Proposed nonprofit to spearhead economic development in OKC

[Hunt4Mayor]

The need for extra secrecy, as has been clearly documented for years by people like Greg LeRoy, is that many times the corporations really don't have offers from other Cities, and don't want people like Lackmeyer or whoever finding this out. It truly is a scam.
Also, in that first pdf, the statement "...The City agrees to assign certain City employees to the Alliance to carry out the scope of work. " is funny.

[Midtowner]

I haven't studied this in depth, but I do understand the need for secrecy when dealing with corporate relocations. We also need to act swiftly when it comes to offering incentives. Apparently, this has been kicked down the road a while, which will allow for more time to study the proposal.

I totally agree with that. Unfortunately, in Oklahoma, for groups with these sorts of powers, we should have a sour taste in our mouth. In the past, these groups haven't been used for corporate relocations, but rather for lining the pockets of the city fathers. And as far as OIA goes, they weren't all bad, they did snooker GM into coming here by promising free taxes (which was beyond their power).

[soonerguru]

I totally agree with that. Unfortunately, in Oklahoma, for groups with these sorts of powers, we should have a sour taste in our mouth. In the past, these groups haven't been used for corporate relocations, but rather for lining the pockets of the city fathers. And as far as OIA goes, they weren't all bad, they did snooker GM into coming here by promising free taxes (which was beyond their power).

Didn't we end up lifting that? I thought GM paid property taxes.

[Midtowner]

A couple (or more) thoughts about the contract:

1) It looks like the Alliance wants to take over MAPS 3. It's right there on page 1 of the Contract. I'm not saying whether that's good or bad, but we've gone from management of MAPS by a Citizens' Oversight Board, the Mayor and the Council to a not-for-profit corporation. Not a good day for public input and sunshine.

2) It's also taking over the city's GOLT bond program, TIF districts, planning the city's retail strategy and incentives, OCURA, "job creation sites," and the financing of all of those things as well.

3) The Alliance, as conceptualized in the Contract seems to be taking over many of the core functions of the Chamber, and in the Alliance's case, it has city goodies to give out additionally. Do we need both entities?

4) The Contract gives the Alliance the sole discretion of which contractors it chooses to do things. Why not allow bidding on projects? This is a very troubling provision.

5) The basic idea here is to consolidate functions of several public trusts in a corporation. Why is this not a public trust? I'm worried that this has something to do with officers shirking their fiduciary duties, duties of loyalty, etc. You know, the ordinary duties trustees have to beneficiaries that would exist within the confines of a public trust.

6) I find it troubling that the Contract obligates the city to make municipal employees available to the Alliance. Again, why do we need a corporation to do this?

7) The Alliance doesn't appear to believe that it would be subject to information requests from the public. Page 7, paragraph D states that "[t]he Alliance shall be responsive to any reasonable request for information and/or documentation made by the General Manager, the City Manager, the Program Coordinator . . . " (etc.) it limits the class of people it would respond to and even goes so far as to limit the information it would need to turn over to our public officials to things which are defined within the paragraph defining the "Scope of the Work" and for expanding and promoting assigned or delegated economic development and redevelopment programs in the City. That is not only troubling, but runs contrary to existing case law and AG opinions.

8) It would seem that the fact that professional resources and staff being made available by the City would allow them to claim that their documents related to their jobs are off-limits any time the public requests because they could claim to have been doing Alliance work.

9) It then has a section specifically limiting records production to the City Manager and other higher ups. These folks will be withholding information from the public about how the public's money is doled out to for-profit entities. That doesn't smell right.

10) There's even a provision which allows the Alliance to fight the production of what otherwise would be city records which should be public.

Just about none of this is legal under Attorney General's Opinion 81-184, which specifically covers using a non-profit private corporation to circumvent the Open Meetings Act. Of course, I'm sure AG Pruitt would be happy to fix that in the name of progress. And a disclaimer here, I don't want to come off as some tinfoil hat wearing nutter. I'm not assuming that bad behavior is intended under this Agreement. I am merely pointing out that it creates a framework where public funds can be disbursed to private entities without the public having a clue as to what is going on, which creates an environment where corruption is very possible.

