Throughout the month of December, readers voted to choose the A2Politico.com Whopper of the Year Award winner. Last year, A2Politico.com gave the 2010 Whopper of the Year to former City Administrator Roger Fraser. For 24 months, Fraser fibbed to Ann Arbor residents through the media and at public City Council meetings, that “property tax revenues are down.” This non-existent decrease in overall revenue was used by Fraser to get Council to pass budgets that included service cuts (police, fire fighters, leaf collection, park maintenance, even powering down streetlights), as well as large increases in fees (facility use fees, water, sewer, and solid waste fees).

This year, readers selected the most egregious fib from among a variety of Whoppers. Links to the A2Politico stories about the statements appear below:

WEEKLY WHOPPER: Mayor Claims City “Not in Hiring Mode Since ’06.” Records Reveal Almost 1,000 FT & PT Hires Since ’06

WEEKLY WHOPPER: In Ann Arbor Just 21 of The City’s 300 Miles Of Roads Are in Poor Condition (It’s Obviously Local Drivers Who Are Cracked)

WEEKLY WHOPPER: “35 Staff Journalists. 407 Years of Experience.”

WEEKLY WHOPPER: “Ann Arbor’s Long Term Debt Has Increased from in $119M in 1999 to $246M in 2010.”

WEEKLY WHOPPER: A2 Streets Are Being Cleared of Snow So Slowly Because, “This Was One of the Wettest Snows in Two Years.”

WEEKLY WHOPPER: “The City will fix the Stadium bridges next spring.”

You can see from the poll, below, which of the statements was selected by A2P readers as the 2011 Whopper of the Year Award.

Ironically, the first and second place Whoppers this year come from the same place: AnnArbor.com, one of the city’s local news sites. The runner up was a marketing campaign launched by the news site a few months after it severely cut back on newsroom staff. In the ad’s tagline, AnnArbor.com claimed to have “35 staff journalists” when, in fact, the masthead listed significantly fewer. It was a close race, but the winner is a story written by the news blog’s government reporter, Ryan Stanton, who reported that in Ann Arbor just 21 miles of the city’s hundreds of miles of roads were in poor condition. The story came out a few months before voters were asked to once again approve an expiring road repair millage.

On June 14, 2011, Ryan Stanton, included two handy graphs (below) from, one has to assume, city officials, to accompany his piece. The graphs, which carry the logo of the city, but no other attribution, represented information about the condition of the city’s roads, and the miles of roads that are repaired each year. According to information from city officials, just 21 miles of roads in Ann Arbor are in poor condition. According to the two graphs, Ann Arbor city staffers are doing a fantastic job improving the city’s roads, even while repaving fewer than seven miles of roads each year over the past seven years.

According to the information Stanton presented in his article, city staffers have done a spectacular job of significantly reducing the number of miles of Ann Arbor roads rated in “poor” condition over the past half a dozen years.

The claims aren’t true, and had Stanton checked the archives of AnnArbor.com for previous reporting done by the news site he might have questioned the numbers given to him by city staffers. In a November 9, 2009 piece by Amalie Nash (who left AnnArbor.com to work at the Detroit Free Press) she writes:

“Washtenaw County was fourth in the state for miles of poor roads at 977 miles with a poor rating. Among Michigan counties, it was 14th in overall percentage of poor roads at 43% of its total 5,773 miles of federal aid roads. Ann Arbor ranked third out of nearly 1,800 municipalities in the state with 189 miles in poor condition. Overall, 55% of Ann Arbor’s 342 miles of federal-aid qualified roads were deemed poor, the report shows.”

In November 2009, then, AnnArbor.com reported that 189 miles of roads in Ann Arbor were found to be in poor condition. According to the graph that accompanied Stanton’s June 14, 2011 piece, between 2009 and 2010, Ann Arbor resurfaced 11.5 miles of streets, including both major and local streets. That would, of course, mean that there remain at least 178 miles of roads in poor condition, perhaps more if roads that were in only fair condition deteriorated further. Yet, Ryan Stanton and AnnArbor.com included information from city officials that purports only 21 miles of roads in Ann Arbor are in poor condition. Both graphs  from Stanton’s piece appear below.

