Did Grey, Pantele make private promise to bailout Arts Center, hide fiscal truth, to gain support for their campaigns?

Occasional Column: By pure luck, we now understand what had previously been a major hidden factor in the funding and policy aspects of the Mayoral campaigns of Robert Grey and Bill Pantele.

By Paul Goldman, for the blog

Call me slow, real slow even. The hidden truth didn't hit me until last Tuesday night, as I was standing there on the stage for the last mayoral debate, with myself in the middle, Robert Grey to my extreme left and Bill Pantele to my extreme right.

Like so much else in politics, there was nothing really hidden about it, the self-evident was always right there for all the world to see. Truth is, something Robert and Bill said a few weeks ago had been puzzling me, and had popped into my mind on occasion while jogging. It was a small thing - part an aside, part an inflection - but it struck me that both of them were on the same page the same way in a way that made it seem they both had thought long and hard about it.

But why would they? Again, this puzzling thing had entered my brain, rattled around while I was running in circles around Mary Munford School, and then had receded from the ole frontal lobe.

In all likelihood, I never would have gone back to it had something not occurred Tuesday night that instantly got me thinking right then and there about the puzzle: then, just like that, it was as Tom Cruise might say, crystal clear.

One thing I have learned in politics over the years: listen to what your opponents are saying, for they often reveal more than they realize if you pay attention to the time, place and context.

So there I was, participating in the Virginia Historical Society debate, having just provided some honest and accurate factual data about my role in exposing the flaws in the failed $110 million dollar Center Stage project and how the City of the Future plan that I had helped develop - praised by Grey and Pantele I might add - showed the way to how to modernize the Carpenter Center in a fiscally responsible manner, an approach likewise adopted by Mr. Grey and Mr. Pantele more than a year later. On this particular question, I was the first-up to bat, and my answer was basically the same as it had been at other times over the course of the campaign, this was not a new question in that regard.

Having finished my answer, Dwight Jones went next and the Richmond lawmaker basically gave his usual answer to the question in the allotted 90 seconds.

So I was thinking, "well, this is just going to be the usual round of answers to this usual question, new to this particular audience perhaps but old hat to the mayoral candidates."

Robert Grey was up third, and I was standing there, my mind actually running through his usual pitch. where he uses a clever tactic that Obama's uses and that I have learned to use listening to Senator Obama who is very effective in that regard in my view.

Robert usually praises me for having come up with the City of the Future plan - which as I say is a good tactic since it makes him look above politics and very sincere to the audience - and thus sets-up everyone for his punch line when he says that of all the City of the Future projects, he led the charge on the one project that actually has a firm finish date, the modernized Carpenter Center to open as the Center Stage project next year. This is his way of making himself into the can-do guy.

Again, it is a good debate tactic, Senator Obama is the master of it, and I have learned from him, having praised Robert and Bill and Dwight at different forums as prelude to discussing a certain subject matter. And I have meant it, since all these guys have good things they have done over the years.

So like I say, my mind was ready for Robert to do his thing.

But last Tuesday night, Robert Grey suddenly went in another direction, and it caught me by surprise as I was standing there, listening to his answer to the Arts Center question. As I say, I was slow to pick-up on it since at the time, my thought was: "Gee, this is not Robert's usual opening lines in this area, so I wonder how he will get to it at the close." I fully expected he would.

That is to say, I figured Robert would make the usual pitch just in a different order.

Nada: Not to be. He didn't just start in a different direction, he was determined to go in a different direction.

As I wrote yesterday, he suggested I had some bad motivations in my taking the lead in exposing the the fiscal irresponsibility and fiscal flaws of the $100 million failed Arts Project that had led to that city auditor's report of $100's of thousands of dollars in unjustified expense reimbursements. He didn't disagree with what I had found, for how could he: The City Auditor agreed with my premise that much money had indeed been wrongfully or wastefully spent.

So instead, Robert went for the false personal attack on me, claiming falsely that I had held up good people to intentional ridicule for no good reason.

"Interesting" I thought, I remember looking out at the audience, the glare from the lights making me squint a little. This was, to be a sure, a very pro-arts audience, and so my initial reaction was that Grey had calculated that he wanted to slam me to this group, to make it seem that somehow I had attacked pro-arts folks personally.

