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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2010 > February > 07
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Editorial: Dayton’s SCLC can’t be blase about allegations
The Dayton chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference has to take seriously complaints against its board chairman, the Rev. Raleigh Trammell. So far, local board members have shown no interest in them.
Rev. Trammell, a fixture in the local civil rights community for decades, is being investigated by the national SCLC on suspicion that he misappropriated funds while serving as national chairman. He and the SCLC’s treasurer, Spiver Gordon, were suspended from their posts last month, then reinstated by a judge on Jan. 20.
The judge’s ruling was not on the merit of the allegations against Rev. Trammell. Rather, the decision was purely procedural.
The SCLC investigation is ongoing and over the past 10 days officials from the group shared information they’ve gathered with prosecutors in Georgia and Alabama, Mr. Gordon’s home state. They promised to do the same with law enforcement officials here.
Rev. Trammell’s alleged abuses extend to his role in Dayton. A longtime employee of the group here has accused him of sexually harassing her and her teenage daughter. She also claims he misused taxpayer dollars.
The Dayton SCLC and the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, which Trammell also heads, last year received at least $200,000 combined in taxpayer funding from the Montgomery County’s Human Services Levy, its job and family services department and the federal government for local programs they operate.
Rev. Trammell’s attorney says he has done nothing wrong, that the allegations originate with an employee who is suspected of financial wrongdoing.
But, in Atlanta, a controversial SCLC investigation has found that at least $569,000 is missing. Some SCLC officials say they can’t access bank accounts controlled by the treasurer, who is an ally of Rev. Trammell, and that $24,450 in SCLC checks were endorsed over to Rev. Trammell.
So far, Rev. Trammell has not responded to his critics at the national SCLC.
Though the national SCLC has been bitterly divided and caught up in its own turmoil, the Dayton SCLC can’t just ignore the investigation. The locals have been reflexively dismissive of the allegations, even though they have fiduciary responsibility for their organization.
“We have more important things to do than deal with these baseless accusations,” Dayton SCLC board member Margaret Peters said last month. “I am not concerned.”
Another board member, Don Black, has been hired by Rev. Trammell to help with his public relations. How can he serve the organization’s interests while he is getting paid to serve Rev. Trammell?
Notwithstanding his work in civil rights, Rev. Trammell has a record that’s not irrelevant. In 1978, he was convicted of felony charges relating to welfare fraud, and he spent more than a year in prison.
Board members have to protect the organizations they serve, not the people who run them. The SCLC has a storied history. Martin Luther King Jr., its first chairman, helped found the group to fight racial segregation.
People who support the organization and its goals deserve answers and explanations. The SCLC’s Dayton leaders haven’t begun to ask questions, let alone insist on answers.
Permalink | Comments (37) | Post your comment | Categories: Civil Rights, Editorials, Scott Elliott
TweetEllen Belcher: Third Frontier’s bumps not all bad
Last week there was lots of jousting in the legislature about whether to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars to continue the successful Third Frontier program.
Two points:
— The program was never really in jeopardy. Republicans and Democrats both are sold on the concept that, in order to grow jobs in a knowledge economy, they have to pony up money to universities and entrepreneurs, who then can leverage it to snare research grants and venture capital.
— The Republicans who were resisting and also complaining about how Gov. Ted Strickland has managed the Third Frontier got some of the bullets they were firing from Dayton — specifically the resignation a little over a year ago of Kettering’s Matthew O. Diggs Jr. from the Third Frontier Commission.
On Wednesday, lawmakers approved asking voters for permission to sell $700 million in Third Frontier bonds. The vote was 30-2 in the Republican-controlled Senate; 83-14 in the Democrat-controlled House.
There isn’t that kind of overwhelming consensus in Columbus these days about anything except that children should not play in the street.
It did not emerge because there was agreement to borrow $700 million, not the $1 billion that the governor wanted or the $500 million that the Senate said should be the limit.
Rather, both sides wanted to tap a lot of money; they were just going to push each other around before they voted for something that they’ll all tout this fall in their campaigns.
Not unlike in Washington, the partisan fever in Columbus is high, and there is zero interest in working together, unless the two political parties absolutely must.
With the business community squarely behind the Third Frontier, Republicans couldn’t just say no to the governor, and Democrats couldn’t insist on having things precisely their way if that was going to kill the deal.
February 3 was the last day for them to act to get the bond issue on the May ballot. So the two sides opted for a novel solution — and compromised.
But not before Diggs had become a subtext.
Republicans have been charging that Strickland has to be watched because, if not, he’ll change the Third Frontier rules that were designed to insulate the award process from political influence.
Knowing that criticism was out there, Eric Fingerhut, the chancellor of Ohio’s universities and the chair of the Third Frontier Commission, recently referred to Diggs by name in a meeting with editors from around the state, saying he knew the Republican quit because he disagreed about how a research award was made.
But Fingerhut insisted that Diggs’ complaint wasn’t evidence that the Third Frontier process is being corrupted. Rather, he said he pulled rank, as chancellor, and overruled a recommendation for a particular grant award, giving money to Ohio State University over Toledo University, because OSU’s proposal advanced the marching orders it has under Ohio’s new university system.
Not corruption, not favoritism, a strategic thing, he said emphatically.
Here’s the thing: When former Gov. Bob Taft originated the Third Frontier, its appeal was rooted in the role that was given to the National Academies of Sciences. It was to vet all the research proposals as protection against politics being played (by universities or even the companies that want particular kinds of research subsidized), and the reviewers’ recommendations would be public.
Then if the Third Frontier Commission overruled judgments by outside experts, the whole world would know.
If there’s even a hint that this commitment is being compromised — and Diggs’ resignation sent that signal — that raises the possibility that the integrity of the effort is being toyed with.
In retrospect, Fingerhut under-reacted to the doubts that inevitably were going to result from Diggs’ protest.
(Meanwhile, companies that received Third Frontier money hosted a fundraiser for Democratic House Speaker Armond Budish. That sent another signal to Republicans that Democrats could and would milk the Third Frontier for their benefit.)
Diggs, who is a former CEO of Copeland Corp., says Fingerhut is “one of the good ones” driving things in Columbus. Still, he stands by the message in his resignation letter that the vetting process for evaluating grants has been compromised.
If voters approve this round of Third Frontier bonds, Ohio will be spending more than $2 billion — more than half of it borrowed — over a decade on the program. The great bulk of it will go for research that will strengthen universities and support start-ups that can be the state’s future.
Clearly, there’s no perfect way of deciding who wins and who loses in the award process, but there are definitely wrong ways to pass out the money.
What’s positive about the dust-up that Diggs played a role in is that at least everybody is on notice that if the politicians get loose with the money, they risk being exposed.
The only question is whether that shot across their bow will make voters leery of saying yes to something that Ohio desperately needs.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Economy, Ellen Belcher, Ohio government, Ohio politics
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