Powers To The People
Love him or hate him, you have to at least give credit and kudos to frequent House Guest columnist and WBT guest show host Wayne Powers for always stepping up to speak his mind. I just got a chance to watch tape from Monday night’s city council meeting, where Powers was in full swing, taking dead aim at the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority and its inherent cronyism.
Powers implored councilmembers to reign in CRVA spending and demand actual accountability from it leaders. Councilmembers, in turn, voted later in the meeting to approve releasing full taxpayer funding to the CRVA ($7.5 million approved Monday night, in addition to the previously approved $2.5 million).
Still, Powers comments are worth sharing, if for no other reason than they shed some needed light on myriad problems flowing from local government, in general, and the CRVA in particular. Roll tape:
I’m here to speak to you about the CRVA, an agency in turmoil whose answer to serious management issues is to give us what today’s lead Observer editorial calls ‘the illusion of management change without real change,’ and they’re right.
Just like the illusion of NASCAR Hall of Fame cost-estimates which turned out to be $32 million higher, or the illusion of attendance projections which turned out to be a bloated fantasy figure pulled from thin air – three times the actual, realized attendance; the illusion of projected hall-of-fame attendance growth, when the real numbers show the harsh reality: May down 30 percent from last year’s anemic numbers, June down 36 percent; the illusion of propriety with over $100,000 in CIAA kickback bonuses, which may or may not adhere to the letter of the law but clearly and unquestionably circumvent the spirit of the law.
When you raise questions, (recently demoted CRVA chief) Mr. Newman offers the illusion of a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers, in reality a verbal whitewash and cover-up. The subsequent written report turned out to be not a report, but an indictment of mismanagement and deceit of the public and of you, our elected representatives. It urges in the strongest possible terms a full investigation and report of CRVA organization, policy, and practices.
And now CRVA offers the illusion of management change. Once again in the face of a cancer eating away at the integrity of our public agencies, ‘doctor’ Newman’s prescription is to touch-up the X-Rays.
What are we doing here? We’ve levied a prepared food-and-beverage tax punishing our local restaurants and all Charlotteans who patronize them. We’ve increased the hotel-and-motel occupancy tax, which raises the cost to our visitors, making Charlotte less competitive. But that creates a huge pool of cash, funding another bloated, over-paid bureaucracy.
They set themselves up as the gatekeepers of their crony network, dispensing perks and goodies, from expensive ticket events, preferred seating, parking, travel, gifts, $900 dinners, and on and on, skimming off fat-cat paychecks and expense accounts for themselves in the process.
That’s an authority gone wild. You might not be able to control it, but you do have the power to put the strings on public funding of it. Demand no additional CRVA management positions, the immediate dismissal of Mr. Newman or the reduction of his compensation by 50 percent, to $150,000, with the $150,000 savings to fund the prompt and complete independent audit of the CRVA, reporting directly to city council as this PWC report recommends.
This is a non-partisan issue. Please do what’s necessary to restore public confidence in our city government and demonstrate the willingness of our elected and appointed leaders to stand up to special interests and conduct the people’s business with transparency and integrity.
Somehow, Powers managed to keep a straight face when he slipped the words “our city government” and “transparency and integrity” into the same sentence. The council’s action Monday night shows there’s still a long way to go before that becomes reality.
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