In this format, there is no rebuttal as there was at the TJ debate. Thus, my having gone first, this gave Robert a clear shot since he was following me. I had seen him do this before, usually to Delegate Jones.

I wasn't overjoyed with the situation, but I knew the audience was a lot smarter than Robert did. So I was amused really.

Then came City Council President Pantele. Robert at least had a certain modulation to his false attacks. But not Bill, he pandered unbelievably, making it sound as if I had called the arts folks everything but a child of God: Bill was way over top, telling the arts folks that what I had done was beyond the pale, the worst thing he had ever witnessed, the biggest injustice since he had witnessed in his time on Earth, or at least close to it by Richmond standards. Bill wanted to take me to the Tower, along with Saint Thomas More and Anne Boleyn.

Off with his head!

I asked myself: What would they take this tactic at this time and place on this particular question? It seemed so out of sync with what they said on it a month ago.


That is to say: Why did they feel compelled to give such a negative, personal attack answer on Tuesday when they had not done that in all the months previous?

So it got me thinking, and then after Lawrence Williams had his turn at bat, the moderator asked a follow-up question that crystallized my thinking: He asked each candidate whether as Mayor, he would insist on a full accounting on all the monies that have gone into the project, since public funds comprise far more than 50% of the mix, that is to say by any standard, it is a mostly public project.

Dwight and I said yes, that when you have a project of this nature, the public is entitled to know all the fiscal facts, that is the normal course of things. Or to use the current phrase, full transparency.
This was a no-brainer really.

Yet Robert and Bill refused: They said the public was not entitled to all the fiscal facts. For example, the public was not entitled per se to know the donor of private money to the project, even though that person or organization contributing the money might also be seeking the assistance of the Mayor and/or City Council on a matter worth millions to that person or group.

Then it hit me: Of Course!. How dense of me!

Robert and Bill had been making private assurances to key big financial players in Richmond to get them to back them for Mayor.

And then it hit me further: Given the current economic and financial situation facing the City and the nation, the Arts Center is likely to need the city to use public funds to bail them out in order to allow the Arts Center backers to receive certain special privileges worth millions to the backers, to cover an operating deficit, to keep certain monies flowing to certain entities, and perhaps for other costs related to building and operating the Arts Center.

"But of course!" I told myself.

Why didn't I see this weeks ago?

The connection between the current situation in the economy and Wall Street relative to the Arts Center had not hit me until that moment.

Think about it: Assuming what we are seeing everyday in the newspapers turns out to be even half true, is this really the best time to be opening a new Arts Center?

As I have been saying for months now, Mr. Pantele and Mr. Wilder have created a fiscal mess in Richmond, spending more than the people could afford. Mr. Grey backs the fiscally irresponsible Wilder budget.

So then I got to thinking and asking people about some things relative to the Arts Center funding. And as it turns out, a close reading of the documents relating to the city's commitment to the various financial issues involved with the Arts Center over the years - such promises agreed to do in all particulars by Mr. Grey and Mr. Pantele - reveals some interesting details about how much the public is being asked to underwrite what was sold as a private project, not a publicly-funded one.

There was a time with the RTD and Style and the Richmond Free Press actually cared about making sure the public knew the facts: and that was when I was the person leading the effort to get the public these facts for the first time, as the City Finance Director admitted.

But since I left, there has been almost no real reporting on the issue of how much public money has been spent, and how much public money has now been promised, on this issue.

AND FOR GOOD REASON PERHAPS.

I dare anyone to do the homework. I dare anyone to think again about the operating bailout given to the Arts Center by the City government, what they call a subsidy, but what is actually a bailout since the Arts Center said it would not need any such monies only a year ago.

And if you do, if you think though the fiscal issues here, then the stances taken by Grey and Pantele are clear, as is a key component to their chances of becoming Mayor.

I have tried to level the playing field, to make it so that everyone in Richmond has a new level of equality in public matters that has not existed before.

Mr. Grey and Mr. Pantele have revealed far more than every intended last Tuesday.

I now have to figure out how to deal with it, to make sure the people of Richmond are not forced backwards.

As I have said, we have come too far to turn back now.