According to Delfi, Haabersti District Elder Anna Levandi (Isamaa) recently laid off the district government's PR adviser in an effort to optimize processes, with PR-related tasks moving into the hands of the assistant district elder in charge of education, culture and youth work.

The district's PR adviser Olga Nigrovskaja, whose duties included working on the Haabersti district newspaper, was laid off while on sick leave.

That is why Nigrovskaja was surprised to learn that while her position was made redundant for optimization purposes, the Haabersti district government at the same time hired Urmas Espenberg to mainly just work on the newspaper.

Levandi tried to ward off suspicions according to which a position was created for Espenberg in return for political services, saying that the decision to hire him was not political and instead follows the urgent need to boost the quality of municipal media. The district elder said that the quality of the city paper suffered because it was the task of two people who worked on it next to their other duties, which is why someone with media experience was found, someone with an "excellent level of Estonian and also the ability to create or translate material in Russian."

Because, according to Levandi, the city was in a hurry to boost the quality of the local paper, there was no time to hold a competition, which is why Espenberg was picked after he agreed to the €1,670 gross salary.

In March, the coalition in the Tallinn City Council (of the Reform Party, Isamaa, SDE and Eesti 200) ended 19 years of Centrist rule in the capital, with Espenberg being the only member of EKRE to support the shift. The politician left EKRE soon after. Espenberg said back then that Isamaa is the only party forward for him, while he told the Õhtuleht newspaper in April that he would be glad to work in the city system.

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