Thread by @NashvilleResist

We're beginning to form the opinion that it's unacceptable that electeds and pro transit advocates are disavowing the PR campaign behind @TransitforNash and its myriad conflicts of interest - in so doing painting folks like us as crackpots for asking questions about it.

It also makes us really angry that we're being told everyone with objections to this plan are doing so in bad faith and - these are fighting words to us - apologists for Donald freaking Trump.

We’re going to make some statements here without links to avoid having a thread with dozens of posts. We have sources for everything we say here. You can also Google yourself, as most of this info is on state or national disclosure reports

or has been in @Tennessean or the @NashvilleBiz.

The PAC accepting donations to pay for the PR campaign behind the transit plan is called "Citizens for Greater Mobility" (CFGM).

tennessean.com/story/news/201…

You can find financial reports for CFGM at
apps.tn.gov/tncamp-app/pub….

Search for PACs, then enter the name. There are two reports, one for '17 year end and one for the first quarter of '18. Both show similar patterns in terms of who's giving.

The chair of Citizens for Greater Mobility, the PAC funding the TV ads and direct mail we’re all seeing everywhere, is Jim Schmitz, the vice chair of the Nashville Chamber of Commerce and President of Regions Bank.

Most of his political donations go to the Regions Bank PAC which donates twice as much to Republicans. (Regions itself also donated $25,000 to CFGM last December.)

Schmitz' employee, Latrisha Jemison, is the treasurer of the shell PAC @TransitforNash puts on its ads, "Nashville for Transit," which is 99% funded by CFGM - probably so it doesn't have to name CFGM and make it easier for folks to find donations. That's her name in the top left.

The vice chair of CFGM, Alexia Poe, made her career working for @BillHaslam.

Officials from the Chamber are running both CFGM & Creating a More Mobile Community, a 501c4 also being used for donations.

The Chamber itself gave $50,000 to CFGM in November. Here are the donations of Milton Johnson, the Chamber's head.

Some of the orgs donating money are not problematic in that there are no obvious conflicts of interest - Vanderbilt, Belmont, Lipscomb. They also don't give $$$$$ to Republicans generally. If these donations were all we were seeing in the financial reporting for CFGM

we wouldn’t be raising these issues.

Some of the orgs are not problematic in their donations, only in that they directly profit from development (Smith Seckman Reid $50,000, Nashville Board of Realtors $75,000, National Association of Realtors $150,000 to name just a few.)

Again: this wouldn't be a problem in itself were it not that folks with a direct financial interest in development along the transit corridors have donated almost $1 million of the $2.6 or so million raised by CFGM through March.

This is a lot of money for one sector of the economy. Many of these names are already working on Fifth + Broadway, which is also receiving millions in public subsidies.

tennessean.com/story/news/201…

You'd expect perhaps to see big donations from hospitality companies, like hotels & restaurants, since tourism is such a big deal in Nashville. With one exception (Omni, $10,000, 12/11/17), they're not there.

There are also very few donations from individuals ($6K since Aug).

Most of the money is coming from big companies, in many cases huge corporations.

So far we're told by some that Vanderbilt is the largest donor to the transit plan PR campaign. They did give $200,000 to Creating a More Mobile Community, the 501c4 being run by Marc Hill,

the Chamber's head of policy.

However, Ingram Industries, company of John Ingram, developer of the new soccer field, also gave $200,000 (8/25/17 & 1/22/18). Here are some of John Ingram's other donations.

Steve Turner, with Market Street Enterprises, a "privately held real estate investment and development firm," gave $100,000 to CFGM in 2 donations (8/30/17 and 1/22/18).

There’s one donation for $25,000 that’s particularly problematic to people of conscience: @CoreCivic, aka the second largest private prisons corporation in America. CoreCivic also owns @ICEgov deportation centers.

vanderbilthustler.com/opinion/privat…

As if that weren’t enough the @CoreCivic PAC makes 90% of its donations to Republicans.

(We regret that we made a mistake on the contributions of this last one: CoreCivic has given “only” $25,000, not $50K as we stated in another thread. Somehow we duped them on a spreadsheet we made. We regret the error.)

To conclude, it simply isn’t possible for people with legit concerns such as the impact of regressive sales tax on poor people to overlook the mailers, newspaper ads, and TV commercials calling them Trump-loving Koch apologists.

They're on every TV station, in our mailboxes, in the paper, knocking on our doors, calling on the phone.

Nor are we prepared to accept being called Trump apologists in mailers being paid for by people who also give $$$$ to candidates endorsed by Americans for Prosperity, people like Orrin Hatch and Mike Pence, virtually every Republican in TN, the Republican National Committee etc.

To conclude: We are in no mood to have discussions about TODs and bus stops until some of the people we see pushing this plan start taking some responsibility for who's making these donations and running this PR campaign.

One more thing: We've had electeds, city officials & community leaders advocating yes on the transit plan tell us they "didn't know" about CFGM taking millions from GOP donors & other problematic sources to run their campaign so they can't answer questions or take responsibility.

If that's true, why not? Don't these folks read the newspaper? Shouldn't they be more informed before asking citizens to approve by far the largest project in city history, which could affect our bond rating and ability to pay for other things?

tennessean.com/story/news/201…

tennessean.com/story/news/201…

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