[Midtowner]

Didn't we end up lifting that? I thought GM paid property taxes.

They did, but only after Mid-Del Schools had to sue to undo the deal on the theory that the OIA didn't have the power to grant special tax status to anyone.

[BoulderSooner]

A couple (or more) thoughts about the contract:

1) It looks like the Alliance wants to take over MAPS 3. It's right there on page 1 of the Contract. I'm not saying whether that's good or bad, but we've gone from management of MAPS by a Citizens' Oversight Board, the Mayor and the Council to a not-for-profit corporation. Not a good day for public input and sunshine.

2) It's also taking over the city's GOLT bond program, TIF districts, planning the city's retail strategy and incentives, OCURA, "job creation sites," and the financing of all of those things as well.

3) The Alliance, as conceptualized in the Contract seems to be taking over many of the core functions of the Chamber, and in the Alliance's case, it has city goodies to give out additionally. Do we need both entities?

4) The Contract gives the Alliance the sole discretion of which contractors it chooses to do things. Why not allow bidding on projects? This is a very troubling provision.

5) The basic idea here is to consolidate functions of several public trusts in a corporation. Why is this not a public trust? I'm worried that this has something to do with officers shirking their fiduciary duties, duties of loyalty, etc. You know, the ordinary duties trustees have to beneficiaries that would exist within the confines of a public trust.

6) I find it troubling that the Contract obligates the city to make municipal employees available to the Alliance. Again, why do we need a corporation to do this?

7) The Alliance doesn't appear to believe that it would be subject to information requests from the public. Page 7, paragraph D states that "[t]he Alliance shall be responsive to any reasonable request for information and/or documentation made by the General Manager, the City Manager, the Program Coordinator . . . " (etc.) it limits the class of people it would respond to and even goes so far as to limit the information it would need to turn over to our public officials to things which are defined within the paragraph defining the "Scope of the Work" and for expanding and promoting assigned or delegated economic development and redevelopment programs in the City. That is not only troubling, but runs contrary to existing case law and AG opinions.

8) It would seem that the fact that professional resources and staff being made available by the City would allow them to claim that their documents related to their jobs are off-limits any time the public requests because they could claim to have been doing Alliance work.

9) It then has a section specifically limiting records production to the City Manager and other higher ups. These folks will be withholding information from the public about how the public's money is doled out to for-profit entities. That doesn't smell right.

10) There's even a provision which allows the Alliance to fight the production of what otherwise would be city records which should be public.

Just about none of this is legal under Attorney General's Opinion 81-184, which specifically covers using a non-profit private corporation to circumvent the Open Meetings Act.

it doesn't "take over" any of these things ... it functions as the staff for those oversight boards .. and gets funding from all of them ..

it deals with maps 3 because ocura currently deals with maps 3 ...

[okclee]

After reading this, it is perfect sense of this years city council elections.

Interesting too that they had the council looking at this today. The day that the new council members were being sworn in, except Shadid wasn't supposed to be there.

[Midtowner]

it doesn't "take over" any of these things ... it functions as the staff for those oversight boards .. and gets funding from all of them ..

it deals with maps 3 because ocura currently deals with maps 3 ...

Due respect, that's not what the contract says. In the initial recitals, it states that "functions performed by the Alliance may include [b]coordination, management, planning and implementation of: [using acronyms here for brevity's sake] GOLT, TIF districts, retail strategy and incentives, OCURA, job creation sites, MAPS 3, and financing for all of the above. That's awfully open-ended. A conspiracy theorist might point out that our public trusts in the past, have been more about lining the pockets of the well-connected than serving the public good, are already beholden to the same folks that'll be running this corp, and that the folks who will be running this corp will really be calling the shots, and that this would be an effective vehicle to avoid public disclosure of that sort of implicit or explicit arrangement. And again, I'm talking in terms of an assume-the-worst framework here, not assuming that this is what's going on.

