Opaque "Union Square Campus" demands answers

GREENSBORO, NC -- I have a wish. I wish that someone in our local paid media would stop, take a breath and realize they've gotten ahead of themselves in reporting on what has come to be described as the "Union Square Campus." This project, to be located on publicly owned land at the south sides of the downtown intersection of Elm Streets and Lee Streets, was once considered too contaminated for development until I identified federal funds to pay for for environmental remediation.

Twelve years later (nobody ever accused Greensboro of being supersonic), the site is ready for development and, in the blink of an eye, it has become "Union Square Campus." While the impression created so far is that this will be some sort of satellite campus for area universities, the ownership and money interests have been hard to follow. Instead we've had misrepresentations of the role of project's first building and tortured descriptions like this that are obviously more about hype than clear explanation:

"[A] catalytic higher education development with a first-building focus on training and education for health care professions..."

A catalytic higher education development?

It doesn't help that there is no online resource that describes the project in any detail—no web page, no Wikipedia entry—nothing other than disparate press release-driven announcements regurgitated by local media.

Between few public records, sparse news stories and the rumor mill, there are more questions than answers. Here are some things the professional media ought to clear up for us:

Who will own it?
Currently, the land for the project is owned by the City of Greensboro. Unpublished sources say that a developer was chosen who was to purchase the land but was disqualified for some unknown reason and a new developer was chosen but they have not taken possession of the property. In other words, they haven't purchased it but remain identified as the developer. Who is the intended eventual owner of the land and is the City of Greensboro going to sell it to them at fair market value or will be it be "donated"? Was the developer chosen through an open and fair process in the best interests of the citizens of Greensboro? Who will own the buildings, and not just the first; what is the ownership plan for additional buildings? Who is deciding?

These are matters of fiduciary responsibility of public property. Answers to these questions are of the utmost public interest.

How much is education related? Really.
Supporters hype the project as devoted to education—"A catalytic higher education development"—but only a single building has been described as being education related. Previous discussions and people who claim to know say that the property is also to include apartments and condos as well as commercial and office space.

Is the project being promoted as education related to procure public funding and public support when some portion, if not most of it, will be for other purposes?

Who gets the money?
It has been announced that the first building is to house classroom space, to be rented, hopes are, to local universities. Presumably, there will be other future rents, no matter the purpose of other eventual buildings. To whom will those rents go? Is that arrangement, whatever it may be, in the best interest of the citizens of Greensboro?

The next time reporters type "Union Square Campus" in a story, I wish they'd stop and ask themselves, "How much do my readers know about what this is? How much do I know?"

Paved in gold: $13 million per mile sidewalk needs construction audit

GREENSBORO, NC -- Dang asks some good questions (in his usual brash way) about the City of Greensboro staff's recommendation that another $26 million be authorized for the downtown greenway.

The public should see an audit of the money spent so far. An official construction audit. We were initially told that the four mile loop would cost an already lofty $26 million. Now it needs another $26 million? That would bring the cost to $13 million per mile. That's more than half of the cost of the four mile portion of the urban loop being built from Bryan Boulevard to Battlegournd Avenue, and that is a six lane highway with four bridges and an interchange.

Something doesn't smell right at all.

Mama always said, unequal is as unequal does

From the comments at The Detonator on the International Civil Rights Center & Museum board chair Deena Hayes-Greene's assertion of unequal public scrutiny for city-funded entities:
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She missed an opportunity for some goodwill and positive PR, still, her point remains. Why is the Civil Rights Center and Museum being treated differently? Sure, it’s transparent and proper for the [museum] records to be made publicly accessible, but:

- Why did it take the City nearly four months to respond to a public records request for the publicly-incentivized Wyndham hotel feasibility study?

- Why has the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro, to this day, refused to provide to city council representative Marikay Abujuaiter a list of matching donors to the city’s $250,000 contribution to the performing arts center exploratory efforts? A record she has publicly asked for three times, starting in October of last year and which CFGG president Walker Sanders tells her, each time, is forthcoming, most recently two weeks ago when, at a city council meeting, he said publicly and on the record he would provide to Abuzuaiter “tomorrow” and which he did not do?

- Why is the mayor insisting that the non-profit governing the operations of the performing arts center will have its records made public because it will co-own the facility with the city yet is declining to obligate the non-profit to public transparency in the operating agreement or its by-laws?

