JUNKET FOR SPIN BUNNY – Why did taxpayers get stuck with the bill for Sheriff’s Spin Bunny for a pricy week with pals in a Boston VRBO when she is an experienced professional and didn’t need to learn social media skills?

NEWS AND COMMENTARY

BADGE BUNNY GOES TO BOSTON

BY KEN ROSSIGNOL
THE CHESAPEAKE TODAY

Highly accomplished and results-driven professional with a strong background in strategic communications, public relations, and community engagement.

The above is how Alisa Casas describes herself on her LinkedIn profile, which is one of several social media platforms she uses professionally and personally.  Her experience on the profile reveals for the reader that she is currently employed as the public information officer for the St. Mary’s County Sheriff’s Department, served in that capacity for St. Mary’s County State’s Attorney Jaymie Sterling for about eight months after a two-month stint at the Town of Leonardtown and about four years as the communications manager for the St. Mary’s County Board of Commissioners. Previously, she was the manager of the cable TV franchise holder in St. Mary’s County and performed as an advertising account executive.  Casas first came to St. Mary’s County in 1997 with radio station executive Ron Walton when his company bought the WPTX/WMDM radio stations and the Channel 10 TV station.

With that background, it is clear that Casas is accomplished in communications. Instead of going off to Boston on a junket with a group of friends and weaseling a way to make the county government pay for her soiree in Boston, she could be on a panel teaching social media skills. Casas proclaimed in one post on LinkedIn that she was a “social media ambassador” for the St. Mary’s Sheriff.

Why does it matter if Casas spotted an event where she could hornswoggle the taxpayers into paying for her junket? After all, bureaucrats and politicians have made swindling the taxpayers for unnecessary travel to big city resorts and beach conferences an art form. The St. Mary’s County Commissioners have made traveling to Ocean City for the Maryland Association of Counties conference in August each year a perk of being a commissioner, as they are wined, dined, and lobbied by vendors who ply them with liquor in hopes of landing county government business. The commissioners and select county government honchos go again in December at the Hyatt Resort on the Choptank River and do it all over again.  The taxpayers pay the bills for the hotels, travel, and food.

The taxpayers paid for Casas’s road trip to Boston, and the junket was approved by the assistant sheriff, a Good Old Boys ladder climber named Clay Safford.

Two years ago, Safford was a sergeant in the Sheriff’s Department; his rank was attained over twenty years after being hired in 1999 and he has since soared to the rank of major. Safford went from being a desk jockey for a shift of patrol officers to enforcing department policy and making decisions for which he had no training or experience.

The accelerated promotion was the work of Sheriff Steve Hall despite Safford never attending advanced police leadership available at Johns Hopkins or the FBI Police Academy, which rejected his application due to a lack of college education or sixty hours of college credits.  Other St. Mary’s Sheriff’s Department commanders have attended and graduated from both Hopkins and the FBI Academy. Safford lists on his resume on LinkedIn that he graduated from high school before joining the Army.

Sheriff Steve Hall lists on his resume on Linkedin that he graduated from the FBI National Academy in 2012 and includes his BA degree in 1992 from Western Colorado University. Hall failed to note his conviction for the violent assault involving his sentence to the Gunnison County Jail when he applied for his job in 1994 at the St. Mary’s County Sheriff’s Department. However, unlike Safford, he attended and graduated from college. The Sheriff’s website, curiously, lacks any biographical information about the commanders of the agency.

ALisa Casas approval of $2248.56 for junket to Boston IACP training on how to use social media

A Public Information Act request filed by THE CHESAPEAKE TODAY Chief Investigative Editor John E. O’Connor for all of the travel information associated with Casas’s junket to Boston revealed that she asserted that there were no hotel rooms available in Boston, so she was forced to book luxury accommodation at Vrbo.  The Sheriff’s Department refused to cooperate with the county government in providing details of the junket.

A PLACE TO STAY IN BOSTON FOR BADGE BUNNY AND PALS

A search of available rooms for any convention in Boston shows thousands are available, and some are as low as $800 for the complete five-night stay that accommodated Casas and her traveling party at the Vrbo rental unit. However, the downside was that a hotel room would not have the luxury accommodations of a full kitchen and amenities sought by Casas. In addition, only a single queen or king bed would have been in the hotel room. Both examples of hotel rooms in Boston were within walking distance of the Boston Convention Exhibition Center.