There's no evidence that there's anything evil afoot, and I can see perfectly good reasons for the secrecy, but doing things like not requiring this group to utilize competitive bidding for contractors which will be paid for with public money, and not having some sort of public access to records (even if you put a year or two hold before allowing public access) could serve as a framework for some bad stuff to happen. I'm not saying it will, just that it could.

[Midtowner]

After reading this, it is perfect sense of this years city council elections.

Interesting too that they had the council looking at this today. The day that the new council members were being sworn in, except Shadid wasn't supposed to be there.

You noticed that too?

I'd love to know whether there's a relationship between Alliance and the Momentum group. Again, I'm not implying there is, just that if there was, that would explain a lot.

[Urban Pioneer]

If you haven't had a chance to view the city council meeting on video today, take a look. It was a pretty interesting discussion about this topic.

Shadid said something to the effect of If this had been proposed 6 month earlier, or even 6 months from now, it probably wouldn't be a big deal. But coming off of the most divisive election in recent memory causes people to react with alarm at the lack of transparency. I'm paraphrasing.

But it set off quite a discussion. Including a detailed discussion on timing of the Convention Center, CC Hotel, and overall lack of diversity on the proposed alliance.

It was just interesting. It was standing room only for swearing in. Also, he specifically referenced Facebook and OKCTALK. Definitely a councilman in touch with how people feel about things. It's going to be a different era in city government.

[Doug Loudenback]

As Jeff said, today's city council meeting was wholly intriguing, not only on this topic but on the Committee for Oklahoma City Momentum (which was roundly bashed by Pete White without specifically naming the organization) -- he called it an "obscenity" and an "atrocity." I'm in the process of putting together a flash file which includes all the discussion associated with this proposal and that will hopefully be up by tomorrow morning, but it might be later (I need to attend to my son's hospital operation in the morning, and so there may be a delay).

In the meantime, as Jeff said, it is, to this forum, noteworthy that Ed Shadid's comments included a reference to the discussion here, in this thread, at OkcTalk.com. He may be the 1st council member to publicly acknowledge the discussion and its value which occurs here.

If you've not already listened to or viewed today's council meeting, I will add this observation. Only council members Salyer and Ryan (who are proposed council members on this organization) seemed to be implicitly in favor of the proposal ... they chimed in from time to time to defend the proposal or its essence. Council member Marrs also noted that this "Alliance" proposal had been approved about 2 months earlier ... something that I had missed.

[Spartan]

I really feel tempted to want to do a "Shadid Watch" segment on my blog that watched incredible weekly statements made by the new councilor. But what I wanted to say, Doug, was do you think you could either give me some tips on how to make videos out of these city clips or could you make clips that break down the comments of each of the councilors, a video for each councilor. There were some really good comments made in succession starting with Pete White and ending with Ed Shadid, or depending on where you draw the line, Pete White again...lol

[Doug Loudenback]

Nick, to record either audio and/or video from city council meetings, you need some software that will do that, and it ain't always fail-safe. It's probably best that we discuss this privately rather than muck up this thread. I'll be glad to tell you what little I've learned ... but just enough to be dangerous, as they say.

[Midtowner]

A couple broad concerns from my earlier narrow concerns:

1) Transparency and accountability: This corp was set up to be the opposite of that. Does no one find it concerning that not even the mayor, not even our elected city councilmen who are supposed to make a lot of these funding decisions (or at least decide who makes the funding decisions) are not even allowed to request records from the corp? Are we to trust that they will be able to get everything they want and need by requesting that Couch make the appropriate requests?

2) Why a corp and not a trust?: Most of this could be accomplished through a public trust, and I'd be a lot more comfortable if it was. There's no really good reason (from a John Q. Public perspective) that there should be all this privacy, the Chamber can handle those sorts of transactions just fine. But aside from transparency, there's another big aspect with a trust which does not have to exist with a corp. With a trust, trustees are forbidden from self-dealing, from taking advantage of deals which their fiduciaries would have benefited from without first bringing that opportunity to their fellow trustees, they have a duty of care, to be competent. In this case, unless their contracts exclude said duties, which is pretty standard these days, even if the officers of the corp have those duties, they will be to the corporation and not to the people. It is concerning that we have all of this secrecy and all of this insider info in one place, and the folks with access to that information are basically free to engage in insider trading.

