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Brown: ‘No secret deal for industry incentive’Tue, 08/01/2006 - 4:21pm
By: Letters to the ...
I received a phone call from a local reporter last week while I was on vacation. The call was regarding a $20,000 economic development incentive offered to a prospective business in conjunction with incentives from the county and the state. Unfortunately, Councilwoman Judi-ann Rutherford recently stated the incentive offer was a “secret” deal without City Council approval. My Nov. 14, 2003, letter to the Fayette County Development Authority president and CEO clearly states, “Our City Manager, City Finance Director and a majority of City Council have expressed that they feel this opportunity would be beneficial to our city.” Ms. Rutherford was not on the City Council at that time. As part of the standard economic development process, we had not been informed of who the prospect actually was, and we were only given some vague data, such as it would be a $6 million corporate headquarters facility with 115 white-collar jobs. The commitment was in principle as there were no sufficient details to merit having a vote. However, the entire 2004 City Council, including Councilwoman Rutherford, was copied on a March 17, 2004 letter to County Commission Chairman Greg Dunn citing the $20,000 incentive and the fact that the Fayette County Development Authority was increasing their request of the city to an increased total of $57,500. Due to some further mistakes on the part of the Fayette County Development Authority, their request later grew to hundreds of thousands of dollars. (At this point, the $20,000 talk went out the window). The entire process became tainted and officials from the authority apologized for the errors. The City Council, including Councilwoman Rutherford, did receive staff reports on the matter and the entire council did, in fact, publicly authorize some significant budget amendments via a public vote in public council meetings to fund engineering studies and plans on behalf of Cooper Wiring Devices. There were no secrets as all the relevant documentation before the council was included in the press packets for the public meetings. The council had public discussions on the issues and the local media reported on the approved expenditures. It was foolhardy of the current council to approve a $20,000 expenditure without responsibly obtaining the appropriate historical information. All they had to do was pick up the phone and call me as the reporter from The Citizen did and they would have known that a significant sum had already been spent. I hope Councilwoman Rutherford will publicly amend her previous statements regarding “secret” deals and her not having personal knowledge of the matter. I am sure it was an honest mistake on her part. I also found it humorous that a member of Direct PAC would write in the Free Speech section that I had a secret annexation meeting with John Wieland Homes a few years back. What is their definition of secret? The local press was also invited to the meeting along many others. The Citizen’s Frank Lynch wrote all the details of the meeting in the next issue of their newspaper. Now, that’s open government and I would not have it any other way. Hope everyone is having a wonderful summer. Steve Brown 
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