Op-eds that rock: "every dollar doled out to a local corporation is one that can't be spent on something far more valuable"

If you have read this blog long enough, you know that I completely agree with these two local attorneys who take to the Tennessean to list the sweetheart corporate welfare deals--including First Tennessee Ballpark in the North Capitol area--that Metro under the Dean administration has brokered.

Daniel Horwitz and Mike Jameson go slow to explain the problem clearly to those who confuse willful self-ignorance with bliss:

The trope that Nashville's seemingly endless supply of tax abatements and economic development grants (two euphemisms for "corporate welfare") will ultimately "pay for themselves" is laughable.

Proof of that will come by 2016, when our next mayor — whoever that is — is forced to institute the largest property tax hike in Metro history just to cover the impending budget shortfall. When that happens, how many voters will look back upon our city's recent "investments" without regret?

Moreover, with local politicians clamoring to hand over public dollars to any business that even whispers about leaving town, why on earth wouldn't every other corporation in Nashville make the same threat? ....

Simply handing cash over to local corporations, however, can hardly be described as a "public investment." It's not. It also reeks of cronyism and incentivizes corruption. If Bridgestone ends up repaying Metro's current officeholders in campaign contributions a few years from now, will anyone really be surprised?

Rather than being real in their campaigning so far, nearly every mayoral candidate I've heard seems to act like they are in denial of gathering budgetary storm clouds. Each talks as if she or he would be a better Dean than Dean himself. In fact, they keep arguing that they will continue Karl Dean's insane corporate subsidies AND devote more money to neighborhoods and infrastructure. It is pure snake-oil, friends. Believe them at your own peril.

The chickens are eventually going to come home to roost for property owners and taxpayers. Someone is going to have to eventually pay for the bills Hizzoner is running up to keep his rave going. We may continue to join in the foolishness today if we wish, but the hangover is only going to be that much harder to deal with tomorrow.

Developer watchdog: Mike Kenner proposes SP for edge of Salemtown

Last year I described problems with perceptions of a 5th Avenue development and I suggested that we keep our eyes open in the future for any other rezoning requests by the developer, Mike Kenner. The future is now: the Nashville Post has the latest spin on properties along Rosa Parks and I-65 that Mr. Kenner wants to rezone for "cottage-style" abodes. He is seeking a "specific plan":

For Salemtown Cottages, Britnie Faith Turner serves as principal of Aerial Development, with Michael Kenner the principal of MiKen Development.

Kenner said the next step in the process is an April 10 [date changed; see below] community meeting (one has already been held) at Morgan Park Community Center. Metro Councilwoman Erica Gilmore, within whose district the proposed development would sit, is expected to attend.

“We want to develop in Salemtown with the support of Councilwoman Gilmore,” said Kenner, adding that Civil Site will serves as the project’s main engineer, with Village Real Estate Service’s City Living Team to market and sell the homes. He did not disclose the name of the architect.

“We’ve already submitted an SP (specific plan) and are waiting for comments from the Metro Planning Department,” Kenner said. “If everything goes well, we’ll get Planning and Council support and break ground within 90 days.”

Kenner said the development team will purchase eight different parcels on which Salemtown Cottages will be built only after all Metro approvals are finalized.

Rezoning for a specific plan allows a development to integrate elements of the neighborhood and allows neighborhoods a voice through community meetings and public hearings. It has been used well and misused, but it is generally designed to address "the unique characteristics of an individual property" while ensuring that "the surrounding neighborhood and community at-large are not adversely affected".

The concept posted here to keep our community informed.

In his interview, Mr. Kenner did not say he was seeking the support of Salemtown neighbors, even as he admitted that he was seeking CM Gilmore's support. However, the spirit of the original SP legislation is that developers seek the support of the neighborhood and not only the council member. Feedback about integration with community character and plans are welcomed in the process of this, and the council member is supposed to facilitate that process. In exchange the developer does not have to navigate pre-existing zoning that itself may no longer fit community character and hampers the build. It is vital that Salemtown residents attend the meetings and public hearings and give feedback that can be incorporated into the SP. It is also important that Mr. Kenner, who lives in the Sylvan Park neighborhood, listen to feedback in good faith.

I emailed Erica Gilmore to tell her that I did not receive an announcement about the April 10 meeting advertised in the paper and to ask her for all the details. She replied that the meeting had been moved to April 17 and that she was working on a mailer. I will post the details here when I am made aware of them.

Former CM Mike Jameson held an SP community meeting process almost 7 years ago that gives us a good idea of what it is supposed to look like:

JAMESON: “If you build a coffee shop in a residential area, right now you just get zoning variances or terms of conditions and it doesn’t say anything about hours of operation, so many parking spaces and so forth. SP allows that and it becomes your zoning. This coffee shop will have 6 parking spaces and will close at 9pm and it won’t play loud music or live music after 9pm or whatever you want to put in and that is the zoning.”

Both traditional and SP zoning have to go through the same process: planning commission approval, public meetings, and three readings before the metro council. But SP lays out the land usage up front, and neighborhoods have the opportunity to change what goes into a given property ....

SP can be used to apply design guidelines, or even regulate what types of businesses are in an area. Councilman Jameson wants to use SP to curb the number of duplexes built in his district. He hopes that including the neighborhood on the front end will give his SP duplex regulation smoother passage.

In the case of Mr. Kenner's request, the SP process actually allows us to keep tabs on what he is doing with his development and how whether he is responsive to community feedback. Once the SP is approved, the developer has to abide by the terms and we can verify whether he is or not. During a separate SP in 2007, I documented how another development team initially reversed course on installing brick veneer, which had been mandated in the SP. They would have had to go through whole rezoning process again if they had not gone back and installed it.

Let me reemphasize the important point that all neighbors interested in the character of our neighborhood should attend community meetings and public hearings on the Salemtown Cottages SP and keep up with the process. If you are a property owner who lives out of town, follow the news on it and write CM Gilmore with your feedback ("Erica.Gilmore@nashville.gov"). If you have concerns about parking, noise, signage, landscaping, design, number of homes, square footage, density, etc. you should involve yourself in this process. You can be sure that both the developer and the council member will. You cannot have any influence over them if you do not participate.