Let's say, like with the I-40 alignment, the corp basically knows where the convention center is going to go significantly sooner than everyone else. Well, then it's perfectly fine and dandy for individuals, corporate officers, etc., to go out and buy up all of the land surrounding the site, only to be able to turn around and sell it back to the city or to another investor at a handsome profit once the public knows where the center is going. And I really don't think that sort of assumption really requires me to adjust my tinfoil hat very much, I think this could easily be one of the reasons a corporate form was chosen rather than just creating another public trust.

[BoulderSooner]

Due respect, that's not what the contract says. In the initial recitals, it states that "functions performed by the Alliance may include [b]coordination, management, planning and implementation of: [using acronyms here for brevity's sake] GOLT, TIF districts, retail strategy and incentives, OCURA, job creation sites, MAPS 3, and financing for all of the above. That's awfully open-ended. A conspiracy theorist might point out that our public trusts in the past, have been more about lining the pockets of the well-connected than serving the public good, are already beholden to the same folks that'll be running this corp, and that the folks who will be running this corp will really be calling the shots, and that this would be an effective vehicle to avoid public disclosure of that sort of implicit or explicit arrangement. And again, I'm talking in terms of an assume-the-worst framework here, not assuming that this is what's going on.

There's no evidence that there's anything evil afoot, and I can see perfectly good reasons for the secrecy, but doing things like not requiring this group to utilize competitive bidding for contractors which will be paid for with public money, and not having some sort of public access to records (even if you put a year or two hold before allowing public access) could serve as a framework for some bad stuff to happen. I'm not saying it will, just that it could.

i think they can and will act as the agent for those orgs, however it is important to note that they are not a decision making body and the orgs "the alliance" will represent/work for will meet and direct them just as they do with city staff today.

i don't see this as any different then city staff or the CVB... this is contracting out some city functions in a more effiecient way ... now i do see a point about accountability. I think monthly rather than quarterly reports back to council would be a better way to handle this.

one last note on the so called non diverse board. Just as councilmen Mars said the council doesn't pick the board for lots of orgs that do business for the city. In this case the board represents the orgs that will contract with the alliance for services which IMHO is very very appropriate. If the council wants this board to be more diverse they need to change the leadership of the orgs that will contract with the Alliance.

[Midtowner]

But the way it's set up, while the trusts are by and large accountable at some level to the Council, outside of termination of this contract (and I haven't looked at that part of it), I don't see what sort of oversight the Council itself has. They can't even request documents. And if city employees are working in some capacity for the Alliance, then where are we with regard to FOIA/Open Meetings? I think there's an AG opinion on the subject, but I just don't see Scott Pruitt vigorously enforcing the Open Meetings/Open Records act like his one-term predecessor back in 79-83.

[BoulderSooner]

But the way it's set up, while the trusts are by and large accountable at some level to the Council, outside of termination of this contract (and I haven't looked at that part of it), I don't see what sort of oversight the Council itself has. They can't even request documents. And if city employees are working in some capacity for the Alliance, then where are we with regard to FOIA/Open Meetings? I think there's an AG opinion on the subject, but I just don't see Scott Pruitt vigorously enforcing the Open Meetings/Open Records act like his one-term predecessor back in 79-83.

how much current access do we have to the dealing of the city staff? clearly they have been working on this for some time and we did know anything about it until last week

[Midtowner]

how much current access do we have to the dealing of the city staff? clearly they have been working on this for some time and we did know anything about it until last week

Anything they have not falling within certain very narrow categories (e.g., personnel) is open to the public via FOIA or the Open Meetings Act. That the 4th Estate may have been not doing its job or that there was nothing of substance to report is no reason to conclude that the public would be better served without knowing what its money is paying for.

