I enjoyed John Cruse's letter about the City of Des Moines laying more of the tax burden on its citizens and chuckled at his praise of Councilmember Kaplan.

It was as ironic as Kaplan asking on his website, "Isn't it convenient when candidates and other elected officials talk about their stance in an election year, when for YEARS they have done just the opposite?"

He advised voters not to be fooled by election year rhetoric.

Let's just take his advice and see how Kaplan's actions on the Council match his election claims. In his primary campaign mailer, he bragged that he is "leading the way in pushing the City of Des Moines toward sustainable budgets and services."

If we don't bother to check his record, this sounds great.

However, in his past four years on Council, Kaplan has consistently bloated the city budgets with expenditures we cannot afford. These included funds for two fellow lobbyists and a communications consultant.

These three items cost taxpayers over $165,000. Using his considerable sales skills learned as a lobbyist in Olympia, he sold his proposals to Councilmembers Scott and Pina, and once he was confident the budget would pass with their votes, he voted against it.

To compensate for the bloat he injected into the budget, other city services were reduced or eliminated ($165,000 would have funded our pool for a year!)

Because of his professional political skills, Kaplan got his pet projects funded, which made our 2009 budget "unsustainable."

Then, after voting against the budget he knew would pass, he now claims that he has lead the way toward "sustainable budgets and services."

This claim is ridiculous because he was, in fact, the leader in making the budgets unsustainable in the first place!

Don't be taken in by Kaplan's campaign claims. Despite what he says, when it comes to solving our budget crisis, he has been a very large part of our budget problem, not the solution.

Kaplan does not deserve another term on the Des Moines City Council.

John Beal
Des Moines