The questions for the Sheriff’s Department are: Was it a ruse to have a short-term rental to accommodate more than a single county employee? It was apparently part of a plan to deceive those responsible for approving travel plans and, thus, the taxpayers and allow them to fund a nice trip for Social Media Ambassador Casas.

Many county commissioners and top managers have gone on unnecessary junkets in the past, such as when several county commissioners and their wives attended bond sales in New York City. Even then, one commissioner, Dan Raley, paid the cost of bringing his wife Ann along, paying her Amtrak fare and a portion of his hotel bill. That trip, which included a county finance officer and several commissioners, billed the taxpayers for travel on the Acela, costing several thousands more and getting to New York about 40 minutes faster. The officials also spent $5,000 on limousine service for the three-day visit.

O’Connor learned that while the rooms booked through the IACP recommended list of accommodations may have been depleted, there were still plenty of other hotel accommodations, in addition to the two examples included with this article, all within walking distance and half the price of the Vrbo unit rented for Casas and her traveling party. According to records provided to THE CHESAPEAKE TODAY, the Vrbo bill was paid on August 6, 2024.

Photos of the Vrbo property in the Historic Charlestown section of Boston and descriptions of the condo reveal that it is within walking distance of all major elements of the area visitors embrace, including the convention center. The appointments of the condo show that it is a one-bedroom unit with a widescreen TV, a large couch, and comfortable seating in the large living room, modern bathroom, outside patio, and private yard.

While not a penthouse with extravagant appointments such as a hot tub and wet bar, the price being twice what a hotel room would have cost, makes the decision by Safford to approve this accommodation a poor one if one considers the plight of the woebegone taxpayers.

Casas paid Vrbo $2205.68. The county reimbursed her for that amount despite the per diem rate for travel of $1610.00. Thus, taxpayers paid the extra amount to accommodate Casas’s traveling party.

TRAVEL TO BOSTON

Casas submitted and was paid by St. Mary’s County .21/mile for 976 miles of travel for a total of $204.60, with her personal vehicle despite the availability of county-owned vehicles that could have been used to drive to Boston and back. Using her own vehicle also provided Casas with the room to provide space for her traveling party instead of booking a single fare on one of more than a dozen Amtrak trains that travel daily between Washington and Boston. Train fare is as low as $56 per person each way for the eight-hour trip.

The Amtrak Regional 170 coach costs $74 and takes eight hours and eleven minutes, leaving Washington DC at 5 a.m. and arriving in Boston at 1:11 p.m. Two other Northeast Regional trains offer fares of $56. The Acela offers two trains daily at $85 business class, shaving more than an hour off the trip.

Meal expenses were $506.00 for the dining purchased in Boston.  Many hotels offer a free breakfast for guests. The condo used by Casas had a kitchen, but no meals were included.

The kicker for totaling the costs associated with this junket was that Casas had to be a member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police to attend. Therefore, before Casas could pay the registration fee, she had to submit payment to join, both of which were paid for by the county treasury.

With membership fees of $190 and registration of $500, the cost to attend took another leap.

While the costs associated with the conference are appropriate to question, Casas certainly had many opportunities to enhance her professional skills.

Former ABC7 Washington news reporter Julie Parker presented one of the programs provided for public information officers. Parker ended her journalism career and began serving as the PIO for Prince George County Police and then moved to the Fairfax County Police.  In 2014, Parker opened her own shop as a public relations consultant.  Her presentation, which hopefully Casas attended, was described in the convention program this way:

“Beyond posting about recruitment events, an effective digital recruiting strategy is a blueprint that sees every social media post a department makes having value in recruitment, where telling your agency’s story matters when you’re actively recruiting and when you’re not, and which sees your website as a window into a candidate’s potential employer. When a department is actively recruiting, ensuring social media campaigns are strategic and the application process is digital and simple are keys to turning clicks into candidates. The engaging presentation covers: Through the Eyes of the Candidate: Social Media Tells Your Story; Content that Sets a Department Apart; Digital Recruitment Campaigns; From Branding to Better Engagement; and Less Clicks, More Candidates.”

With the St. Mary’s Sheriff’s Department losing officers who leave in search of better law enforcement agencies not beset with nepotism, favoritism, and Good Old Boy alliances, resulting in over 27 vacant positions, any skills Casas could enhance would be significant. She could implement strategies, but that wouldn’t replace Sheriff Steve Hall’s lack of skills and those of his moribund commanders.

With a salary of $117,000 plus benefits, why did Casas not take leave, attend the IACP conference on her dime, pay for her membership, and deduct the costs as professional education as she eyes her next job in communications?

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