State Senate speaker Ron Ramsey, who must know bad smells from his own close association with the coal industry, said Wednesday that Zach Wamp's promotion of the Tennessee Valley Corridor and his close campaign connections with its promoters doesn't pass "the smell test."
Rep. Wamp defensively called that charge "gutter politics." He then blamed the Haslam camp for the news focus on his technology corridor creation by laying it on Tom Ingram, an aide to Sen. Lamar Alexander who's helping steer Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam's gubernatorial primary battle against Messrs. Wamp and Ramsey. Rep. Wamp then attacked Mr. Haslam, pointing reporters to the Haslam family's Pilot Corp., which he says should be examined for its ties to gambling. That was an apparent reference to poker and slot machines in Pilot truck stops in states, such as Nevada, which allow them.
This sort of political boxing is pretty typical in a hard-fought primary among politicians with a past, but it shouldn't be allowed to fuzz up every issue.
$2 million in 10 years
In fact, Rep. Wamp's Corridor project and his political connections with the public relations firm that has been paid $2 million over the past 10 years to handle the Corridor's technology "summits" and conferences seems uncomfortably cozy. It's not surprising it doesn't pass the tainted Mr. Ramsey's smell test.
The issue was initially reported by Ken Whitehouse and Stephen George in the online Nashville City Paper. Their research showed that AkinsCrisp Public Strategies, which has offices in the Nashville, Oak Ridge, Huntsville, Ala., and the Washington, D.C., suburb of Alexandria, Va., not only profits enormously from work for arranging Corridor meetings, but also that its principals, John Crisp and Darrell Akins, are on Mr. Wamp's campaign payroll.
Mr. Akins is a senior adviser to Rep. Wamp. Mr. Crisp is a key campaign strategist and communications consultant. They've been close to Rep. Wamp for years, and their firm gets $9,000 a month for campaign work for him.
A promise for other Corridors
Their Corridor profits and close political connections to Mr. Wamp spurred the interest of the Nashville City Paper's writers because of Mr. Wamp's campaign promise to create similar Corridor programs in Middle and West Tennessee. It's a good thing they looked into the Corridor's money flow.
The Tennessee Valley Corridor Inc., chartered as a 501(c)6 organization, raises most of its money from sponsorships it solicits from big firms and organizations for the technology Corridor's summits. Over the past 10 years, the Corridor has taken in $5 million, $2 million of which has gone to AkinsCrisp for management fees, according to the City Paper.
In the past two years, it reported, AkinsCrisp got 60 percent of the Corridor's revenues. Much of the rest apparently goes to hold the meetings, and related activities, including golf tournaments, cocktail receptions, travel and meals. Significantly, the City Paper found that the Corridor apparently spends no money on specific programs or initiatives to recruit jobs or companies. That logically led Mr. Ramsey to ask what Corridor Inc. actually does.
Among the biggest Corridor sponsors solicited by AkinsCrisp are companies and entities which receive funding from Congress. Thirteen of their clients, including some federal contractors which do work for the huge Oak Ridge National Laboratory complex, are regular TVC sponsors. Rep. Wamp, who sits on the powerful House Appropriations Committee, and who held more significant influence over budget earmarks when Republicans ruled Congress, has been extremely influential in getting funding for projects to such contractors.
AkinsCrisp and the Oak Ridge community, the City Paper also found, have been, in turn, generous contributors to Mr. Wamp. He has received more than $1 million in campaign contributions from the community, the paper reported, and Mr. Akins, his family and business associates have contributed at least $40,000 to Mr. Wamp over the past eight years.
There may be nothing unusual, illegal or unethical, at least in political terms, about this money loop. Lobbyists and fund-raisers frequently serve as both advisers to congressmen and to the businesses which depend on congressional influence to win federal earmarks and contracts. Contractors are well known to funnel money to both.
The gravy-train loop
But the arrangement that Rep. Wamp and Messrs. Akins and Crisp have going, in which Mr. Wamp touts the Corridor and holds sway over contracts to companies which are called on to fund the Corridor, does merit more scrutiny and transparency.
Indeed, the Corridor entity and AkinsCrisp share a physical address, the City Paper reported. And the Corridor's chairman, Doug Fisher, an Erlanger Hospital executive and former Chattanooga district director for Mr. Wamp, told the City Paper he didn't realize that AkinsCrisp fees were "that high." His statement suggests the Corridor's scattered board is not watching the books too closely.
Rep. Wamp, of course, claims that the technology corridor project he has created, promoted and inflated has been a key player in the race for economic development. But whether it would have been an important factor for Volkswagen, Wacker Chemie or Alstom, for example, is an unknown.
More important factors
Gov. Bredesen's team put together the $575 million incentive package that outbid every other competitor state for VW, and TVA's megasite certification for Enterprise South helped county and city governments here seal the deal. Key elements of the governor's incentive deal extended to Wacker, as well. Such factors are far more concrete and important, we suspect, than the idea of synergistic potential along Tennessee Valley technology corridor.
It's not "gutter politics" to raise questions about the Tennessee Valley Corridor, which Mr. Wamp claims is one of his biggest accomplishments, and which he promises to replicate. It's fair game. And Mr. Wamp's response with questions about gambling when his children have received Hope scholarships from the Tennessee Lottery's earnings is both illogical and irrelevant to questions about the Corridor.