District 19 council member listed among others on developer's "secret tapes"

Over the weekend the Tennessean reported that "secret tapes" exist that contain 40 hours of conversations between a May Town Center developer and over a dozen council members regarding his team's plan to build a sprawling "second downtown" on Bells Bend. Noteworthy is the mention of District 19 CM Erica Gilmore:

 

By early 2010 — when the first recording was captured — May Town leaders had turned their attention from the Metro Planning Commission, where the development had stalled in a 5-5 vote, to the 40-member council, where the project needed 27 votes for approval because of the planning commission setback.

Ultimately, the council in March 2010 voted to defer the May Town project indefinitely.

According to May’s recent filing, plaintiffs secretly recorded conversations with council members Megan Barry, Phil Claiborne, Tim Garrett, Erica Gilmore, Jason Holleman, Edith Langster, Lonnell Matthews Jr., Jerry Maynard, Bruce Stanley, Ronnie Steine, Charlie Tygard, and then-council members Michael Craddock, Randy Foster and Jim Hodge. It also cites “others.”

The parties discussed the project, speculated about votes and offered their impressions of Jack May, Mayor Karl Dean, Tony Giarratana and others, according to the brief.

The Metro Planning Commission refused in a close vote to approve the proposal, which put the burden on Metro Council to approve it only with a super-majority. The proposal was eventually withdrawn, so we do not have recorded votes of these CMs.

However, some of these council members made their opinions clear during the planning public hearing process. Here is an excerpt of the May 2009 public hearing minutes:

Councilmember [Mike] Jameson first explained that he was asked by Councilmember Barry and Councilmember Cole to include their names as part of the record as expressing their opposition to the proposed May Town Center. They were unable to attend the meeting....

Councilmember Holleman acknowledged Councilmember Matthews support for the May Town Center, however, expressed his concerns with respect to the May Town Center development affecting the entire region as opposed to only Council District 1. His district is in the pathway of connecting this development to the rest of the city and he expressed his concerns regarding its impact on District 24. He explained the work that he and his constituents have completed on the West Nashville Community Plan update and spoke of how the May Town Center would impact their transportation network and infrastructure. He also explained that he and his constituents have not had the chance to review the Traffic Impact Study recently released from RPM and would like for the Commission to allow them an opportunity to review the study and provide their comments regarding the study at the next Public Hearing scheduled for June 25, 2009. Councilmember Holleman then pointed out some of the highlights included the Traffic Impact Study and how they would directly affect his district. He requested that the Commission deny the zone change request until he and his community can further digest any impacts on their district.

Councilmember Craddock expressed his support for the May Town Center development as the project is a good quality development; and that the proposal would lessen the burden on the Nashville’s taxpayers. He spoke on the issue of spiraling property taxes and the need to seek good quality development to further enhance the City of Nashville. Councilmember Craddock then acknowledged the importance of not allowing a development of this size to adversely affect surrounding districts and to need to find the best way to implement the project for the betterment of all living in Nashville.

Councilmember Matthews .... stated that over the year, he has obtained the necessary information in which he could now support the proposed May Town Center development and explained all of the positive attributes that could be derived from the development. Attributes such as increased jobs for the area, and additional opportunities for corporate relocations to the City of Nashville .... He stated he would assist the bill as it makes it way through the approval process at Council .... As Councilmember Matthews closed, he explained all of the conversations he has with all involved parties and expressed his support for the May Town Center.

I attended that public hearing, and I do not recall seeing CM Gilmore. I am curious about what her views on the May Town Center proposal are on those "secret tapes". I am also wondering, as a constituent, whether I have a right to know what my CM says to developers about voting intentions on significant projects.

Mike Jameson wins well-deserved General Sessions judgeship

Here come the Judge:

My message to Erica Gilmore on Mike Jameson

Several days ago I sent the following email to CM Gilmore on the subject of Mike Jameson's candidacy for General Sessions Court Judge:

I write to ask you to please support Mike Jameson to fill the General Session Court opening for Judge.

With his extensive legal background and law practice, as well as his service to our community as a Metro Council member, Mr. Jameson is more than qualified to sit as Judge in Davidson County courts.

I first got to know him 10 years ago when he was my council member in East Nashville (we moved to Salemtown in 2004). Mr. Jameson has never failed to impress me as one of the more thoughtful, intelligent, respectful, balanced, fair-minded, and principled leaders in Nashville. He also won my admiration by fighting good fights that others shied away from. I cannot imagine him ever failing to do the right thing.

When it comes time to vote on a replacement to GS Court, I hope that you will cast yours for Mike Jameson.

Thank you for your consideration of my views.

Gotto's stupid teabagger trick just barely nosed out the spoken inanities of a couple of progressives last night

There were some high-flying moments at last night's council meeting (like CM Mike Jameson quoting Christian political realist Reinhold Niebuhr during the opening prayer), but a couple of progressives' comments brought the meeting right back down to the lowest denominator. In my previous post on last night I underscored Jim Gotto's foot-in-mouth disease during discussion of honoring students for their "Don't Say Gay" protests.

But a couple of progressives did not exactly measure their words with respect to the truth before opening their mouths. First, in his speech to the council as a the shoo-in candidate for criminal court clerk, Howard Gentry said, as if it were a worthy goal:

I will run the office like a business.

If I'm not mistaken, this is the same logic that John Arriola used to run the county clerk's office and to run afoul of taxpayers. Arriola expressed an unfettered profit motive to bring money in. He marketed "gratuities" as "fees" (making people believe that they needed to pay for products and services they might not otherwise choose to pay for) and he monetized just about everything he did. He had stylish and hip new signs designed to lure more customers. He maximized and tricked out his ride to work. The profit motive runs business; the profit motive ran Arriola's tenure. In other words, Arriola was more CEO than clerk.

Shouldn't the officer of a Metro office be looking to run the office less like a business and more like an institution accountable for the public good? Gentry's comment was a clear pander to the business interests that dominate the Courthouse, but frankly the prospect is frightening.

The second inane progressive comment of the night came from Dean Teamer and outgoing CM Erik Cole, who contrasted Jim Gotto's self-reference of a Republican trying to hold a "corporate citizen" (assuming that corporations are individuals!) responsible, by trotting out this gem:

You now got a Democrat standing with developers!

