Mission Accomplished - Three Year Benchmarks Not Met

9:40 am, 9/1/07

Mission Accomplished - Three Year Benchmarks Not Met

Reader 'Tony Stark' defends the work of Team Services, LLC, the company that was hired to find sponsorship schemes to generate revenue in the State of Illinois. This scheme basically proposed to raise capital by turning state government into NASCAR, with products like "a state beverage" and "a state credit card". (That the company's founder gave Blago's campaign $4,000 and was tied to his chief-of-staff is surely sheer coincidence.)

By the way, according to a recent press release, Team Services just passed the $1,000,000 mark in sponsorship for the State of Illinois. Thought you guys might be interested in an update on that issue. I guess maybe they were worth their salt after all, huh?

The post this comment was placed on was written almost exactly three years ago, and the press release actually came out two years ago. Here's an excerpt from the original story:

Administration officials said the sponsorships could produce millions of dollars for the state. State agencies were asked for sponsorship ideas. A marketing firm was hired and paid more than $107,000 to work on the project.

A year later, the marketing firm has produced only one sponsorship deal, worth about $60,000....Officials with Team Services LLC of Maryland, the company hired to secure sponsorship deals, did not return phone calls. Seth Webb, the Blagojevich aide overseeing the sponsorship program, was not available for interviews, Ottenhoff said.

[T]he administration contends the state is on the verge of making a significant sponsorship deal for a state beverage and that other deals, possibly including a state credit card, are in the works.

"Deals of this magnitude don't happen overnight," said Blagojevich spokeswoman Abby Ottenhoff. "There is time and careful consideration of what is involved."

There was a $15,000-a-month retainer fee.

So, if by "on the verge" the Blagojevich administration meant "years", and if by "this magnitude" they meant "a pathetically tiny fraction of the predicted revenues", then yes, you could say the program was "worth it's salt". Kindly disregard the original projections, which promised $40 million in the first year (when the original post was written), and $300 million after three (which passed a year ago).

What Team Services actually delivered, deals like a bank sponsoring 'ethnically diverse Christmas trees', are radically and hilariously different from what the Blagojevich administration originally promoted in defending the idea. In a state where prisons and universities are falling apart and health service providers aren't getting paid (in one case, mailing a pharmacist a check for $6 and change against the $2,000,000 they owed him), this was an idiotic project.

In fact, the "idea", such as it was, ultimately slipped quietly beneath the waves for exactly that reason. Since announcing the Christmas Tree deal (critical to making the state's books balance, I'm sure) in December 2005, Team Services, LLC has posted no new press releases to their site containing the word "Illinois".

You go, Gov!