Say Anything Blog

A Grand Forks Herald Reporter’s blog reported on the head of the Grand Forks Economic Development Corporation resigning.  In the comments I took the liberaty to question why it’s impossible to find out how they are spending our tax money. 
This was his response:

Maybe the Herald, which is an EDC supporter, doesn’t want you to know how they’re spending our money. The EDC is a private group not a public group so disclosure requirements are different.

“What are they hiding?” That’s rich coming from an anonymous blogger.

These economic development corporations are a scheme to get around the North Dakota Constitution which prohibits giving tax money to private businesses.  Somewhere along the line someone came up with the fiction that they could form a publicly owned corporation to launder the money to favored businesses.  Personally I don’t buy the idea that they can get around a specific prohibition by forming a shell corporation, but they’ve gotten away with it so far.

But really, why should they not report on where they are spending our money.  The various government agencies (in this case they are supported by both the city and the county)  give them our tax money.  It’s our money.  We have every right to know how it’s being spent. 

The Herald, or at least this reporter, don’t think it’s any business of ours.  I have to wonder what they are hiding.

Now there are limits to what we probably need to see.  I don’t think we need to know about a deal until it’s executed.  I can see the need to negotiate in secret.  Also if they receive confidential information from a company (financial or otherwise) we don’t need to know.  On the other hand, the public has every right to see the contract with the company as well as knowing how much we’re giving them including future obligations.

What’s wrong with that?

The reporter claimed that this is a private enterprise which is complete horse manure.  This is a corporation owned and supported by the public. 

Regarding the last bit.  I get on this guys nerves pretty regularily.  I just take things like this as a proof that I’m close to the mark. 

Update:  Tu Uyen Tran responded in the comments on his blog.  I thought I’d comment here on this because it covers a wide range of issues.

People, I was being flip about our desire to keep things quiet. We are, in fact, a financial supporter. If you’ve been to this page, http://www.grandforks.org/gfredc/partners.php, you’ll see we are a “platinum member.

I buy this, I push his buttons, he pushes mine.  I accept that he was pushing mine pretending that the Herald’s participation meant they didn’t want to cover it. 

I do think though that they are loathe to cover sensitive issues that will reflect poorly on the powers that be.  For the Herald’s own reasons they don’t want us to know that charity business A gets this much and charity-business B gets this.  I think that’s a poor editorial decision, but I don’t think it has to do with their membership in the EDC. 

The city could insist that any entity that it funds be wide open, but that would probably limit partnerships that it can get into—partnerships that can benefit taxpayers either by expanding the tax base, which is the point of economic development, or reducing social problems before they worsen, which is the point of social service nonprofit groups.

I think we have every right to know where our money is being spent.  As far as I’m concerned if a charity-business gets free money from our taxes then they have to expect that it will be public knowledge. 

I also believe that the economy would be better if people kept their own money and invested it in the local economy.  These charity-businesses usually fail which is probably why the city leadership and the Herald don’t want us to know about it.

With the EDC, there’s a reason it’s a public-private partnership rather than a purely public organization. Businesses don’t always want to attract attention to their expansion plans until they’re ready to pull the trigger.

This is a classic straw man argument.  I don’t mind the first contacts being kept confidential.  However once they accept public money, the public has a right to know what the deal entails including how we benefit as well as future obligation for all parties.  Again, there’s a reason why they don’t want the public to know this.

Bear in mind that if any city dollars, i.e., from the Growth Fund, were to go to these businesses, their identities and intentions would have to be wide open.

Wide open how?  I’ve never seen where the growth fund puts their money.  In fact I believe it’s illegal to give money directly from a government entity to a charity-business.  That’s why they formed economic development corporations in the first place to launder the money.

As for the dig about anonymity: I don’t care about anonymity but if you’re going to be anonymous, at least have the decency not to question other people’s integrity and intentions. Asking if someone has “something to hide” is an assumption of dishonesty.

Well golly, it’s not as if the city leaders think of economic development money as being their slush fund.  I mean they’d never transfer money out of there into the Alerus Center’s accounts or anything questionable like that.  When someone’s hiding something you have a right to question why they are hiding it.

How do we know, for example, that the Whistler isn’t actually a council member forwarding his own agenda? (I know that he isn’t.) How do we know that he’s not a disgruntled city employee with an axe to grind? Maybe he hasn’t paid his taxes and he’s griping about how tax dollars are spent?

There are three possible reasons behind questioning someone’s anonymity.  The first would be, as Tu Uyen suggests, that I have some kind of agenda beyond expressing my opinion.  I don’t and Tu Uyen says he knows that I don’t.  Thanks.

The second would be that he lacks a good response to my arguments and wants to use that challenge to divert attention from his inability to counter my facts and logic. 

The third is that you hope to spur me to divulge my secret identiity so that I could be pressured in other ways.  My employer could be pressured to pressure me.  My kids could suffer in their grades at school (don’t laugh I’ve seen it done).  Or some personal issue like unpaid taxes could be brought up to divert attention from my facts and logic. 

I assume that the second scenario is accurate in this case. 

Second, I will generally cover stories that have a broad public interest, that is, stories that will get me the most readers, subscribing or otherwise. Just because some people have a philosophical disagreement with the economic development approach in Grand Forks doesn’t mean that the rest of the public is interested.

I think the public would buy newspapers to find out how their money is being spent.  Besides if this economic development horse manure stuff were as popular as you say, you could be giving the city leaders props for bringing in great companies like Websmart.  Err maybe not.

I’d have to sit down and list the number of stories of less interest than the city spending millions of dollars.

I should also say that, in an age of declining newspaper circulation, I have to focus my time and energy in a smart way. Just because you are curious about how one agency or another works doesn’t mean that there’s actually a story there. If I spend a week digging into some agency’s finance only to turn up with no story, then I’ve wasted many opportunities for more interesting stories. This would actually result in less information going to readers rather than more.

I can understand that the current editor has run the paper readership into the grounds so that there’s less resources today.  However the EDC wasn’t covered back before the many rounds of job cuts. 

Of course this wouldn’t take much time.  The city information office ought to be providing this information to the public (including putting it on the internet.) 

I’m not sure why these things are so difficult to fathom for some of you that I actually have to explain them in detail.

I guess some of us are really dense.  Maybe if we went to the wizard and got a journalism degree we’d become geniuses. 

But you realize I respect you enough that I’ve spent 45 minutes writing this answer whereas you probably took a minute to blast off something snide.

Yeah, I have no idea the time commitment it takes to be a blogger.