“During a council meeting on a recent Monday evening,” reports Fox 8, “the I-Team noticed Councilman Anthony Brancatelli had a computer on his desk keeping track of detailed play-by-play action happening in an Indians playoff game.”
My stars.
But it gets worse. Brancatelli repeatedly refreshed the screen. And when approached after the meeting, the councilman, who represents Cleveland’s Slavic Village neighborhood, defended his behavior by saying he was “multi-tasking.”
Nice try, Brancitelli! The I-Team sleuths next turned to newly minted Councilman Kerry McCormack, whom they spied texting during the very same meeting. McCormack tried to shrug it off as a “constituent issue” — rookie mistake, McCormack — and then tried to get the I-Team off his tail by having his staff say the “issue” had been resolved. Pssshaww!
Speaking of issues: this one probably deserves a pass, huh?
Council merits much harder and deeper investigation by local media, certainly, and it’s true that the non-stop texting and phone calls and web browsing during meetings (and more egregiously, during committee meetings) can seem indecorous. (Joe Cimperman was a repeat offender.) But a councilperson’s job involves intense demands on time and attention, and faulting Brancatelli, for discreetly tracking a Tribe playoff game, with zero corresponding information (or interrogation) about whether the lack of attention mattered, seems like a misallocation of investigative resources.
What was the council meeting even about, for instance?
This article appears in Nov 9-15, 2016.
The local TV station’s have “investigative” team clown cars that don’t aimlessly cruise the streets for low hanging fruit…..they burn rubber for fruit that has fallen into the gutter.
Surprise, surprise, surprise. This is what Cleveland aka Mayberry deserves when you have a collection of individuals that have no idea of what it means to work for a living. This collection of clowns have always approved every budget placed before by the Mayor. Their respective wards are a mess. No leaf pick up, sewer lines are not cleaned, trash pick up is haphazard, pot holes are not filled, etc. Now we find that these over paid part-time clowns text and play games during meetings. Take a good look not only at these silly council people, take a look at the Chiefs and the multiple special assistants within the office of the Mayor. Surprise, surprise, surprise.
I guess being a grade school brown nose/snitch is what passes for investigative journalism at Fox 8 these days. Did he check to see if anybody was chewing gum?