What price PR?

Keith Plocek over at HouStoned called our attention to a post he wrote today about Write On Metro, the transit agency's fledgling blog. Write On is a pleasant enough read, sure — we learned, for example, that people in Cypress are nearly wetting themselves over being able to ride the bus into the city and read the heartwarming story of Bobby Moon, Metro's audit manager, who rides Metro to lunch every day (and, as you might expect, pinches pennies doing so).

But HouStoned unearthed something deeply disturbing about the Metro blog: Mary Sit, the woman who writes it, makes an ungodly amount of money for churning out a feel-good post a day — most days, that is. Here's what HouStoned had to say:

We here at HouStoned are a nosy bunch, so we sent a message to METRO a couple of weeks ago to find out just how much its “communications Web log specialist” was pulling in. We’re old friends, so we were a little surprised when the transit authority made us file the request under the Texas Public Information Act.

Ten days later — wait for it, wait for it — we got the goods.

METRO’s blogger makes $76,622 a year. Yep, that’s right: Seventy-six thousand, six hundred and twenty two dollars a year. One more time, for the English-impaired: Setenta seis mil, seiscientos veinte dos dólares.

In case you're wondering how that use of your transit dollars breaks down, let's suppose blogHouston's estimate is right and Sit writes 236 posts a year. That means she's making about $325 per post. Good lord, we're jealous.

(Check out PDFs of Metro's FOI response here.)