Let's revisit CM Cole's recent past, shall we? He supported the Mayor's plan to build the most expensive capital project in Nashville's history, a developer's dream, the Music City Convention Center. He supported the Mayor's plan to sell off a huge tract of public Fairgrounds land to wealthy developers to make a lot of money on an office park. Even if Erik Cole ever stood against developers, those two projects alone bury any pretense of forward thinking opposition he ever expressed against untrammeled growth. But let's be clear: you do not get anywhere in the Davidson County Democratic Party without the habit of standing with developers. The most powerful and wealthiest Dems are in knee-deep with developers. For Cole to suggest otherwise is to concoct an urban myth. And it was pretty darn self-serving in what it implied about Erik Cole beyond its utterance.

I can always count on local progressives to give local conservatives a run for their money in the cringeworthy foot-in-mouth department.

Miffed East Nashville residents, jilted by Kroger, risk accusation of "class war" by the pinheads

When it comes to the class-based prejudices of wealth, some things never change:

Green Hills Kroger customers have applauded improved features such as a meat grilling station, beverage center and expanded seating area for Wi-Fi access, but Eastland Kroger customers view the upgrades to the grocery in one of the wealthiest parts of town as an insult.

“Kroger should make more of an investment in this thriving neighborhood,” said Elizabeth Bush, who lives on Woodland Street. “They have a vast group of folks who would shop there if they would fix the store. It doesn’t matter what your income is, you deserve fresh food” ....

The minor projects at East Nashville-area grocers still do not compete with the $1 million project that will be unveiled in a re-grand opening at the Abbott Martin Road location today, said District 6 Councilman Mike Jameson. The enduring issues with customer service, cleanliness and limited food options continue to keep a growing number of East Nashvillians away from their neighborhood store.

If East Nashville cannot siphon the channels of wealth flowing to West Nashville, economically diverse North Nashville is even farther out of the loop.

It took a while but balanced minority opposition to the Mayor finally formed

Back in 2008 when it seemed like the only council member willing to take on Karl Dean publicly and assertively was Mike Jameson, I openly wondered whether this submissive Metro Council was even worse than the conservative-dominated previous council that battled former Mayor Bill Purcell at every turn. Then came the Dean plan (supersaturated with donor influence) for a convention center, which was not exactly popular, and more CMs stuck their necks out to oppose the Mayor. The Fairgrounds debacle, and the botched handling of it, finally made opposing Mayor Dean permissible and the council's minority opposition wing of liberals and conservatives solidified.

This morning's Tennessean ponders the unlikely coalition as it stands:

Hollin and Craddock are at the heart of a coalition of progressive and conservative council members who have regularly opposed Dean’s agenda on high-profile issues. It brings together pro-neighborhood, pro-environment council members like Emily Evans, Jason Holleman and Mike Jameson with social and fiscal conservatives like Eric Crafton, Jim Gotto and Robert Duvall, forming a vocal minority.

Evans said the pairing isn’t that surprising.

“The convention center (debate) was really about fiscal responsibility,” she said. “Being a fiscally responsible government tends to be a hallmark of both progressives and conservatives. I put myself in both categories. It’s just a common theme.”

The progressives Michael Cass lists in the story have generally been the ethical cream of the council bunch over time, even as unsubstantiated mud was slung at them in the print/online news media by the Courthouse innuendo hounds every time they dared to criticize a Dean plan. Cass also inventories the coalition--including the "progressives"--that appease and buckle to the Mayor's Office on every initiative that I can remember. Jerry Maynard and Ronnie Steine have had their ethical stumbles in the past and I'm not exactly inspired by the quality of their leadership even as the dogs of Dean give them a pass on any criticism.

That brings me to Dean spokesperson Janel Lacy's purported declination to "publicly criticize" the council's minority coalition. The Dean administration does not publicly criticize his critics because it does not have to. On just about every major policy initiative (the convention center being the most obvious), it has hired consultants and anonymous trolls to do the attacking for them. With a generally compliant news media, Karl Dean can take the high road and let the hatchet men do the dirty work. While the thugs and mercenaries have taken some below-the-belt shots at the council's independent progressives like Hollin, Jameson, Holleman, and Evans, the mud simply will not stick.

Near total media blackout of this morning's council work session, despite council promises to televise

After CM Mike Jameson proposed a council work session for this morning, CM Vivian Wilhoite stated at two different council business meetings that council was working to televise the proceedings. According to the the Nashville neighborhoods e-list, CM Jameson asked preservationists not to turnout massively this morning like they had for previous Fairgrounds discussions because it was going to be televised.

If you like I turned on Metro 3 this morning expecting to see exactly what our council members were up to in the latest installment of the ongoing Fairgrounds drama, you were disappointed that Metro 3 was showing events of Metro government past, including Mayor Karl Dean's speech to the Rotary Club last month reaffirming his goal to sell off Fairgrounds property. There were Mayor Dean's smug comments on my TV once again that, in spite of previously taking a "time out" to listen, he would push ahead with his original goal. That is some thick irony.

Both the Tennessean and the Nashville City Paper bloggers were present and started out live tweeting the meeting. Then both inexplicably fell silent. The only detailed Tennessean tweet was on water spillage at the beginning of the session:

The City Paper's few tweets provided more details on the chances that the demolition bill may be deferred and on the CMs breaking up into groups to discuss the issue, but little else. Both bloggers responded to my request for information at the end of the meeting by saying that they had trouble getting cell signals during the meeting to tweet details. Even so, they disclosed little else at that point, including why the meeting was not televised.

CM Erik Cole replied to one of the press bloggers that he did not attempt to get a cell signal because he was busy participating in the work session. Too bad that participation was not seen by those who did not attend because they were told it would be on Metro 3.

CM Jamie Hollin eventually replied to my ongoing query-tweets that he was under the impression that the session would be televised.

This was an unfortunate media blackout that is not going to reassure suspicious community leaders who oppose the Mayor's attempt to coerce a redevelopment plan that has not shown broad public support. Metro 3's inflexibly selective coverage is frustrating, but I am particularly disappointed to hear that CM Jameson encouraged those leaders to stay home. As it turned out, council once again held an insular meeting even though it was in the interests of Nashvillians to observe it.

