Bite of the Apple

A tidy rip-off here, a tasteful price-gouge there -it was all to be expected once the Democrats had picked New York City as the site of their convention. But not even the worldly-wise among the press had anticipated the size of the serpents that lurk around the Big Apple and its Garden; Madison Square, that is.

They are truly big, or so an outraged group of reporters and editors, armed with bills and price lists, told Democratic National Committee Chairman Robert Strauss at a meeting in Washington, where they vigorously protested the looting of the Fourth Estate.

The news representatives claimed -and Democratic officials admit -that New York City convention costs have soared far beyond those in Miami four years ago, even allowing for inflation. The prices are equally exorbitant when compared with the current costs of setting up shop for the Republican Convention in Kansas City that begins Aug. 16. Some New York examples:

>> Office equipment rental charges for the July 12th week reaching $37.50 each for stack chairs, $55 for a typewriter stand, $140 for a filing cabinet and $10 for a wastebasket. TV sets are $50 per day. One firm is accused of having raised its prices from 50% to 400%, depending on the item, in the past four months.

>> Costs of $15 a linear foot plus a $150 security deposit for installing rods and divider curtains for working spaces at Madison Square Garden. (A figure since lowered to $4.50.) The same items in Kansas City: $3 per foot and no security charge.

>> A union-dictated charge of $100,000 to erect the press platform, and another $100,000 to tear it down.

>> "Convention service charges" on all equipment being installed by the New York Telephone Company. Thus, a six-button phone that normally costs $29 is $127; a switchboard that is ordinarily $542 is $1,161; a unit that cost one major user less than $4,000 in Miami, and will be $5,000 in Kansas City, is $7,000 in New York City.

>> Typewriters that rented from one firm for $18.50 in February were up to $30 by May, and are $40 now.

Such reports did not surprise Strauss (the DNC has been hit with a $300,000 bill for removing, storing and replacing chairs in the Garden, three times higher than the original estimate), but they the press angered him -"I don't like it one damn bit." He told New York Mayor Abe Beame and Governor Hugh Carey something had to be done, complained to labor union officials, contractors and supply firms and came to New York City for a meeting with all concerned at the Statler Hilton (where double-room rates will be the standard $42-$54).

A Pencil. The result was a DNC "media update" to the 175 press organizations that have assigned some 10,000 journalists, technicians and aides to the convention. It offered names of equipment suppliers in New York City so that long-distance comparison shopping would be possible, and warned that deliveries to the Statler Hilton and the Garden should be firmly scheduled. The reason: labor charges for moving equipment in and out of the two buildings could substantially exceed the rental price of the equipment itself. The company handling Garden deliveries has been unable to offer any cost estimates.

"No one has taken advantage of the Democratic Party," concluded Strauss optimistically, "but we have a lot of confusion. Media people just don't know how to go about getting furniture. They're writers, not decorators." Despite Strauss's efforts, when the final bills come in from New York City, many a newspaper will long for those legendary days when all a good reporter needed was a pencil and an ear to hang it on.

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