Romper Room Council Tinkers With CRVA
A divided city council on Monday night voted to withhold nearly $10 million in funding for the embattled Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority, while simultaneously agreeing to provide the tourism booster group with $1.7 million for “business development purposes,” to be disbursed at the discretion of the city manager, and $800,000 in immediate funding to sustain operations through the end of July.
That’s when the council will again revisit full funding of $10 million for the CRVA, which receives a portion of its budget from taxes on hotel and motel rooms and on prepared food and drink sales.
The decision comes on the heels of the CRVA releasing a written report on a review of the agency, performed by CRVA board members with the help of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), which officials had previously said did not exist. The initial report, which cost a hefty $25,000, consisted of a two-and-a-half page overview that produced, councilmembers said, more questions than answers.
In response, the CRVA this week released a longer version of the report that was previously said not to exist, along with a so-called action plan for how the agency says it will address issues and concerns raised in the report.
But the long-version report, a majority of council said Monday night, still left myriad questions and concerns. Chief among them, the report criticized the CRVA for failing to perform due diligence when it rolled out projections for the NASCAR Hall of Fame to attract upward of 800,000 visitors its first year (the hall, by contrast, has managed to lure about 247,000, a tally that includes 12,000 free visits from a special promotion).
The CRVA has also come under fire of late for doling out bonus payments from the CIAA basketball tournament to a staff member, and for excessive spending on pricey perks, extravagant meals, concert tickets, and lavish thank-you gifts for local business leaders, public officials and agency executives and board members. All of which has left the CRVA facing a “crisis of credibility” with the public, according to the report released this week.
At which point it should be noted that any “crisis of credibility” facing the CRVA would likely apply equally in the public’s mind to the city council that controls the purse strings for a large portion of the agency’s budget.
While CRVA chieftain Tim Newman has acknowledged that he ballooned hall of fame attendance projections to better compete with cities that were also trying to land the racing museum, it blinks reality to think it was done without the complicity and knowledge, perhaps even encouragement, of the council. Either that or the council was content to remain willfully ignorant of reality while maintaining plausible deniability about the attendance scam.
Recall also that it was the council that approved millions of dollars in additional funding for the hall of fame to pay for turbo-charged exhibits that would, councilmembers at the time assured, help the hall meet its attendance projections.
And while the CRVA has come under scrutiny for an employee who received bonus pay from the CIAA tourney, it is the same tournament for which councilmembers annually receive free luxury box tickets as part of an agreement where the city provides money for the hoops extravaganza.
That said, the council on Monday night voted 7-4 to withhold full funding for the CRVA until its crisis of credibility can be better resolved, and instead give the agency $1.7 million in marketing and tourism-boosting dollars to be disbursed at the discretion of the city manager and $800,000 for operations.
Democrat councilmembers Patrick Cannon and Warren Turner, along with Republicans Warren Cooksey and Edwin Peacock, voted in dissent, arguing that the council was overstepping its role by withholding funding and, ultimately, hampering the city’s ability to attract tourism and convention-related events and business. The four councilmembers instead supported a doomed substitute motion, made by Cooksey, to release the $10 million in taxpayer money to the CRVA and move on to address more important matters.
“It will be nice when we can get back to issues of public safety, transportation and the environment, and things of that nature, and not have to spend time on romper room issues,” Cannon said in favor of immediately forking over $10 million.
There was an important distinction, he said, between the budget allocation and the PWC report and the questions and concerns it raised.
“One has nothing to do with the other,” he said. “If it’s answers that we’re still looking for, it doesn’t come by way of hurting the citizens here in Charlotte relative to lobbying and spending money, which is what this money would be used for, to bring in visitors and support conventions that increase our bottom line.”
Peacock echoed that sentiment.
“What has been lost through this entire process is that the lens of scrutiny has completely gone away from what the performance of the exact organization is and it has focused exclusively on a report and what do we believe is the performance of their chief executive,” he said.
The CRVA, Peacock said, was doing an admirable job fulfilling its mission of bolstering the profile of Charlotte and attracting tourism/convention business to town.
“Why are we piecemealing the decisions on the very thing that we are charged to do, which is to make these city-owned facilities sing, make them successful?” he said. “Don’t send a signal to them (CRVA) that we’re not confident in them as an operation. If we do that we’re sending them a mixed signal. We told them in the budget committee that we were pleased with their operations. Now we’re doing a complete 180 on that? I don’t’ understand that.”