It is clear that the information in the graph concerning the miles of roads in poor condition, information supplied to Stanton by city officials, is a fairytake, huckster propoaganda. Stanton simply repeated the clearly inaccurate information.

The 2011 A2Politico Whopper of the Year Award goes to Ryan Stanton and AnnArbor.com.

It’s time for readers to help choose the A2Politico.com Whopper of the Year Award winner. A2Politico.com gave the 2010 Whopper of the Year to former City Administrator Roger Fraser. For 24 months, Fraser fibbed to Ann Arbor residents through the media and at public City Council meetings, that “property tax revenues are down.” This non-existent decrease in overall revenue was used by Fraser to get Council to pass budgets that included service cuts (police, fire fighters, leaf collection, park maintenance, even powering down streetlights), as well as large increases in fees (facility use fees, water, sewer, and solid waste fees).

Here are several examples of Fraser’s “property tax revenues are down” statements:

“The financial state of the city was characterized by Fraser as influenced by three key factors: The city’s property tax revenues are declining due to lower assessed values, Pfizer’s departure, and less new construction.”—Roger Fraser quoted in AnnArborChronicle.com, January 2009

“At Monday night’s city council working session, city administrator Roger Fraser introduced a recommended budget for fiscal year 2010 (beginning July 2009)  of about $85 million, down from the almost $91 million budget in FY 2009. Declining revenues from property taxes, together with increasing contributions to the pension fund means that for FY 2010, the equivalent of 34 full-time positions at the city  would be eliminated, followed by 22 full-time positions in FY 2011. If implemented, the cuts would reduce the city workforce from 800 to 746 by 2011 – a number that has declined from a peak of 1,005 city workers in 2001.”—Roger Fraser quoted in AnnArborChronicle.com, April 2009

“Roger Fraser said the city’s financial struggles are the result of several factors, including continued declines in state revenue sharing and declining property tax revenues.”—Roger Fraser, AnnArbor.com, December 2009

“Even if the economy picks up, typically it’s a two- to three-year lag before we start to see increased revenues from our property taxes.”—Roger Fraser,AnnArbor.com, February 2010.

“With property tax revenue sinking 4.2 percent and state-revenue sharing continuing its decline, City Administrator Roger Fraser told Ann Arbor City Council members Monday night the city’s short-term future doesn’t look bright.” —Roger Fraser, AnnArbor.com, April 2010.

This year, A2Politico readers will decide which Whopper will receive the Whopper of the Year Award. Here are the top contenders. The Whoppers are linked for easy reading. Voting will end December 31, 2011. The Whopper of the Year will be announced Wednesday January 6, 2011.

Once you’re ready, you can vote in the poll, below the list of Whoppers:

WEEKLY WHOPPER: Mayor Claims City “Not in Hiring Mode Since ’06.” Records Reveal Almost 1,000 FT & PT Hires Since ’06

WEEKLY WHOPPER: In Ann Arbor Just 21 of The City’s 300 Miles Of Roads Are in Poor Condition (It’s Obviously Local Drivers Who Are Cracked)

WEEKLY WHOPPER: “35 Staff Journalists. 407 Years of Experience.”

WEEKLY WHOPPER: “Ann Arbor’s Long Term Debt Has Increased from in $119M in 1999 to $246M in 2010.”

WEEKLY WHOPPER: A2 Streets Are Being Cleared of Snow So Slowly Because, “This Was One of the Wettest Snows in Two Years.”

WEEKLY WHOPPER: “The City will fix the Stadium bridges next spring.”

