Opinion: Board should insist on open partnership


The General Government Committee of the Vance County Board of Commissioners still isn’t sold on the Henderson-Vance Economic Partnership, and that’s a good thing.

As often happens in public debates, we see the lines of communication breaking down. The partnership’s proponents and critics have slipped onto parallel tracks, allowing them to see the logic and clarity of their positions without seeing the points of the other side.

To the organizers of the partnership, it seems like a no-brainer. Economic development isn’t working. An independent Team Vance study found that a lack of coordination and cooperation is one of the problems. This group will create that cooperation in an unprecedented way. It has the involvement and support, on a voluntary basis, of some of Henderson’s leading citizens. It’s such a good idea that businesses and the hospital board have bought into it with pledges for enough money to start the partnership and run it for several years. What is there to oppose?

To the skeptics — most of whom don’t oppose the concept of coordinating our economic development efforts — the partnership as proposed sets off every warning signal imaginable. The fact that current economic development efforts are failing is not an argument that the partnership is the correct alternative — particularly when many of the same people are involved in both. The whole thing smacks of an effort to take public business behind closed doors. If the central role of Sam Watkins weren’t enough to make people think “Embassy Square Foundation II,” the proposed bylaws would do the trick: the creation of a broad board of directors with no promise of open meetings or of regular meetings of the whole board; the provision for a limited executive committee to do everything in the name of the board; and lots of unenforceable spoken explanations and assurances about what the bylaws mean and how they will be carried out.

Essentially, the partnership’s organizers ask us to trust them, but public trust is in short order after Embassy Square — a noble project whose finances weren’t quite what the public was led to believe and whose execution was carried out behind closed doors.

That’s where communication breaks down: One side says it is acting for the common good; the other side says it has doubts. And we hit an impasse.

Let’s be clear about one thing, though: The burden of proof is on the partnership. It wants to do something different and to have the support and involvement of our elected officials. It therefore has the responsibility to address any and all questions now, before we’ve passed the point of no return. It is the height of arrogance to respond to questions with bluster, anger and impatience.

It does the partnership no good when John Wester shows aggravation at the questions of a fellow council member, Elissa Yount. It does no good when the partnership drops its bylaws into agenda materials for the City Council and Board of Commissioners to rubber-stamp, then seems shocked when people take the bylaws seriously and ask what certain provisions mean. It does no good when Watkins provides no details about what the partnership would do but presents plenty of misleading implications.

(For example, Watkins left the clear impression with the commissioners and council members June 6 that The Daily Dispatch acknowledged mistakes and bias in this June 5 article about the partnership; in fact, subsequent pieces on the editorial page revealed that the newspaper correctly made no such admission. That same night, when the council asked Watkins whether the commissioners had acted to endorse the partnership and his bylaws, the first thing he said was “One of the commissioners was missing,” implying that the county board chose not to act in Tommy Hester’s absence. In fact, the board’s attorney, Stubbs Hight, cut off debate on the bylaws before it began, and Hester’s absence was irrelevant.)

The disconnect in the public debate is nowhere more evident than in the matter of open meetings. Watkins assures us that the group wants no secrecy and that meetings will be as open as possible — end of issue. Further, it’s noted that the partnership is a private group, so it doesn’t have any responsibility to meet in public.

It’s true, the partnership may operate in private, skirting but not violating the state’s open-meetings law. It doesn’t have to promise openness, let along codify it in the bylaws. It’s also true that we don’t have to invest the public trust in the partnership. Our county commissioners can vote not to participate and can order the county employees in the tourism and economic development agencies not to cooperate, as partnership Chairman-to-be Bob Fleming said in not so many words Thursday on WIZS. And if the Board of Education doesn’t want to play, it can order Schools Superintendent Norm Shearin to stay away.

Partnership advocates can and do argue that the partnership’s setup gives the agencies all of the power because they can halt or limit participation at any time. But here’s an idea: Why not try to persuade us all upfront about the value of the partnership? Instead of seeing the commissioners’ General Government Committee as a hurdle, see it as an opportunity to inform us.

To that end, we have some specific questions we suggest the commissioners ask partnership representatives this week:

* How much money has been pledged, and by whom?

* Would the partnership, now or in the foreseeable future, spend or direct the spending of funds now given to the Economic Development Commission, the Downtown Development Commission or the Tourism Department?

* Please explain, with examples if possible, how the partnership and Economic Development Director Benny Finch’s office would be able to do more together than either could do alone. What exactly will be different about economic development now?

* Please explain why economic development requires a formal private-public organization with an executive director and a paid staff, while the community is attempting to address the equally dire crime situation through an open, volunteer coalition, the Vance Organization to Implement Community Excellence.

Besides asking and insisting on answers to these and other important questions about the partnership, the commissioners should do one other thing: They should refuse to endorse or participate in the partnership without an open-meetings measure in the bylaws.

We can’t imagine a reason not to adopt an open-meetings provision that incorporates the economic-development exception of the state open-meetings law. After all, two-ninths of the directors are elected officials, most of the others represent public organizations, and all are acting in behalf of the public.

We’ve heard arguments that the exception would make an open-meetings provision in the bylaws meaningless, but we disagree. Such a bylaw would make an open meeting the default and would force the partnership to justify closing a session. And too many closed sessions without action would raise questions about the partnership’s effectiveness.

Perhaps most important, putting a commitment to open meetings in writing would be the partnership’s first step toward earning, rather than demanding, the public trust. And maybe the public debate would gradually become civil public discourse.