Compare and contrast the Metro beat coverage of last night's council debate on the Fairgrounds

It would be difficult for me to imagine more divergence between Metro beat reporter accounts than I read in this morning's print media on last night's council meeting.

Exhibit A is the Tennessean's Nate Rau who leaves the impression that things went according to script with only minor diversions:

Metro Council took a step Tuesday toward demolishing the fairgrounds racetrack, although council members promised to give the public a chance to weigh in on the issue next month.

Well, tra-la-la, and never mind that a couple of the Mayor's loyalists on the council blew gaskets when their end-the-Fairgrounds bill did not simply sail through without the threat of a public hearing. That threat aroused CM Ronnie Steine from his composure and into a kanipshin fit of yanking every single 1st reading bill off the consent agenda (customarily, bills on 1st reading are passed without debate). Rau ties the story up with a nice little Christmas bow at the end in the form of Finance Director Rich Riebeling's insistence that the Mayor had wanted a public hearing all along.

Exhibit B is the City Paper's Joey Garrison whose account of last night's meeting approaches something closer to the truth of what I witnessed last night:

Ultimately, Barry’s bill cleared first reading by a 34-6 vote, a misleading reflection of the council’s true stance on the ordinance. Most were simply trying to advance the bill to the council’s committee system, allowing the new public hearing to take place.

Since the unprecedented November 16 public hearing on the Fairgrounds bill, the Metro Council has been dogged by sustained popular opposition to Mayor Dean. They were dogged when Dean opponents filled the gallery on December 7, even though there was a snowball's chance in hell of another public hearing. And they were dogged last night by another full gallery of people who vow to keep coming back to council meetings, public hearing or no public hearing.

Garrison's account more accurately reports the mood of Metro Council that came across to me last night. It is an account more ambiguous, uncertain, and unscripted. What happened last night in council chambers was messy. What happened was democracy attempting to check and to balance an executive. Rau seems to have missed that part (that and the irony that CM Mike Jameson, whom Rau once described at the City Paper as having "a flair for the dramatic" disliked by the Dean Team, was the least theatrical in his appeals to stop the fighting).

The Mayor's plan may currently have 9 sponsors, but 6 opponents voted against allowing it to even get past first reading. During a paradoxical twist of Chapter 5 of the Developer's Playbook, Steine and Megan Barry looked red-faced as they tried to fight back Duane Dominy's attempt to allow a Christmas week public hearing on their bill. Steine's parliamentary stunt of pulling every 1st reading bill violated the very process he preaches. In intending to be symbolic, he looked cynical in the most hysterical sense.

So, when the Tennessean leads this story by minimizing the fractures and fissures that resulted in council over the Mayor's new bill, by denying the desperate theatrics performed by Mayor's council diehards, and by generally sticking to Karl Dean's script, their account is not worth your time.

Read Joey Garrison, who was much more even-handed, much more attuned, and much more accurate, although I would disagree with him that CM Steine is a stickler for council rules. Relative to the long record of council 1st readings, the bills pulled last night were the exceptions, not the rule. Nothing that happened on 1st reading last night violated council rules as much as they violated Ronnie Steine's own preferences for habits and process. Then again, CM Steine's performance makes him seem much more a stickler for process than for people.

Depends on whose council member is being gored

During his tenure as a Metro beat reporter first at the City Paper and then at the Tennessean, I do not remember a discouraging word from Nate Rau against controversial CMs like Charlie Tygard (whom Rau once defended as "blogged to death") or Eric Crafton (whose English Only initiative Rau handled sensitively, nearly generously). But consistently with non-ostentatious CM Mike Jameson, Rau breaks out the critical analysis, regularly referencing what the Mayor's Office dislikes about him.

My issue here is not with evenhandedly treating CMs critically. I simply do not think that Rau's treatment of Jameson in particular has been the highest quality criticism.

It is no different in Rau's recent blogging on Jameson's reservations about privatizing the public Fairgrounds.  Rau blogs a somewhat rambling, disjointed, and loaded criticism of Jameson:

Jameson’s indignation could be seen as some what puzzling. He’s been a councilmember for more than seven years. He knows the ugly ins and unseemly outs of city politics.

I’ve heard it said that former Mayor Bill Purcell never used petty tactics like calling down department directors on district council members.

Somebody should tell that to Charlie Tygard and Chris Whitson, because I believe they would paint a different picture.

Since Dean was elected mayor, by my count he’s had five tough votes go through council – the Predators lease, the stormwater fee, the convention center land acquisition, the creation of the Convention Center Authority and the convention center bond resolution. Jameson has voted against three of those proposals; the lease agreement at Hickory Hollow would make four out of six.

It is fair for observers to wonder if Jameson’s opposition, no matter how eloquently justified, is rooted in politics, not policy, especially considering the weight of his stance just a year ago.

Someone needs to tell Nate that his wonderment is only fair if he goes back and actually analyzes Jameson's arguments and points out the logical fallacies point-by-point. I never remember him doing that, and I was reading the City Paper long before he was hired.

The problem is that in previous stories reporter Rau seemed to transmit what mayoral staffers either believe or spin about Jameson. The Mayor's Office told reporters that Mike Jameson was an opportunistic grandstander seeking a judgeship. Rau simply passed that judgment along without expressing any journalistic critical thinking or probing curiosity. When Jameson used the same parliamentary rules that other CMs (including Tygard) have used, Rau assumed without a second thought (or as if it had been spun to him) that Jameson used "obscure" tricks to shut down an unquestionably legitimate policy brought at an unquestionably impeccable pace. Jameson conducted council queries of Dean staffers in ways that casual observers called "polite" and "professional," yet analyst Rau was prompted to call the same act a "deposition" as if Jameson was not able to perform as anything but a slick lawyer.

But politics is an end game. If someone is playing politics then they make a rational choice for benefits that outweigh the risk involved in taking on a popular Mayor under this Metro Charter which relegates CMs to a ridiculously weak position from which to make legislative checks on the executive. While I am not happy with acquiescent CMs, I can understand that in this system their choice is either to be a Dean supporter or to find oneself isolated to the Mayor's dog house. And the fawning print media does not help break the servitude by repeating whatever their Metro PR sources tell them.

