WHY WE CAN"T KEEP ANYTHING STRAIGHT DEPT: The PD headline this morning reads "Cleveland's high-tech center is $3.5 million over budget". The lead paragraph says:

Mayor Jane Campbell's administration badly underestimated the cost of a new high-tech center for city computers and needs an extra $3.5 million for the project.

But when you read the rest of the story, it turns out that a) the "underestimate" of costs on the original project is actually $1.7 million (which is plenty bad enough); b) the rest of the "extra $3.5 million" is not an overrun but a proposal to expand the project by adding facilities for the separately funded Water Department and the Municipal Court, at their cost; and c) the money that the Mayor wants Council to approve is from Homeland Security grant funds and Water and Court funds, with construction bond money as backup -- no General Fund money is at issue.

Now this is all in Mike Tobin's article, which is quite straightforward and even-handed once you get past the lead. And the core story -- estimating screwups and strategy changes in the tech center project -- is certainly legitimate news. A $1.7 million, 50% cost overrun is serious business. I'd love to know more about the hows and whys: Did they get a bad work estimate from the architect? Does the building have structural or environmental problems that somebody missed? Is the contractor market less soft than they expected? Did someone just do the math wrong? Is there some other backstory we haven't heard about?

And while we're asking questions, why did it take the Water Department and Court this long to decide to join up? Has this whole project been pushed too fast because of the International Children's Games?

The article doesn't address any of these questions, so we don't know if there's more to this than meets the eye. But here's what we do know:

A $1.7 million shortage in the project budget is not the same as a $3.5 million shortage. Which makes the PD's headline false, and the lead sentence very misleading.

"Give light, and the people will find their own way." Oh, I'm sorry, that was that other newspaper.