Where we might be concerned is that certain well-connected individuals, even members of this corp, will be privy to important information before the rest of us, e.g., where the convention center will go, and they will be able to make a mint on real estate investments. There's also a concern about TIF appropriations, what developers will be approved, which won't, and all of the information regarding that will be closed to the public. Right now, there are AG opinions which would theoretically protect the public from this, but the way this contract is written, they either don't know those opinions are out there, which I highly doubt, or because they expect that no one will do anything to stop Alliance from hiding information from the public.

[Larry OKC]

There needs to be a clear & distinct separation of City & Chamber. Period.

[soonerguru]

You noticed that too?

I'd love to know whether there's a relationship between Alliance and the Momentum group. Again, I'm not implying there is, just that if there was, that would explain a lot.

Of course there is. Duh. Dontcha think Clay Bennett and Larry Nichols were big Momentum spenders, along with buddy Aubrey McLendon?

Midtowner's post has me completely sold against this. It should be voted down. It's odd that two of the council members are on the steering committee, and are expected to vote as to whether this organization should exist? Say what? This has the strong stench of cronyism.

[Midtowner]

Of course there is. Duh. Dontcha think Clay Bennett and Larry Nichols were big Momentum spenders, along with buddy Aubrey McLendon?

No, I have no evidence to that effect.

[Hunt4Mayor]

I enjoyed Cathy O'Connor's presentation, especially when she talked about how dumb the Chamber of Commerce is (1:37:23 "chamber doesn't have the knowledge...") and can't really do anything - so let's give the responsibilities to the all knowing alliance. Her statement that "...a lot of cities create entities like these..." was rather bizarre, I don't think the alliance has been created by "The City" (I.E people who do actual work for a living and pay taxes, boring stuff like that, etc...) rather a group of elites who's main desire is to preserve the status quo (with regards to money and power).

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when she said the alliance is "not a policy making entity" over and over and over. Anyone with a functioning brain that follows these types of groups, be it The Heritage Foundation or Planned Parenthood or whoever, take your pick, do make policy - indirectly if you want to call it that.

at 1:48:38 she made the funny quip, after several discouraging statements from the council on how this group doesn't seem focused on the South Side, East Side, mainly downtown, that the "structure (of the alliance's work) is designed to be city wide" I wish one of the Council members would have asked her where the evidence is for that statement. I doubt there is any other than the vague statements they have in their heads that they'll make at proper times...

Skip did ask a good question at 2:03:25, with regards to the Convention Hotel which the alliance wants to make happen, "....do we know of a convention center hotel in our region that has been successful" - O'conner replied "..I could probably get you some information on that..."

She liked saying that the alliance will become a "one stop shop for..." and I think she said it about a dozen times. For some reason, this image came into my head. Dunno why, haven't seen this movie in years....

[Hunt4Mayor]

Something even funnier, the opinion piece in The Oklahoman today is, you guessed it "Economic development alliance idea worth pursuing" The article starts off "Some folks haven’t gotten over passage of MAPS 3. That was in December 2009." and gets worse from there.

I like this funny part: "...The city council on Tuesday deferred approval of the alliance, with new council member Ed Shadid joining others in questioning the proposed entity’s transparency and lack of diversity of its proposed membership. Yet one day earlier Shadid had spoken against disbanding a governor’s advisory council on Mideast cultures, a council that had no apparent religious diversity."

We need, if anything, an alliance that can look into the possibility of getting our town a newspaper and some local ownership of tv and radio.

[Larry OKC]

Of course there is. Duh. Dontcha think Clay Bennett and Larry Nichols were big Momentum spenders, along with buddy Aubrey McLendon?

Midtowner's post has me completely sold against this. It should be voted down. It's odd that two of the council members are on the steering committee, and are expected to vote as to whether this organization should exist? Say what? This has the strong stench of cronyism.

Will throw this out there...think it was Councilman Ryan (Chamber/Momentum backed and one of the Alliance members) that stated they weren't voting on creating the Alliance (essentially saying it already exists), that they were only voting if the City should be part of their funding.

[MikeOKC]

Am I the only one wondering if this is just "Oklahoma Industrial Authority II"?