So, the insistence that a maverick is somehow gaining more than losing in opposing the Mayor on most of the most contentious issues is absurd. And yet, that seems to be exactly what Nate Rau is insisting. If it's just politics, then what is the benefit to Jameson of continuously sticking his head out of the council trenches only to face Karl Dean's howitzer? Given the Courthouse disdain he faces from the perfect storm of council conservatives, sovereign Mayor, and cynical reporters, what chance does Jameson have to win the end game that Metro politics is? Rau doesn't say, but he doesn't seem to be required by anyone to do so, either.

In the end Nate Rau fell into the same trap as many bloggers: he put up a post based mostly on anecdotes with few warrants, making a flawed case, nonsensical when judged rationally. Granted, it may make airtight sense inside the Courthouse.

Is the Mayor's Office sending department heads to lobby Metro Council on the fairgrounds privatization plan?

I cannot wait to see the replay of this week's council committee meeting on Mayor Karl Dean's plan to help fulfill Finance Director Rich Riebeling's dream of privatizing the fairgrounds by converting it for real estate industry royalty. I've never really been strongly opposed to converting the fairgrounds to something more in tune with surrounding South Nashville, I just oppose the means the Mayor's Office uses consistently to ram through capital initiatives that serve Karl Dean's cohort while leaving the rest of us to enjoy whatever scraps are left over.

I want to see the replay of the meeting because I look forward to CM Emily Evans pointing out that Director Riebeling has been "carrying the torch" of fairgrounds privatization since he was with the fair board. That confirms my sense (which I've had since the Mayor's Office ran interference for CM Sandra Moore on a shadow neighborhood meeting) that the fix was in on the fairgrounds future from the beginning.

But what I most want to see is CM Mike Jameson rail against the lobbying effort that seems to be coming from on high (as related by Joey Garrison):

Jameson said [Metro Public Works Director Billy] Lynch called him last week and asked for his stance on the fairgrounds issue.

“You don’t need to go there,” Jameson said. “Had it just been me, I would have chalked it up as just idle conversation. But, in talking to some of my colleagues on the council floor –– none of whom I will name –– but all of whom said they got the call and started getting arms twisted and references to yellow trucks in their district. That doesn’t need to happen.

“I know the public works director,” Jameson added. “He’s a phenomenal public servant. I know he doesn’t do this out of his own volition. I know he follows orders.”

Jameson requested Councilwoman Vivian Wilhoite, who chairs the council’s Codes, Fair and Farmers Market Committee, ask Lynch for any vote tally list that he may have obtained.

Metro 3 and IT Director Keith Durbin willing, I will get to see the drama unfold on tape someday soon.


UPDATE: Metro 3 did play back the 3 hour meeting Thursday night, and Mike Jameson's disclosure about Public Works' lobbying effort was even more spectacular than depicted in The City Paper. CM Jameson made a point of saying that the Director's phone call was not made personally, but with the Director's assistant. If I could transcribe Jameson's entire body of comments I would. It was impressive.

About my Twitter fight with a SouthComm editor

Same Twitter stream in which the City Paper editor sized me down to a kid with Mentos and Diet Coke after I suggested that journalists accusing bloggers of conspiracy theories is pot-meet-kettle. It's actually club soda or nothing for me, thank you.

Local news editors continue to show that they just do not get it. Down these years I have been blogging, one editor after another has at one time or another taken swipes at certain bloggers who do not merely link their editorializing but who dare to question their balance, who raise the question of bias.

In spite of the fact that blogging has made its own contributions to understanding local politics, over and over it seems a remarkable number of editors cop a tone of arrogance whenever a blogger dares charge bias and self-interest in reporting and "analysis."

Being a blogger who will not blindly promote or otherwise genuflect to the corporate generation of pro journalism, I'm now catching heat from Nashville's newest editor, Stephen George, who hasn't even been here a year but already knew enough about the local convention and tourism industry (as well as risks of encumbering Metro's General Fund to support that industry) to write a shill editorial in support of Music City Center construction months ago.

After I challenged his support of the Davidson County branch of "Government Goldman" (a term that captures the pandering, patronizing relationships that governments develop with finance industry brokers like Goldman Sachs, which is the primary financier for Music City Center), the editor characterized my views as conspiratorial. I did not ask, but I'm sure that branding was meant to lump me in league with those society lampoons with references to black helicopters, UFO probes, and the grassy knoll.

As if criticism of the lop-sided power of the banking and lending industry, which undeniably brought this country well-nigh to its knees, amounts to paranoid speculation or a lunatic fringe.

Frankly, that's rich from a local journalist. The news media here has not given a second thought to performing conspiratorial hatchet jobs on out-spoken opponents of Mayor Karl Dean's policies. Courthouse class savaging of Mike Jameson for speaking out on East Bank Riverfront development and of Emily Evans for questioning broken funding promises on the convention center was abetted by the media echo chamber.

Both were rumored to be over-politicizing opportunists. Both have been generally above reproach. They just were bold enough to dare to block the bandwagon, unlike Nashville's newspapers.

Moreover, it is not conspiratorial for me to challenge self-interested "4th estate" promotion of Music City Center within this constellation of government power and private, special-interest wealth. We live in a world where the journalists we used to read and listen to end up as communications directors in government and information officers in industry or they move to start their own public relations firms with intentions of using connections to garner deals with government and industry. We live in a world where journalists are coached by PR flacks to write columns and where newspapers donate money to the cause of Metro launching its largest capital project ever to serve the smallest number of Nashvillians ever.

It is entirely reasonable and realistic common sense to argue out loud and in print that journalists' motives in promoting Music City Center fail objectivity and neutrality tests given the rewards for so shilling. Mr. George would have acted more honorably by not writing an editorial following the chatter class crowd down the road of growth and development.

Because, you see, the insider access the news media enjoys at the Courthouse also seems to bind them to pass on unchecked, speculative innuendo that damages reputations even when refuted. And their guild gives them a sometimes unearned cloak of balance and fairness. They end with the mantle of official gatekeeper for news even when they behave more like Courthouse information curators.

Hence, editors like Mr. George cannot without self-contradiction charge informed, engaged bloggers of "humping conspiracy" for expressing common sense suspicion toward elite power moves while defending journalism's co-dependent relationship with Courthouse sources.

