A Correction. And a $3M Question.
Wherein I admit when I'm wrong, but also [Colombo voice], "One more thing..."
I was wrong about something in my last update about Metro Arts, and I want to correct it. Because I’m brave like that.
It’s humbling to be wrong about stuff and I don’t love the feeling. But I like the dopamine hit of things clicking into place, and feeling a bit closer to that elusive goddess truth. The cost of admitting I’m wrong is worth the price of admission.
And what I learned brought me to a deeper question with this whole arts funding situation.
In my last post (above), I asserted that the memo released on March 22 from the Mayor’s Office, penned by Metro Finance, told the Arts Commission how they have to spend their money. I claimed they had ordered Metro Arts to fund all the art groups 100% of what they had considered giving them last year, rather than how they had most recently voted.
I was concerned that this demonstrated an alarming pattern of departmental overreach, where one department simply tells another how to use its spending authority.
After speaking to Metro Legal representatives at the Metro Arts Oversight Committee Meeting today (this damn department has more meetings than an AA sponsor), the story is more complicated.
Metro Finance isn’t telling Metro Arts how to spend their money. The last vote of the Metro Arts Committee, the vote which the Metro Human Relations Commission’s outside counsel said was plausibly a violation of the Civil Rights Act, stands unamended.
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I was correct that Metro Finance, under the banner of the Mayor’s Office, is recommending that everyone get funded.
The mistake I made was in inferring that they would be making Metro Arts accept additional funds to cover all recipients, and insisting Arts pay them full amount they had been awarded in July and/or August.
In reality, it is Metro Finance that will be making up the difference, taking money from the $28M of excess city budget funds that were not used last fiscal year. In a strange twist, artists that had been blocked from their funds by Metro Finance for months will now be getting a contract directly from Mr. Crumbo’s department.
The artists I’ve talked to are happy they’re getting funded. And the first commission meeting post this decision had a bit more pep in its step. But the elephant in the room was still the MHRC Report, and a lack of clarity as to how, if at all, the Finance’s memo addresses the Civil Rights infringements Metro may have committed.
Rev. Davie Tucker, Executive Director of the MHRC, also had concerns about the document released by the Mayor’s Office last Friday. Tucker published a 2 page statement on the topic over the weekend.
The framers of our city rightly envisioned times when Metro would conflict with Metro and made what I think are adequate remedies for these expected conflicts. These remedies need to play out. Nashville needs to know if the Supreme Court ruling about college admissions has an applicability to Arts grants, because if it does it has a larger impact on other Metro departments that make grants/awards (or other financial disbursements) to organizations and individuals. It should also be a point of concern that this position is also the position of TN AG Skrmetti.
Rev. Davie Tucker, MHRC Executive Director
If the MHRC report holds water, Metro Arts arguably voted to defund arts organizations on race-based analysis of the recipients. Does the fact that another department is filling in the gaps undo the damage? I don’t know. Do you?
If the USDA cut the salary of a bunch of Black employees — but then 8 months later they get jobs at the US Postal Service, does that undo the racial discrimination that was done by the USDA? I’m guessing no? But I really don’t know.
Perhaps it is in Metro’s favor that no one was receiving funding from this grants cycle during that period, as far as I’m aware. It’s a weird one!
But as the folks at Arts Equity Nashville will tell you, it was never just about the money. Title VI violations are not resolved by simply cutting a check. Remedies can include voluntary compliance agreements, restoration of services or benefits, revisions of policies and procedures, training and education for staff, ongoing monitoring and reporting, community engagement and feedback sessions, financial compensation or reimbursement, and, as a last resort, termination of federal funding.
None of that is in Director Crumbo’s terms and conditions for this $3M. Indeed, there’s no allusion to the Title VI complaint at all, besides a request that the MHRC “work collaboratively” to resolve concerns it may have without litigation.
How’d We Get to the “Hand Me My Checkbook” Phase of all this?