- Why does city-supported Downtown Greensboro Incorporated get a pass when it declares some of its records to be off limits to public inspection?

Yes, there is a double standard. The solution is not to give the Civil Rights Museum the same cloak of secrecy that other publicly-funded third parties receive but to extend the same expectations for transparency and public access to all others.

Civil Rights Museum response a warning on performing arts center

GREENSBORO, NC -- Although she gets some of her facts and nomenclature grossly wrong, the director of the International Civil Rights Center and Museum, Deena Hayes-Greene, is right about the inequality of the current city council's expectations of the non-profits it funds and her reactions foreshadow problems with the city's expectations of the performing arts center.

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.

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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.

On closer inspection, PAC scheme worse than thought

GREENSBORO, NC -- After posting yesterday's open letter to Greensboro's City Council, I have come to better understand the financing scheme being put together for the performing arts center. It's worse than I thought for the people of Greensboro. In a nutshell, rather than the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro (CFGG) or donors putting put up a portion of their own assets to guarantee their $35 million in pledges towards the project's $65 projected costs, a separate non-profit will be created that will own the center for the first ten years and put it up as collateral for the donor pledges.

That inspired another letter to city council:
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Hello Folks,

Since writing to you yesterday with some questions about the memorandum of understanding on the performing arts center, I have come to better understand the ownership issue and it is even more discomforting.

If I have this right, the City will not own the center for the first ten years while it is used as collateral for the bank backing of the donor contributions. Then, after ten years, even if all has gone according to plan and ownership successfully transfers to the city, the city can only further transfer the center by giving it away to the non-profit; no other options.

I hope it is as obvious to you, as it is to me, the kind of financial jeopardy to which that scheme exposes the citizens of Greensboro. Should something go awry in the first ten years -- cost overruns, donor contributions fall short, loan default by the non-profit or some other fiscal speed bump -- the people of Greensboro will be over a barrel: Either come up with more money to ameliorate whatever problem may have arisen, even if it was the responsibility of other parties, or lose ownership of the center and our tens of millions put in it. Even if we successfully pass the ten year mark and the center transfers to the city, the center would be encumbered in a way unlike any other city property: ours, but not to do with what we will.

This alternative strikes me as simpler and more fair: Have the CFGG and the PAC donors, especially those whose names will supplant Greensboro in the naming of the facility (even though we are its largest financial contributor), have them get a bank letter underwritten by their assets instead of "borrowing" public property to underwrite their financial promises. The Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro has $146 million in assets, why must it put public property at risk to back its donor pledges instead of using its own massive assets? If that is a risk they are unwilling to take, we should ask why.

Yours,

Roch

Correction: This post has been updated with the correct amount of the donor pledges.

Dang right!

GREENSBORO, NC -- Blogger Dang (Eric Robert) recently joined the board of tax-payer funded Downtown Greensboro Incorporated (DGI). Although having only attended two meetings so far, he is bothered by the board's lack of transparency, tight-fisted rule and self-dealings. He has some excellent suggestions for improving public trust in DGI that should apply to all non-profits that receive public funding.

He suggests:

• Record board meetings electronically. 
• Respond to requests for information about the organization in accordance with public records law.
• Structure organizations so the operations are transparent and understood without multiple layers of foundations, shelters and holding companies.
• Don't use P.R. consultants as a means to avoid being honest and forthcoming.
• Diversify boards so that the members reflect the community at-large.

Some of these recommendations can only serve as guideposts at best. Only records of government business are subject to North Carolina public records law, for example, but that doesn't mean that non-profit boards receiving public largess cannot strive to be more open.

Also, when elected officials and public staff who sit on non-profit boards in their official capacities receive records from the non-profit, such as meeting minutes and audits, they should, as a matter of course, make those publicly available as the City of Greensboro refreshingly did last week, posting online minutes and audits from board meetings of the International Civil Rights Center & Museum. In the possession of government officials serving on boards because of their official capacities, such documents become public records (see Greensboro Attorney's opinion, page 2).

Robert was a long-time critic of Downtown Greensboro Incorporated. I was rather surprised when I heard he got a seat on their board. They must have thought he could bring something to the table. Now, he has. These are good ideas not just for DGI, but for all non-profits that benefit from public financing. The City of Greensboro should consider making them mandatory conditions for receiving public funds.