In the end I do not think the news media should ignore innuendo. But raising the specter of ignorance is missing the point. Journalists should admit that they have "humped" a few conspiracy theories themselves and looked more like PR flacks than seasoned pros who refuse to stand to post at the government house threshold.

The Wrath of Gail Kerr

After a few months of duress for being coached by PR pros on the Metro dime and writing rah-rah fluff for Mayor Dean's convention center plans, Gail Kerr finally lets loose on the shamefully small number of council members who have dared to ask critical questions.

There are five or six council members who will obviously vote against it. Heck, they've been voting against it since day one, and anything else Dean proposes. They bad-mouth the plan and the mayor and everyone who supports it.

They sound exactly like the council members who fought the downtown arena, library, and bringing the Tennessee Titans here and building them a stadium.

The current Always-Anti complaint is that Dean presented this piecemeal, so that too much has been done to stop it now. They call it the cart-before-the-horse.

But if Dean had brought the entire convention center package to them at the first of this year, sans the actual financing, they would have bellyached about that, too.

Notice that Ms. Kerr mentions no names in her blind bombardment of those who didn't simply go along, but she must be referring to at least a couple of council members who are consistently above reproach: Mike Jameson and Emily Evans. Too bad Ms. Kerr lacks the fortitude to call them out by name and explain to her readers exactly how she believes they are mistaken. Instead, she trots out the same predictable screed we read over and over in her columns against the unnamed who would have opposed every attempt to rebuild downtown into a developers' and entertainers' dream at any expense to Metro taxpayers or to livable urban neighborhoods.

Understandably Gail Kerr is apoplectic. She's caught fire for her penned pandering to the powers-that-be. But that is still no excuse for conveniently ignoring facts. It's easy to pimp the Titans bandwagon now that they've overcome 0-6 impressively even as she fails to mention that funds are drained from our Metro Water Services to subsidize the team. As if the cost is not worth mention. She also should have pointed out that one convention center opponent, Emily Evans, has not opposed Karl Dean on everything sports-and-entertainment-growth-related. As if the truth is inconvenient. To the chagrin of some of us, Ms. Evans supported the Mayor's plan to shore up the flagging fortunes of the local pro hockey team.

But Gail Kerr rarely lets facts stand in the way of her mission to make pro journalism the lap dog of government fiat. Instead, she channels Spiro Agnew, as if any honest questioning or loyal opponents are "nattering nabobs of negativism" on every issue at every moment. She's behaving badly. It's bound to be laziness, arrogance, or just plain flunkiness. Rather than producing an actual argument against the opponents on this issue, she apparently intends to see the project through in spite of the embarrassment she causes herself over it.

Council Denies Resolution Requesting that Convention Center Financing Legislation Be Delayed until After the Year-End Holidays

Pleas tonight from some for more time to hold community meetings in their districts did not stop Metro Council from tabling a memorializing resolution that would have requested that the Mayor and other Metro leaders stretch the timetable for approving financing for the new convention center until February 16, 2010. In the midst of disclosures that council members were getting lobbied hard by the Mayor's Office to vote against this resolution, an overwhelming majority voted against even allowing the resolution to be voted on.

My own council member, Erica Gilmore, as well as all five of the at-Large members (including Megan Barry who during the 2007 campaign asserted, "I believe one person, one voice can make a difference. I will be your voice on the Metro Council") fell in line with the large pack of other CMs in blocking a vote on the request for more time to inform and prepare communities for the largest capital project in Nashville history. According to bill sponsor Michael Craddock, tabling motioner Rip Ryman supported the delay resolution in committee the night before. Emily Evans encouraged all of the CMs who wished to stop the vote on the measure to hold community meetings with constituents regardless. Mike Jameson asked Finance Director Rick Riebeling for assurance that a claim--that the vote could actually be held in January without the resolution--used to justify tabling was true. Riebeling deflected by denying that the Mayor's Office has any control over council scheduling.

In the end, it looks like the Mayor and his drones on the Metro Council are going to call an audible right out of the developers playbook, by holding controversial municipal meetings during the holiday season when people are busy, distracted, absorbed with family life or on vacation. Between Halloween, Thanksgiving, & Hanukkah/Christmas, it is going to be difficult for people to attend community meetings. That gives convention boosters, who are locked in like zealots in the Crusades, the upper hand.

We need to keep tabs on which council members hold community meetings before the bond issue to finance the project is approved and signed by the Mayor. Will Karl Dean's supporters on the council accommodate their constituents by holding meetings to prepare them? It will be interesting to see who does and who does not. A month ago I requested that Salemtown Neighbors Neighborhood Association contact CM Gilmore and ask for a meeting on the convention center proposal. No word yet on whether it will happen. But now that CM Gilmore has voted down a request to hold public hearings, she really should meet with us and discuss the ramifications of this project for our future.

This is how SouthComm steamrolls

Last week Southcomm Publisher Chris Ferrell took time away from the task of purchasing the Nashville Scene to tweet a reply to my post defending CM Mike Jameson's attempt to delay the Mayor's proposal to create a convention center authority. Ferrell compared Jameson's use of council rules to the actions of my former District 19 council member, Ludye Wallace:

on the council rules post - that's an old Ludye Wallace trick and not what the rule was intended for

What bothers me most about Ferrell's response are the insinuations in the word "trick" about motivations and intentions. Tricks are acts meant to deceive people, and I learned fairly quickly while being Ludye's constituent that there usually seemed to be some hidden vice in his council actions. I found Ludye's deceit to be about talking as if he were representing the community while merely serving himself.

For all of his talk about listening to constituents, he never responded to e-mails or attended neighborhood meetings. The one discussion I had with him face-to-face about one of his bills, he argued incessantly with me and seemed to close his mind to my perspective. He promised to have community meetings on development issues and did not.

Ludye earmarked thousands of dollars for private non-profits likely to return favors later and ignored Metro Park pleas to use council discretionary funds to provide summer youth programming as community centers reduced hours in tight budget times. He attempted to redirect funds that would have helped struggling families pay their utility bills to a non-profit tennis program. He went to bat for a growth-focused university against the Rose Park neighborhood and its sense of character. Speaking of character, Ludye has not exactly been a model. He grew grass on his properties that was code-violating tall and he was indicted for his patronage of gambling houses.

