Yesterday, I reported that Mayor Nickels devastated the city’s photography budget by running up costs with ribbon-cutting photo ops—forcing the photography dept. (rather than the mayor’s office) to foot the five-figure bill.

Individual City depts., like the mayor’s office, were supposed to pay for photo work themselves, but the mayor’s office wouldn’t go along with the “buy back” formula, and so the program folded.

Thanks to Team Nickels, the two city photographers (Eric Stuhaug & Ian Edelstein) lost their jobs. Then, Nickels’s campaign turned around and paid a measly $10 bucks to the city clerk for a CD of the pictures. The campaign is now running the photos in Nickels’s reelection fliers.

Noteworthy asterisk on this tacky tacky turn of events: The decision to stiff the photo dept. was made by Nickels’s then-communications director, Casey Corr.