In an answer to the city's request for more information about the museum's operations, Hayes-Greene writes this about the city making the museum's responses public:
"[A]ny time Sit-In Movement, Inc., a non-profit, but a private corporation*, answers in this format its personal confidential and financial information will be published on a City website. [snip] [W]e decline to have our private information published on the City web page unless other recipients of City Money [sic] do also."The City of Greensboro is currently formulating a contract that will set the stage for governance of the performing arts center. It anticipates the formation of a non-profit corporation to operate the facility. For weeks I have been pleading with city council to include language that would obligate the non-profit to make its records public. Instead of enshrining that in the agreement, what was added was language that limits public access only to "audited financial statements" and "board meeting minutes" and even then those limited records, according to the current text, can be inspected only "to the extent the functioning of the non-profit is not compromised."
Council has been resistant to changing this language and actually obligating the performing arts center governing non-profit to public transparency, insisting that the city's co-ownership of the building will somehow magically compel the independent non-profit corporation to make its records public and that obligating the non-profit to public transparency in the contract is unnecessary. Seeing Hayes-Greene's objection to public transparency prompted me to write the following to city council.
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Dear City Council,
I have previously expressed my concerns with you that the portion of the performing arts center agreement regarding public access to the governing non-profit's records is inadequate and an invitation to secrecy, obfuscation and mistrust. Lest you may have doubted the potential for an uncooperative future board to take an adversarial posture towards transparency under the current terms of the agreement, I invite you to see Deena Hayes-Greene's latest response to the City's inquiry regarding the finances and operations of the International Civil Rights Center and Museum.
I encourage you, again, to consider the implications of the performing arts center contract on situations just such as this and to enshrine in the agreement, in no uncertain terms, public access to the performing arts center's board's records. Not only will you be shirking your duties to protect the interests of Greensboro's public if you do not more strongly mandate public access to the performing arts center governing board's records in the agreement, but you will put truth to Ms. Hayes-Greene's assertions that the International Civil Rights Center and Museum is being treated differently than the performing arts center.
Cordially,
Roch Smith, Jr.---------
The City of Greensboro is committed to providing $30 million in public financing to the performing arts center (compared to $1.5 million for the museum) and, by design, will be the financial backstop for operational shortfalls. It is simply irresponsible for the city not to obligate to public transparency the entity that will be governing an operation vested with so much public support. Simply saying that the governing non-profit probably will be transparent or that one could make the argument that their records should be public is not enough. It gives the board room to raise the kinds of objections raised by Ms. Hayes-Greene.
If this council actually expects the records of the performing arts center governing non-profit to be public, they should put that obligation in the contract. Anything less is a wink and a nod that this council is prepared to allow the governing board to operate with a degree of secrecy.
* This is exactly the same type of organization proposed to govern the performing arts center -- a non-profit LLC.
Update: Edited for clarity.
Well put!
ReplyDeleteMs. Hayes-Green's chutzpah is remarkable. The city can put any and all public records online that it wants, and given the level of mistrust the museum's leadership has generated on its own, with no help at all from either city government or from those who want the venture to fail, she is foolish to expect anything less than full transparency on city interactions with the organization.
ReplyDeleteWhat she SHOULD have said was, "We're fine with this, but we think that in the interest of transparency and public confidence in city government, the same treatment should apply to every other entity receiving money from or through the city."
Agreed. I found it remarkable that she, as a member of the Guilford County School Board, is so unknowledgeable of North Carolina public records law.
ReplyDeleteFact is, Deena Hayes-Greene is a marginally bright (at best) public servant with no discernible talents save for race baiting and self aggrandization. Advocating long and loudly for minority contractors while being married to a black contractor and not disclosing that fact hardly engenders trust or credibility. The latest Rhino Times printed her recent email spat with School Board member Darlene Garrett, revealing Ms Hayes-Greene to be rather petty and spiteful.
ReplyDeleteA more self-aware board of directors might well regret naming such a wing nut their chairperson but I suspect this was their strategy.
Still, she has a point, even if only because of the way the city has handled transparency with other orgs in the past.
ReplyDeleteI saw the headline of the Rhino article, but haven't read it yet. I will.