And he only did that just while I was paying attention to him.

Ferrell may have served on council with both Ludye and Jameson, but his attempt to criticize squeaky clean MJ with a comparison to Ludye is patently absurd. Mike Jameson's tenure on Metro Council is broadly characterized as above reproach. Jameson listened to his constituents. He expressed hesitance at the one request I made of him when I lived in his East Nashville district, but he said he would raise the issue in council if I were set on it. He held community meetings. He recommended discretionary funds not for patronizing non-profits but for public infrastructure. His opponents may not like his stance on the issues, but they can hardly pin anything on him with regard to ulterior motives.

Jameson's attempts to slow down the Mayor's rush-to-convention-center have been telegraphed and broadcast. His use of the rules to guarantee that questions bubbling up from the public get answered were fairly predictable. Where's the sleight of hand? More importantly, where is the arrogant selfishness that marked the tricks of Ludye Wallace? How does it serve Mike Jameson to plant himself in front of Karl Dean's steamroller or to risk his political career by taking on McNeely, Pigott, and Fox (who besides Dean counts Phil Bredesen and scores of other Tennessee big shots as close friends)?

The reality of the situation is that Ludye Wallace never would have attempted to stop the Mayor's convention center proposal, because the Mayor would have already thrown Ludye whatever bone he asked for. Ludye never would have taken the risk to oppose on principle. Standing up for the right thing "tho the heavens fall" is not Ludye's style. Being a Salty Papa is.

The irony here is that Ludye is now a paid lobbyist for the Mayor's convention center plan. The Nashville Convention and Visitors Bureau is paying him $1,500 to be a "minority representative" with council relationships and knowledge of council procedure. Too bad that amount won't cover the $2,000 he lost on June 2, 2006 visiting "constituents" in a gambling house a few blocks west of the street where I live. I don't hear any trepidation from Chris Ferrell about Ludye's influential new position.

In lumping Ludye and MJ, either Ferrell is riding the Dean steamroller himself or he knows something about a dark side to Jameson that none of the rest of us do. Having watched both CMs, I consider Ferrell's short burst at Jameson serious, and I would like to know more about what sort of Ludye-like deceit he believes that Jameson was intending. I've asked him to clarify, but he has not responded. That's the mark of tactical attempts to undermine credibility rather than exhibition of authentic attempts to join the debate and to answer all questions.

I have yet to understand why advocates of the Music City Center might be more offended that Jameson is demanding answers from the Mayor before moving ahead than they should be at the pummelling Mayor's managers have given the Metro budget.

In the end, though, Ferrell has to concede that if Mike Jameson attempted to trick people by derailing the Dean express, then Vice Mayor Diane Neighbors and 15 other council members exercised their own form of deceit in arranging, staging, and executing last Friday's defeat of Jameson's actions. They did not exactly take the high road. One could interpret their actions as a use of the Charter against the intentions and spirit of the Charter.

If the Southcomm publisher truly believes that Jameson was morally wrong for exercising a privilege that the Charter gives him to delay the process in order to have the Mayor's office answer a few questions, then he cannot without self-contradiction excuse convention center proponents for using the rules against Jameson deceitfully. Two wrongs don't make a right, unless you're riding the Karl Dean steamroller.

A Poster Child for Local Media's Shameless Double Standards

For the third story in a row on the Metro Council's votes to approve the Mayor's proposed Convention Center Authority, City Paper reporter Nate Rau refers to Mike Jameson's invocation of council rules to delay authority approval as "obscure." Rau seems bent on spinning our interpretations of CM Jameson's actions as somehow concealed, occult, or unaccountable. Or maybe I'm just giving Rau too much credit. Maybe he doesn't know any less pejorative terms to describe rules that don't get used very much except on controversial votes.

Either way, he fails in yesterday's story on the council's second vote to be balanced or neutral in his description of Vice Mayor Diane Neighbors' use of an "obscure" rule to defeat CM Jameson's attempt to delay:

Council held Friday’s special meeting after Jameson used an obscure procedural rule to force the legislation to be reconsidered at its next meeting. Vice Mayor Diane Neighbors, at the request of several Council members, called the special meeting for Friday instead of waiting until the next meeting on Sept. 2.

Too bad no one at parent company SouthComm Publishing is motivating Rau to reconsider the truthiness of his reporting. You see, the Vice Mayor acted on the evocation of another little used rule to call a rare special session to beat CM Jameson at his own game. I give you the Vice Mayor's own exercise in "obscurity":

Pursuant to Section 3.04 of the Charter of the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County and Rule 34 of the Council Rules of Procedure, we, the undersigned Members of the Metropolitan Council, respectfully request that you call a Special Meeting of the Council for the purpose of considering the motion to reconsider the vote on Resolution No. RS2009-881.

And with that Diane Neighbors (if I may apply Rau's own terms) "forced" the convention center authority plan back on the Mayor's fast track. But Rau doesn't report that Ms. Neighbors forced anything. Instead, he reports that the council "officially approved" it. As if a minority's use of the rules does not really ever count as "official."

The Mayor's Supporters Pull Their Own "Obscure" Parliamentary Move and Force Less Time for Reconsidering Authority

Thanks to Christian Grantham for forwarding these documents, which Vice Mayor Diane Neighbors supplied to the news media.

First, CMs who apparently have a dog in a speedy convention center hunt (Ronnie Steine, Michael Craddock, Jim Gotto, Anna Page, Carl Burch, Buddy Baker, Parker Toler, Jim Forkum, Rip Ryman, Charlie Tygard, Walter Hunt, Frank Harrison, Duane Dominy, and Phil Claiborne) submitted a letter earlier today requesting a special meeting to consider Mike Jameson's move to reconsider the council's snap approval of the Mayor's new convention center authority in the wake of the Mayor's PR debacle the last couple of weeks:


Without pause and as if she has a dog in the swift hunt, Vice Mayor Neighbors responds by scheduling a special meeting for the day after tomorrow:



I can't say that I've ever seen Metro Council move with such cat-like and coordinated reflexes on a mayoral request. Makes me wonder how hungry Metro Council members are to have influence over and benefits from the construction of a convention center. Makes me wonder how corralled by the Mayor's Office the council is on this single issue. Makes me wish they were motived to operate with such coordinated efficiency on issues that benefit common people's real lives like parks, neighborhoods, schools, infrastructure, etc.

