The Industrial Development Board helped create Oasis Center’s new youth center, Goodwill Industries office space, and local YMCAs, among others. Gail Kerr from the Tennessean has a column today on the Board’s financial troubles:

Metro’s Industrial Development Board is one of those mysterious, terribly boring governmental entities that nobody ever hears about.

Until now. A meeting is set for Friday afternoon to begin a sweeping cleanup of decades-old sloppy practices that left an extraordinary potential for corruption.

The board has the power to issue cheaper tax-exempt revenue bonds to help out private businesses and organizations with building projects that help the public good. State law requires that those loans be approved by a government entity, even though taxpayer money is not at risk.

So in 1959, the Industrial Development Board was born. It is made up of nine members picked by the Metro Council. There are no checks and balances about who goes on there. The mayor has no say. There is no staff except a private attorney who’s been doing it for three decades at the board’s request. He is paid only when those real estate deals close.

A Metro audit shows that the board and its attorney approved $675 million worth of bonds in 2007 and 2008.

That money paid for some pretty important projects: Goodwill Industries’ new offices, the Oasis Center’s new youth center, renovation of Watkins Institute, YMCAs in downtown and Bellevue, and Lipscomb University’s expansion.

$150,000 was misplaced
The audit’s conclusions were startling. For example, $150,000 was misplaced for 16 months. Questions were raised about the authenticity of signatures on financial papers. Minutes from meetings haven’t always reflected financial transactions.

And there are facts the audit didn’t include, but everybody talks about. The board is chaired by an 88-year-old woman who has rarely, if ever, attended a meeting in two years. There are no minutes of any Industrial Development Board meeting to be found in the Metro Courthouse or on the Internet. The attorney, Bobby Davis, keeps them. He also controls the checkbook and all records.

Vice Mayor Diane Neighbors tried to oust the entire board after they didn’t show up for a January meeting about the audit. But it turns out the board members were never told by their attorney there was a meeting. Or an audit, for that matter.

So the whole gang will gather at 2 p.m. Friday to try and get to the bottom of things.

“I have no reason to believe that any of these board members have done anything wrong or would do anything wrong,” said Metro Finance Director Rich Riebeling said. “But the board has an important function. Most times, there shouldn’t be issues.”

Newer board members are in agreement that their business should be conducted with the help of the Metro Legal Department, not a private attorney who stands to profit off the deals the board makes. Older members who can no longer physically serve should resign. Minutes should be easy for the public to find.

All of that, Riebeling said, “should have been done years ago.”

It doesn’t take an audit to know that’s the truth.