As I wrote in another entry, I am a big fan of the online news site Voiceof SanDiego.org, a non-profit news site whose writers have won numerous industry-wide accolades and awards, and aggressively pursue investigative stories in a wide variety of areas, including politics, education and the environment. One of the regular beats at VoiceofSanDiego.org is the “Fact Check” beat. In December 2010, the site compiled the Top Whoppers of 2010. VOSD.org writer Keegan Kyle explains how the system works:

The contenders are 15 statements that we’ve previously determined false, including four that we rated Huckster Propaganda. We’re not awarding a trophy or prize money, but the title conveys a fitting level of notoriety.

Today, we’re posting a list of the top false claims and inviting your feedback. Which factual blunder do you think stands out above the rest? Send an email to keegan.kyle@voiceofsandiego.org and explain your reasoning.

After the New Year, we’ll post a narrowed list of finalists and invite your feedback once again. Then, on Friday, Jan. 7, we’ll announce our choice for Whopper of the Year and explain the consensus among readers.

So, without further adieu, here’s the list of false claims and links to our analyses. The Huckster Propaganda statements are listed separately at the bottom.

For the past 24 months, Roger Fraser (pictured left) has told City Council and the public that “property tax revenues are down.” This non-existent decrease in overall revenue has been used by Fraser to get Council to pass budgets that included service cuts (police, fire fighters, leaf collection, park maintenance, even powering down streetlights), as well as large increases in fees (facility use fees, water, sewer, and solid waste fees). The fib has been used to justify the need for a city income tax.

Here are several examples of Fraser’s “property tax revenues are down” statements:

“The financial state of the city was characterized by Fraser as influenced by three key factors: The city’s property tax revenues are declining due to lower assessed values, Pfizer’s departure, and less new construction.”—Roger Fraser quoted in AnnArborChronicle.com, January 2009

“At Monday night’s city council working session, city administrator Roger Fraser introduced a recommended budget for fiscal year 2010 (beginning July 2009)  of about $85 million, down from the almost $91 million budget in FY 2009. Declining revenues from property taxes, together with increasing contributions to the pension fund means that for FY 2010, the equivalent of 34 full-time positions at the city  would be eliminated, followed by 22 full-time positions in FY 2011. If implemented, the cuts would reduce the city workforce from 800 to 746 by 2011 – a number that has declined from a peak of 1,005 city workers in 2001.”—Roger Fraser quoted in AnnArborChronicle.com, April 2009

“Roger Fraser said the city’s financial struggles are the result of several factors, including continued declines in state revenue sharing and declining property tax revenues.”—Roger Fraser, AnnArbor.com, December 2009

“Even if the economy picks up, typically it’s a two- to three-year lag before we start to see increased revenues from our property taxes.”—Roger Fraser, AnnArbor.com, February 2010.

“With property tax revenue sinking 4.2 percent and state-revenue sharing continuing its decline, City Administrator Roger Fraser told Ann Arbor City Council members Monday night the city’s short-term future doesn’t look bright.” —Roger Fraser, AnnArbor.com, April 2010.

It’s a crying shame that AnnArbor.com never checked Mr. Fraser’s facts between December 2009 and January 2011. It took the news blog 23 months to finally ask city officials for the information, and produce the graph, below. The accompanying article, comparing property tax revenues to city income tax revenues, makes no reference to the fact that, for almost two years, Ann Arbor’s City Administrator Roger Fraser has repeatedly told both City Council and the public that property tax revenues have fallen. Between 2001 and 2010 property tax revenues in Ann Arbor never declined. Rather, revenues from property taxes have increased from $55.6 million dollars in 2001 to $81.9 million dollars in 2010.

So, the 2010 A2Politico Whopper of the Year Award goes to Ann Arbor City Administrator Roger Fraser. We would be remiss in neglecting to point out the absolutely crucial supporting role AnnArbor.com played in Mr. Fraser’s award-winning performance.

Look for a new A2Politico feature called, Weekly Whoppers and, of course, in January 2012 A2Politico will hand out its second Whopper of the Year Award. We’ll ask readers to vote on that one from among the 15 top whoppers collected over the course of 2011.