Where But for Her Would We Be?

Michael Cass has a good profile of Metro Council progressive Emily Evans, even though he seems to rely on pejorative "aggressive" connotations (instead of the neutral "assertive" ones) to describe Evans' critical questioning of Mayor's Office officials. I think fellow CM Mike Jameson may be on to something when he brings up the sexism of calling women "aggressive" when none of their male peers would be so described.

Otherwise, Cass does a good job at giving a balanced picture of Evans rather than strictly relying on the tensions between her and the Mayor's Office over stormwater and the convention center. The local media has tended to ignore balance in favor of obsessing over the drama, almost as if it cannot believe that any CM would dare question the Mayor's Office. Cass gives Evans' critic, CM Charlie Tygard, the megaphone long enough for him to display his hypocrisy in going along with Karl Dean in ways he probably would not with the previous Mayor:

"I don't know why she would risk political capital and the wrath of the administration," said Tygard, who often clashed with Dean's predecessor, Bill Purcell. "She may have gone out of her way to continue to antagonize them."

Yet, Cass does not really excavate the scope of Tygard's ironic criticism. When Purcell was Mayor, I listened to CM Tygard on several occasions get shrill and defiant with his proposals. He went so far as to call Purcell's concept of the Courthouse Public Square "a monument to government." As if Dean's concept of a new convention center would be any less of one?

However, in general, Cass's portrait of Evans seems even-handed. What stands out is how her critics as well as her proponents have high praise for her. In the end, I am glad that it has been a couple of strong progressive leaders who have been asking the important and direct questions of the Mayor's Office; the conservatives have basically relinquished the oppositional role for an image of pandering pawns to Karl Dean. Other progressives seem to have taken their eye off the ball. That formula does not often result in significant progressive wins, but at least determined leaders with unimpeachable character like CM Evans are asking our questions and advancing our interests when no one else will.

Gail Kerr Transmits Mayor Karl Dean's Persistent Waffles

Have you ever been in a conflict with someone who says, "Look, this is just a miscommunication," while all the while you had this gnawing sense that there was something more fundamental, going beyond communication, that was wrong with the relationship? That is sort of the way I feel this morning reading Gail Kerr, who gives Mayor Karl Dean the mainstream media's megaphone to make his case about the motives behind changing the Riverfront plans.

Kerr seems to want to assure us that this is just miscommunication on the Mayor's part and nothing more to be alarmed about. Her interpretation of the Dean administration--who, she gushes, "has done a lot of things right in his first term in office"--seems designed to blunt and dilute any criticism that it is either inept or imperious on balancing growth with infrastructure that is in the common interests of Nashville's neighborhoods.

Keep in mind that this is the same Gail Kerr who christened Republican Senator Bob Corker a savior for scapegoating the Big 3 auto unions without considering the possibility that nonunion auto companies were also listing and looking for bailouts from their homelands. So, whenever Ms. Kerr gushes, you have to take it with a grain of salt. My sense is that the Mayor's office badly botched handling some control that he unilaterally decided to assert over the Riverfront plan, but the problem here is not just the handling of the process, but the imperial pose this Mayor strikes about issues involving regular Nashvillians.

And Ms. Kerr misleads readers when she spins this into an "East Nashville" controversy. The intention clearly stated at three forums held two years ago was to develop the Riverfront in such a way as to erase the distinction between the Downtown and East Bank sides of the Cumberland River. The stated purpose was to draw the two sides closer to the concept of an organic whole. And those forums were not held exclusively in East Nashville, and the perceived stake-holders were not strictly East Nashvillians. The participants came from all over Davidson County. I attended them myself.

By using the cover of economic slump to suggest that the East Bank may have lesser priority than the Downtown side, the Mayor is effectively prising the concept of a Riverfront whole into its constituent parts once again. I am concerned that he is sundering the unity between Nashvillians--whether bearing east, west, north, or south--that came out of those forums. By portraying the blowback that the Mayor is getting now as hurtled from a bunch of outraged East Nashvillians, Gail Kerr seems to be carrying the Mayor's water, even as it looks like she is criticizing him for mere "miscommunication."

In the end, there is nothing in Kerr's column that suggests to me that Karl Dean is making a responsible attempt to clear up confusion and divisiveness that his administration engendered last week. It all still looks posturing and evasive.

Representatives had already made two contradictory public statements on which I chewed last week.

The riverfront redevelopment plan was completed over two years ago. [The Mayor's MDHA appointee] is now going through a public process of determining if what was set out two years ago still fits the needs of our community today. That was the purpose of the community meeting at East Park.

Mayor Karl Dean is committed to each of the projects envisioned by Nashville's original riverfront redevelopment plan but believes some may have to be built later than expected due to the economic recession, a city official said today.

To those you can add these statements in this morning's Kerr column:

Dean says he understands [CM Mike Jameson's point that East Nashvillians are angry that they participated for months in a process that may be overruled by the Mayor]. His announcement, he said, was not that the plan was changing. It was that he intends to include $20 million to pay for it

The mayor said [East Bank development] still may be built first, but it may not.

If we accept Gail Kerr's premise that Dean's mistake is a mere bump in the road of communication between Mayor and constituents, then we have no reason to be alarmed by the ambiguous, confused, and mutable conditions that he is creating on the Riverfront. But I have this gnawing sense that the problem here is more fundamentally about fiat and concealment than it is about dissemination of information.

UPDATE: The Riverfront Plan blog looks at the Mayor's latest back track via Gail Kerr (that is that his announcement was not of a change but of the $20 million) and asks some obvious questions:

If that's the case, why did MDHA ever call the public meeting? Why did MDHA ever propose an alternative, more expensive sequence which just happens to push to the bottom of the list the project the Mayor has been bashing at wine&cheeses around town? If Mayor Dean is committed to all 19 projects, if his office is really just concerned that the current plan "still fits the needs of our community," and if all he was going to announce was that he was putting $20M into his capital budget to fund it, why has he asked for more time to consider it? Why hasn't he just come out and publicly committed to implementing the original Riverfront Plan?