VisitLex employees received over a quarter million dollars in bonuses this year

But don’t get angry and mos def question the messenger

Last week, the Lexington Time’s Paul Oliva reported on the $284,000 in 2024 bonuses doled out to seventeen employees of VisitLex, the name for the Lexington Fayette Urban County (LFUC) department of tourism. Previous reports have focused on the high base salaries of VisitLex employees, with Oliva finding that four (about a quarter of staff) get paid more than the Mayor.

Larger media outlets like the Herald Leader, the Kentucky Lantern, CivicLex, and WKYT have thus far declined to pick up the story. On Reddit, though, where responses numbered over 100, LFUCers were interested. VisitLex debate coalesced around two competing camps.

The first, let’s call it the Populist response, was fairly straight forward and can be summarized by the widely thumbied comments of Reddit’s Mine_Sudden and Glimmhilda:

Mine_Sudden: I believe stealing is the word they’re looking for here.
Glimmhilda: So sick of fat cats using the little guys to line their pockets. This is so egregious in this fiscal climate. Fuck them.

The second camp, the generally less-thumbied Experts, relied upon a longer, more developed chain of interlocking claims. I’ll list these claims here:

1. Most Lexingtonians are not smart enough to have any definitive opinions on the topic of VisitLex.
2. Populist viewpoints on VisitLex (egregious fat cats who are stealing in this fiscal climate) are angry and also wrong.
3. They are wrong because hotel taxes are only taxes on visitors and “bonuses like [VisitLex’s $240k] are given when someone brings in something of much, much higher value.”
4. The source article was negligent for not providing these likely reasons for the high salaries and 25% VisitLex bonuses.

Here are these Expert claims highlighted in yellow, as delineated by lolly_lag and then affirmed in iconic expert fashion by jordanpalmerky

Unlike the Populists, the Experts strike an aggressively agnostic stance about the salaries and bonus. Responses are analytic and critical of others’ views, but not actionable as their own standing ethos.

“I’m not saying it’s right,” lolly_lag writes of the bonuses and VisitLex salaries greater than the Mayor, “I just don’t think it’s fair to say it’s unquestionably wrong.” In other words, I don’t know—so it is unfair for you to feel strongly about it.

The one bit of solid moral high ground that the Experts seemed qualified to speak on with authority was the Lexington Times itself. True, the website did report factual information that it had received from Lexington officials via a Freedom of Information request. But the site had done so without the appropriate surrounding context from those qualified to speak.

The Lexington Times had circulated a local version of what the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) terms malinformation.

Specifically, the “article”—lolly_gag does actually mark Oliva’s work with the dreaded scare quotes—was questionable because it did not ask VisitLex reps…the Reddit questions created on the spot by lolly_lag, a self-identified non-expert on the topic of Shatty’s Tourism bureau. “Excellent point,” jordanpalmerky affirms. “I’ve lived [here] for 20 years and have never heard of the Lexington Times.”

It’s quite the thread-jack. Forget VisitLex, these commenters seem to be saying, which you couldn’t possibly understand anyway. The bigger issue here is questionable sourcing and malinformation.

Me? I am more of a centrist. As a populist expert, I don’t believe in the radical fringe concept of malinformation. There is only information, which like oxygen should not be suppressed.

By all means, let’s add more context to the Lexington Times’ initial bare-knuckle reporting on the bonuses and base pay of the city’s tourism bureau. One hopes, as my Expert Shattizens seem to want, that the Herald Leader and the Lane Report and WKYT and CivicLex and UK and other certified people and outlets contribute to the very popular and engaged VisitLex debate begun on Reddit. Lots of people are listening, thanks to the work of the un-credentialed Lexington Times.

But I am also an expert populist, one who has spent two decades covering Lexington tourism, from the Coolavin bike polo courts and Rupp Arena Entertainment Zone on out to the mountain-bike trails at Veterans and the feeder creeks of the Kentucky River. I am quite capable of generating my own coherent description and analysis of the VisitLex pay structure and its relation to value.

I’ll have more later—I am an expert by training; I research and expound—but my own decades of work incline me to lean towards Glimmhilde on this.

Like a budget account ledger, VisitLex pay and bonuses mark our local priorities as seriously Fayette Urban County’d. That pretty centrist take should be front page news all over this place.