News & Record: Duped or shillin'?

GREENSBORO, NC -- In her article of August 18th, "Here's what you need to know about GPAC," News & Record reporter Amanda Lehmert told her readers:

"Cost to buy the land: Up to $7.6 million."

"Up to...", she wrote.

From Richard Barron on the News & Record website yesterday:

"The city would borrow $3.9 million to buy the parcels — at 300 and 332 N. Elm St. — that would push the original $7.6 million land acquisition budget to $11.5 million."

The "original" $7.6 million was never real. It was a canard,  a charade, and reporting it as such illustrates the problem with regurgitating the pronouncements of authorities as facts, as the News & Record—Lehmert especially—routinely do in covering city government.

City Council and City staff knew land acquisition was going to cost significantly more than $7.6 million well before Lehmert reported $7.6 million as a limit.

Here is what Mayor Robbie Perkins said in a closed session meeting on August 5th, in which all City Council members, the City Manager, the City Attorney and Walker Sanders, president of the Community Foundation, discussed having the City spend $7.6 million to purchase seven of the nine needed parcels:

Perkins: "The other thing we need to... the other thing that we need to make real sure of is that we've got one piece of.. [cross talk] Walker, Walker you mind? We need to make real sure... Mr Attorney, we need to make real sure that everybody in this room doesn't talk about anything that we just happened [uninteligible] because we've got one person that's already jacked his price up a couple, three hundred thousand dollars, it's not under contract, and if it comes out that all of this is glued together except for him, you don't know where he's gonna go. And, and, and, I mean, if we start reading about this in the newspaper, this whole project would come unglued. So, y'all don't say anything." 

Yvonne Johnson: "I won't".

So there is the real news hook: somehow, either having been deceived by or cooperating with a deception, Lehmert reported the $7.6 million as a maximum—in a front page story of the most-widely circulated Sunday edition of Greensboro's paper. City staff and City Council knew thirteen days prior to the publication of Lehmert's article that land purchases would exceed $7.6 million, possibly significantly. They knew the $7.6 million they were seeking to spend was only for seven of nine needed parcels and that the mayor was worried about the possibility of the holdout landowner jacking up his price even further. Yet, Lehmert reported $7.6 million as a maximum.

$7.6 million was never the total for land purchases, it was only ever for a portion of the land, so how and why did it get reported as such? Dupe or shill?