Here’s the passage of the memo from Metro Legal that now strikes me as the oddest.
This doesn’t quite scan to me.
As MHRC Executive Director Rev. Davie Tucker put it, “[Mr. Crumbo’s comments are unhelpful because he spins a false and incomplete narrative around the events that led to the announcement of Friday.”
Mr. Crumbo puts it like this: The Metro Department of Law, which has arguably exceeded its chartered authority by directing the Metro Arts Commission to reverse its July vote and potentially helped a Civil Rights Violation take place, now claims, based on undisclosed evidence, that the actions of Executive Director Singh are responsible for Metro's $3M financial outlay.
It definitely has nothing to do with the MHRC Title VI complaint nor the press conferences City Council1 Members were having demanding them to “Release The Funds” or number of times “White Supremacy” was said during public comments sections of commission meetings.
Rather, Mr. Crumbo argues, somehow Mr. Singh had put Metro on the hook for this money through some sort of email correspondence — email correspondence that conveniently cannot be found because it is alleged to have been sent by 3rd parties on behalf of Mr. Singh.
When reached for comment, Mr. Singh denied these allegations.
“Only grantees approved by the Commissioners in the August vote received contracts. And those contracts were signed by Metro Finance and Legal.”
The signature of Metro Finance on these contracts is of particular note, as this has its prescription in the Metro Charter.
The Metro Charter says that the Director of Finance is to:
Examine all contracts purchase orders and other documents which would result in or involve financial obligations against the metropolitan government, and approve the same only upon ascertaining that there is an unexpended, unencumbered and unimpounded balance in each such appropriation and allotment to which they are applicable, sufficient to cover such potential obligation.
Furthermore, the city's charter and the Metro Arts Commission's bylaws do not grant the Metro Arts Executive Director the authority to allocate funds for grants; this power is reserved exclusively for the Arts Commissioners. Consequently, Mr. Singh definitely lacks the authority to delegate this power to third-party contractors who are not government employees.
For an appropriation to be considered valid and lawful, it must receive approval from the Arts Commission and be officially authorized by both Metro Law and Finance.
If Metro Legal can’t get the city out of an “implied contract” with grassroots art organizations that were allegedly told, via a non .gov email, they’d maybe getting a grant — they should be taken out behind the Old Courthouse and pummelled with a copy of Black’s Law Dictionary.
So.
Metro Finance found several millions of dollars in the couch cushions and is going to be giving it to arts organizations. Quite a reversal considering their months long stance of withholding all arts funding. What gives?
My Aforementioned $3M Question
Are they doing this because…
(1) The love of Arts. Mr. Crumbo is unabashedly a lover of the arts. After all, in 2022 he donated eight paintings to Metro Nashville for a tax break of $22,400. Can’t say this guy isn’t passionate about the finer things.
(2) Mr. Singh allegedly sent emails to artists and arts organizations, emails that have not been produced, and using power he is not imbued with, deputized non-government employees, to put Metro on the hook for paying more money than the department had to spend — though no evidence of this has been presented, nor sound argument on why these emails would hold any weight.
(3) Metro Law and Finance have been backed into a corner, do not want to lose face, have respectively put Metro in the crosshairs of Civil Rights litigation and brought public arts funding to a screeching halt. All whilst stirring up unbelievably bad press in the Mayors first 150 days, and creating a divisive, racially and economically polarized schism in the arts community that may lead to a grassroots boycotting of major arts institutions, and skepticism in the Mayor’s ability to deliver any programming with a legitimate equity valence (a bad look in the face of a controversial Transit Referendum on the horizon).
(4) Some fourth reason that is for reasons and complexity I know not of? I was not humbled today for me to say this is not a possibility.
A standing correction: This post refers to the Nashville Metro Council as a “City Council”. It is, in fact, a City-County Council, known colloquially as the “Metro Council.” More information on this distinction can be found in this previous post.