Councilmember Michael Barnes, a Democrat who made the motion to withhold full funding, disagreed. The $1.7 million the CRVA would be receiving, he said, equals about $57,000 per day, an amount he said CRVA officials had indicated would be sufficient for them to complete the marketing and tourism work they need to do through July, when the issue of full funding will again be taken up by council.
In the meantime, Barnes said, releasing a lesser amount now would help rebuild public trust in the CRVA as the agency works to provide more concrete plans on how it will improve operational effectiveness and address concerns about financial controls and personnel issues.
Several councilmembers, however, questioned what additional information and answers were needed from the CRVA, and asked what could be provided between now and July that hadn’t already been addressed by the PWC report.
“My concern is we’re delving, as a body, into the management of another entity without being very specific about what it is that’s concerning us as a group,” Cooksey said. “If we’re going to postpone this funding as a group, shouldn’t we be very clear, as a group, what our expectations are?”
Mayor Anthony Foxx didn’t vote on the CRVA issue, but sent a clear message that he supported the decision to delay full funding until more information from the CRVA was forthcoming. The PWC report, he said, was a plan to have a plan; the council should wait to see an actual plan that addresses CRVA fiscal controls, transparency and accountability, Foxx said, before releasing full funding. At the same time, Foxx said he was concerned by some of the issues raised by the PWC report.
“Implicit in it are some areas where there may not be adequate financial controls in place,” Foxx said, along with indications that there may have been problems in the past with “sufficient rigor in making projections on projects we have supported.”
“Those are things that legitimately create concern, in my mind, for the next project, and the next project, and the next project, even if you assume we don’t have management responsibility for this agency,” Foxx said.
Dulin said he voted to defer funding for the CRVA because he wasn’t totally comfortable with the answers and explanations provided by the CRVA; yet he conceded that he would likely agree to give the full $10 million to the agency – eventually, once his comfort level improves, or something.
“It’s not our money and it’s not the CRVA’s money. It’s the taxpayers’ money. I made a pledge to be a good steward of that money,” said Dulin, fresh off a taxpayer-funded trip he took to Seattle last week as part of the Chamber of Commerce’s annual Inter-City Visit. The price tag for the junket: about $3,100 per councilmember. Also taking the trip on the taxpayers’ dime were Foxx and councilmembers Barnes, Cooksey, Nancy Carter, David Howard, Patsy Kinsey, and James Mitchell.
Monday night Cooksey said that when it came to making sure tax dollars were being appropriately spent, the council and CRVA were both doing a good job. The specific, stated purpose of tax dollars received by the CRVA, he said, is for the promotion and marketing of Charlotte.
“What we’ve heard,” Cooksey said, “is that the CRVA is doing a fantastic job at promoting Charlotte.”
Turner agreed and, in that light, said if the CRVA’s bottom-line performance wasn’t an issue, it must be something else.
“If we talk about transparency,” he said, referencing critics’ recurring rap on the CRVA’s lack thereof, “let’s be transparent.”
“You can’t tell me they’re doing a great job, but you’re not willing to support their current operations and the way they’re doing business,” Turner said, adding that he thought there seemed “to be a decisive move to hold this process up for some personal reason.”
Several councilmembers have previously balked at the $300,000 annual salary pocketed by Newman, and have indicated it was time for a change of leadership.
If that was the case, some councilmembers argued Monday night that the way to go about achieving it was through appointments council makes to the CRVA board of directors, which is responsible for hiring the agency’s chief executive.
Newman’s contract to run the CRVA ends this week. When it does, the current board of directors has suggested allowing Newman to continue in his role sans a contract. A decision on Newman’s fate is expected some time with the next week.
If a majority of council were truly sincere about wanting a change of CRVA leadership, however, it wouldn’t necessarily have to wait. Councilmembers could step up to the plate and immediately demand the resignation of all current board members, to be replaced with members committed to actual, substantive change.
Instead, on Monday night the council made some tepid adjustments to the CRVA board. In a vote between current board member Anthony Lindsey and Chuck Allen, the council appointed Allen, a US Airways executive and current member of the Visitors Advisory Committee, which provides “feedback to the CRVA’s leadership team to help in its success.” The council also appointed Russell Sizemore, an attorney/partner with K&L Gates.
The mayor gets to name his own appointment to the CRVA board of directors. On Monday, Foxx selected Will Miller, a key player who as interim executive director of Charlotte’s host committee was instrumental in luring DNC 2012 to the Queen City.
Now there’s hope and change for the CRVA to believe in.
We need your help! If you like PunditHouse, please consider donating to us. Even $5 a month can make a difference!
Short URL: https://pundithouse.com/?p=6657
