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.

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