitees always started with 2 people from the Governor’s staff, two from the department of education, then various legislators and lobbyists based on local informants. On a certain date the invitations would go out for a meeting five weeks away.
The plan for the meeting was simple. It would be held at a Hotel at a regional airport so that it was possible that the participants could fly in early in the morning and fly out later the same day if need be. The meeting would start around 10:00 AM and end around 3:30 PM. For the convenience of the participants we would arrange with the hotel for a special room rate the night before (always a Wednesday ) and the night after (always a Thursday). There was no charge for the meeting itself although participants were responsible for their own costs including their own lunch for which the conference took a 1 ½ hour break.
When the meeting was actually held approximately five pre registered key people from each state would show up (around fifty altogether) and we would get the input from them we desired.
About ten days before our “Southern State Meeting” I received a phone call from the “Sheraton Atlanta Airport” wanting to know if I cared if our special rate was extended into the weekend for some participants. I replied that the Hotel could do whatever it wanted with its rates as long as it honored the prearranged one we had for the night before and after of the meeting. Then I asked them why?
The hotel representative then informed me they had received a $1,300 check from the Department of Education, State of Kentucky for 10 rooms for 4 nights each ($ 35 per/ Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday). I said "Oh".
The next day in the mail I received pre registration forms in one envelope for 10 Kentucky Department of Education employees ( 9 of whom were not on the invitation list). I pointed this out to my boss who simply said “The more the merrier..”
Fortunately for us on the day of the meeting the “ten” signed in then all but the one we had invited promptly disappeared. I hope they all had a nice Atlanta weekend on their “taxpayers’ nickel”.
Maybe they suddenly decided it was time for a retreat..