Slush money, does it corrupt?

Image courtesy of Development Design Group Inc. via the Washington Post. Caption: An elaborate model of the National Harbor development is unveiled. The developer paid $400,000 for the model, part of an effort to sell the massive project planned for the banks of the Potomac in southern Prince George's County.

I "complain" constantly about how proffers, or the process of providing community amenities in relationship to development projects, are too often unstructured and underprioritized.

When you don't set priorities, you fund anything, you take anything, and likely you don't get resources that help you accomplish structural improvements that last beyond the spending of the last dollars of the grant.

See for example, an excerpt from testimony in this blog entry, "Thinking about proffers/community benefits" as well as the entry, "If the carcass is the DC Government property portfolio, are eager developers merely "The Carrion Eaters?"."

The Post reported on this in Prince George's County a couple days ago, in the article "Charity Oversight in Pr. George's Project Lax," subtitled "Records Are Vague On $700,000 Issued." From the article:

Three years ago, Prince George's County Executive Jack B. Johnson (D) negotiated a deal with the developer of the massive National Harbor project, agreeing that the county would pay for road and sewer improvements in exchange for the developer's donation of $3.5 million over 10 years to local charities.

The developer, Peterson Cos., has upheld its end of the bargain, writing checks worth $700,000 for community groups in 2005 and 2006. What has become of the money is less clear.

An unasked question by the reporter is how much do the road and sewer improvements cost to begin with. Without that crucial piece of information, we can't even assess the value of the deal. And that doesn't even get into the question of how the money is being used.

The Post also editorialized about this issue also, in "Slush Fund in Prince George's," subtitled "Wanted: Recipients for $3.5 million in cash. Requirements: None."

But again, the real issue is the lack of a system and structure for dealing with proffers. Arlington County does it differently. In DC and apparently in PG County, it's the wild wild west, and as I said in the blog entry "The Agony of Defeat," it makes me feel dirty as a citizen watching how this process works.

Where are the editorials about that?, and the necessity of good government, civic engagement, and building the capacity of citizens to participate in a deliberate fashion, as well as with the need to "build the right processes to generate the proper behavior" as discussed in this blog entry last week, "Stultified vs. flat organizations, democracy vs. autocracy."

For better guidance, see Community Benefits Agreements: Making Development Projects Accountable.