Barrett: Probing misuse of funds that never should have been given

Chattanooga's and Hamilton County's race-based funding practices have blown up in their faces, with suspicions that the Tennessee Multicultural Chamber of Commerce's financial management is, let's say, murky. (Read: incomprehensible this side of the Looking Glass.)

Both city and county are now withholding funds from the Multicultural Chamber, and government leaders have offered the obligatory tsk-tsking over a fiasco that apparently didn't come to their attention until the Times Free Press started asking questions.

I suppose relief is one appropriate emotion now that funding has been put on indefinite hold and investigations of the Multicultural Chamber's finances are under way. But it's akin to the relief you feel when a dad rescues his toddler from the path of a dump truck. That's the minimum expected standard of behavior, but it doesn't tell you why the toddler was in the blame road to begin with!

City and county leaders are free to congratulate themselves for derailing the gravy train at long last, but that doesn't explain why an organization whose express purpose is to aid businesses connected with members of certain racial groups - and not others - was getting tax dollars in the first place. Alas, questions about the lax attitude toward the ideal of racial neutrality in government are being swallowed up in concerns, however legitimate, about mystifying inconsistencies in the Multicultural Chamber's finances.

At least so far as the city is concerned, there isn't even a need for a cooling-off period from its misguided funding approach. With the Multicultural Chamber unlikely to get city funds in the near future, the council is looking to funnel tax dollars into some similar venture. From the front page of the Times Free Press: "The City Council voted 9-0 Tuesday night to set aside $75,000 in economic development funds to support an [as-yet-unnamed] entity that could help minority or multicultural businesses within Chattanooga."

Why?

No really, Mr. Benson, Ms. Berz, Mr. Gilbert, Ms. Ladd, Mr. McGary, Mr. Murphy, Mr. Rico, Ms. Robinson and Ms. Scott: Why?

Is it that you agree with the original justification - still cited by some today - that a separate, racially oriented chamber is necessary because the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce might not be adequately interested in the development of minority-owned businesses?

Heaven knows I have my differences with the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce. Its opposition to vouchers that would help children slip the surly bonds of failing schools still curdles my half and half.

But if there is evidence that it is denying its services or assistance to any business on the basis of race, then somebody needs to present that evidence - or lay off.

I don't think for a moment that the Chamber is discriminating against minority-owned businesses, and even if it were, the solution would scarcely be to fund another chamber for the purpose of discriminating in the opposite direction.

Fretting over whether the Multicultural Chamber used government money rightly or wrongly may be necessary from the standpoint of finding out whether taxpayers got royally fleeced. But that "equal protection" thing in the Constitution makes this whole ball of Turtle Wax an exercise in belated barn door-closing. Even if we should find that the Multicultural Chamber has spent every penny aboveboard, in accordance with its stated goals, it wouldn't change the fact that those goals are not things government should underwrite.

That issue has been conspicuously missing from official discussions of the Chamber's funding.

It would be nice if somebody explained why.

Upcoming Events