Romney style disclosure.
"You people" don't need to see their financial records.

Perhaps if someone handed them the cancelled checks and bank statements, and those implied some sort of shortcoming in the Chamber's accounting, the KNS might take notice.
~m.

Are columns 3 and 4 in Research data fulfillment. The different fonts and type sizes are clearly there to throw everyone off track.

Who is Rhonda Rice?

Bullfeathers.

When I served on the Citizen's Panel for Community Grants, each of those grantees--which were also 501(c)(3)s--had to submit full and complete financial statements to us in order to be considered for county money.

They had to detail how they planned to spend their requested grant money too, of course.

But again, that detail on how they planned to spend any new money was needed above and beyond the complete financial statements explaining how they were already spending their money. All of their money. From every source.

I don't see a whit of difference between the Chamber's 501(c)(3) and every other one to apply for county money.

(I still have the application checklist we used here in my office, if Commissioner Norman or anyone else cares to take a look at it.)

It's not a grant...it is a contract for specific services.

It may be...but historically the Chamber has had a different type deal. They are not getting a grant.

It sure seems to me to be a distinction without a difference, Mike...

Like Steve observes, all those county "grantees" are performing "specific services" for government. If they weren't performing them, the county government itself would have to perform them.

And WRT the Chamber, it's sounding like more and more people are proposing just that.

In the 10 years Edwards has been at the helm, they haven't done squat, haven't recruited crap, and haven't relocated a damn thing to Knox County, other than the one Green Mountain Coffee distribution warehouse, which is about to meet a slow demise with Starbucks creating its own one cup platform and Green Mountain looking for a merger partner.

In Edwards' 10 years, all we have heard are excuses, excuse, alibi's, more excuses, pleas for more money, and more excuses of why he can't recruit and relocate business and industry to Knox County.

Pointing fingers at the school system. Really? Did VW, Amazon, Alstom Power and soon the tire company select Hamilton County because of the excellence in the Hamilton County Public School System? Are businesses relocating to Memphis and Nashville because of the unbridled success of the Shelby County and Davidson County Public School Systems.

All you are getting with Edwards is $250,000 plus perk worth of excuses and double talk, spin, and chicanery as to why business and industry cannot be relocated to Knox County.

Let's relocated Edwards and his staff to some other county, hire proven business recruitment/relocation specialists and get back to the business of improving the local economy rather than circulating worn out excuses as to why he can't get the job done. The sooner we export Edwards the sooner businesses and industry looking to relocate to Tennessee will get a straight shake from Knox County and a comprehensive presentation and a well assembled proposal to do something in town besides take over a burned out HolRob strip shopping center or a piece of worn out retail space in Turkey Creek that nobody can get to and nobody would want to work in anyway.

We may not have landed a VW, but this statistic is still very important. These are figures from the state as of last Friday:

UNEMPLOYMENT:
Knoxville MSA 7.0
Chattanooga MSA 8.2
Nashville MSA 7.3
Memphis MSA 9.6

Individual counties
Knox 6.7
Hamilton 8.3
Davidson 7.3
Shelby 9.7

Is that the financial disclosure would appear to be a guesstimate. Everything is rounded to a five dollar amount, which would suggest that it is either not going to match an alternate paper trail or that there isn't one.

Would this be a reasonable discrepancy and is there a plausible explanation? Is it possible that someone is trying to sneak this by Donilla on the theory that he may be gun shy? Why is John Lawyer listed at the top and not the bottom of the report? The answers aren't popping out at me.

To me the unemployment rate is a good indicator of economic development efforts.

Out of the top 10 employers in the Knox region 5 are government entities employing nearly 70% of the employees in the top 10. Of the remaining 5 in the top 10, 3 are non-profit medical centers--one being UT. The reason Knox Co unemployment rate is relatively low (as it always is) is because of the high number of public subsidized/government employers--not because of the Chamber. If the Chamber went away tomorrow I"m not sure anyone would notice.

Frist and last, the Knoxville Chamber needs to be held accountable for fulfilling the obligations of its contract with Knox County. I think Mike Edwards and Rhonda Rice and the board of the chamber would say the same thing. In fact, chamber spokesman Anthony Welsch said the receipts are available for review. So anyone can go view them at the chamber offices on Market Square. Those who post here who fancy themselves reporters can knock themselves out.

Cohen is correct (as much as it pains me to say so) that the chamber has a contract, not a grant. And there is a difference. Organizations that get grants do not typically perform the functions of government. The Boys & Girls Club, the Knoxville Symphony, Blount Mansion and others that receive grants aren't doing government business. Governments tend to issue contracts for outsourcing work they are responsible for doing. Such is the case with the chamber.

That brings me to the term "functional equivalency," which people need to understand if they are to parse all these relationships. If an organization, be it for-profit or nonprofit, does work that is the exclusive province of government, it is the functional equivalent of a government agency and subject to the public records act.

The courts have established a four-part test to see if an organization falls under that category. It takes a totality of the circumstances (not all four parts) to determine whether an organization is the functional equivalent of a government agency. I won't bore you with the decisions and opinions here, but if you're interested, Google is your friend.

A good example of functional equivalency is the organization formerly known as the Knoxville Tourism and Sports Corp. State law requires that county governments spend a portion of their hotel/motel taxes on tourism promotion. Knox County contracted that out to KTSC. KTSC's revenues come almost entirely from tax dollars, and it performs the function of tourism development required by state law. It is, therefore, the equivalent of a local government agency and is subject to the public records act.

But what of organizations that only get a portion of their income and spend a portion of their resources on government functions? There is a state court decision form the past few years that addresses that. An inmate sued Corrections Corporation of America to obtain documents related to its management of a prison in Middle Tennessee. The court ruled that CCA's records of its operations of that particular prison are subject to the state's open records act because running a prison is a state government function. The court did not deem that all CCA records were public, but those dealing with that particular prison were.

That gets me back to the chamber. The chamber is the functional equivalent of a government agency only regarding its execution of its county government contract. In all other respects, it is a private organization and not subject to the public records act.

County Commission does not have to contract its economic development functions to the chamber, which brings me back to accountability. The chamber should be accountable to the taxpayers for the work it does on their behalf. We should scrutinize their efforts. If they fall short of their contractual obligations, they should be held accountable.

I don't get paid for this, I always disclose if I have a client about which I am writing.

is the chamber a 501c3? if so, they would have to disclose a fair amount annually on form 990. But i don't find them on IRS list of 501c3 entities.

I do find them listed in TN Secty of State list as a nonprofit corp, but that doesn't necessarily mean 501c3.

just asking. I have not followed this thing closely

While I realize I am doing the opposite of singing to the choir, I just want to make sure I have made my point, which is this: If anyone (in this case the Chamber) is the staff for Economic Development then you can't just blame them for what you perceive as failure and exclude them from success. A low unemployment rate is a success, not landing a VW a failure.

By the way, I actually pay the Chamber. I am a member and personally I have gotten value out of it, mostly through networking events where I have met people and established relationships that could lead to business.

They have a Guidestar listing with their 990's and IRS filings. I didn't log in because I've got to be somewhere, but isn't that where one would start an inquiry into their spending?

At the very least the compliance reports they are filing should give an indication as to what the citizenry has a right to know.