VisitUs

Inflated base salaries and over a quarter million dollars in 2024 bonuses for Shatty’s tourism department, but don't get angry and mos def question the messenger

Last week, the Time’s Paul Oliva reported on the $284,000 in 2024 bonuses doled out to seventeen employees of VisitUs, Shatty Town’s department of tourism. His previous reports have focused on the high base salaries of VisitUs employees, with Oliva finding that four VisitUs employees (about a quarter of staff) get paid more than the Mayor.

Data Sources 1, 2, and 3.

Larger media outlets like the Leader, the Lantern, CivicTown, and WKYT have thus far declined to pick up the story. On Reddit, though, where responses numbered over 100, Shatty Towners were interested. VisitUs debate coalesced around two competing camps.

The first, let’s call it the Populist response, was fairly straight forward and can be summarized by the widely thumbied comments of Reddit’s Mine_Sudden and Glimmhilda:

Mine_Sudden: I believe stealing is the word they’re looking for here.
Glimmhilda: So sick of fat cats using the little guys to line their pockets. This is so egregious in this fiscal climate. Fuck them.

The second camp, the generally less-thumbied Experts, relied upon a longer, more developed chain of interlocking claims. I’ll list these claims here:

1. Most Shatty Towners are not smart enough to have any definitive opinions on the topic of VisitUs.

2. Populist viewpoints on VisitUs (egregious fat cats who are stealing in this fiscal climate) are angry and also wrong.

3. They are wrong because hotel taxes are only taxes on visitors and “bonuses like [VisitUs’s $240k] are given when someone brings in something of much, much higher value.”

4. The source article was negligent for not providing these likely reasons for the high salaries and 25% VisitUs bonuses.

Here are these Expert claims highlighted in yellow, as delineated by lolly_lag and then affirmed in iconic expert fashion by jordanpalmerky

Unlike the Populists, the Experts strike an aggressively agnostic stance about the salaries and bonus. Responses are analytic and critical of others’ views, but not actionable as their own standing ethos.

“I’m not saying it’s right,” lolly_lag writes of the bonuses and VisitUs salaries greater than the Mayor, “I just don’t think it’s fair to say it’s unquestionably wrong.” In other words, I don’t know—so it is unfair for you to feel strongly about it.

The one bit of solid moral high ground that the Experts seemed qualified to speak on with authority was the Times itself. True, the website did report factual information that it had received from Shatty Town officials via a Freedom of Information request. But the site had done so without the appropriate surrounding context from those qualified to speak.

The Times had circulated a local version of what the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) terms malinformation.

From federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), “Mis-, Dis-, and Malinformation: Planning and Incident Response Guide for Election Officials”

Specifically, the “article”—lolly_gag does actually mark Oliva’s work with the dreaded scare quotes—was questionable because it did not ask VisitUs reps…the Reddit questions created on the spot by lolly_lag, a self-identified non-expert on the topic of Shatty’s Tourism bureau. “Excellent point,” jordanpalmerky affirms. “I’ve lived [here] for 20 years and have never heard of the Times.”

It’s quite the thread-jack. Forget VisitUs, these commenters seem to be saying, which you couldn’t possibly understand anyway. The bigger issue here is questionable sourcing and malinformation.

Trunk. New Old Transylvania, Kentucky. By Peach Melba.

Me, I am more of a Shatty centrist. As a populist expert, I don’t believe in the radical fringe concept of malinformation. There is only information, which like oxygen should not be suppressed.

By all means, let’s add more context to the Times’ initial bare-knuckle reporting on the bonuses and base pay of the city’s tourism bureau. One hopes, as my Expert Shattizens seem to want, that the Leader and the Lane Report and WKYT and CivicTown and Shatty U and other certified people and outlets contribute to the very popular and engaged VisitUs debate begun on Reddit. Lots of people are listening, thanks to the work of the un-credentialed Times.

But I am also an expert populist, one who has spent two decades covering Shatty Town tourism, from the Coolavin bike polo courts and Rupp Arena Entertainment Zone on out to the mountain-bike trails at Veterans and the feeder creeks of the Kentucky River. I am quite capable of generating my own coherent description and analysis of the VisitUs pay structure and its relation to value.

I’ll have more later—I am an expert by training; I research and expound—but my own decades of work lead me to lean towards Glimmhilde on this.

Like a budget account ledger, VisitUs pay and bonuses mark our local priorities as seriously Fayette Urban County’d. That pretty centrist take should be front page news all over the place.