bizarreville

Within moments of Arizona passing its tough-minded new law to deal with the flood of illegal immigrants, the mayor of San Francisco took to the microphone.  He informed the public, and in particular the City employees, that effective immediately there would be no more boondoggles of City employees to any part of Arizona.  This included no sidetrips to the Hoover dam on any City summits or symposiums to Vegas, or any special City Issues Conferences and Golf Outings in Scottsdale.  “If those cowboys down there want to start 3rd degreeing every ordinary citizen they come across…well, we will have no part in it,” the mayor said.

Reporters questioned the mayor whether the true reason for his pronouncement was because perhaps he had illegal Mexicans on his staff.  The mayor became outraged, “What…are you guys now going to enjoin this whole McCarthyism program and start badgering the good staff of citizens who make our city work so well?  Did I just fall asleep and wake up in Nazi Germany or something?”

After San Francisco broke the ice, a number of other cities jumped on the bandwagon, instructing their staffs to rebook their boondoggles to non-Arizona destinations.  One large city mayor immediately switched to one of the Dakotas.  When staffers complained that there was nothing to do in the Dakotas, the mayor said, “What about Mount Rushmore??  I’ve been there 7 times and plan to go again next summer.  You can’t get enough of that place, in my opinion.”  A reporter asked what about the flood of illegal Canadians that keep crossing the border and pouring into the Dakotas, literally unwatched and unregulated.  He replied, “Now that you mention it, there are a lot of people up there who put ‘Eh?’ on the end of their sentences.”

Other mayors and even some state governors are scrambling to reschedule their boondoggles in order to avoid the spotlight.  Many saw what happened when the group of City officials from Mixfart, Idaho, who were on a “business development” mission to Phoenix started getting questioned and scrutinized by protesters and reporters while they dined at a 5-star restaurant.  “Often Joe Public does not fully understand the value that these fact-finding trips uncover,” a senior Mixfart official said.  “They just see a bunch of city people lounging around, drinking cabernet around the pool at a luxo-resort, eating surf and turf, and getting in a few rounds of golf or tennis on the taxpayer tab.  They totally miss those mid-morning meetings where we talk details about city business…serious details, for sometimes over an hour.”

Many cities are under time pressure to get these trips in.  Some have been funded with Federal Stimulus program money, and could be under pressure after November.  But most are confident they can find alternate places to go.  One official said, “We’ll go to Europe if we have to.”

Disclaimer:  all stories in Bizarreville are fiction, even the ones that seem pretty darn real.