Proposed nonprofit to spearhead economic development in OKC

[soonerguru]

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.

[Hunt4Mayor]

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.

Documented perfectly in Greg LeRoy's fine book The Great American Jobs Scam: Corporate Tax Dodging and the Myth of Job Creation

[OkieDave]

Jim Couch was dealing with Continental Resources for months and kept it quiet what is the need for extra secrecy? If it makes sense it will happen.

[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.

[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 ...

[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.

[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.

[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]

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.