The attorney for Shelby County, Brian Kuhn, says there’s no “smoking gun” evidence indicating who the bad guy(s) are in the FedEx Forum shenanigans. From The Commercial Appeal:
Kuhn and his staff, at the request of the County Commission, have been sifting through as many as 140,000 pages of documents connected to the funding and construction of the garage and arena, home to the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies.
During a joint session of the commission’s audit and public service committees, Kuhn told commissioners decisions about the garage appear to have been made largely by groups of people in meetings, not individuals.
Kuhn said he hasn’t found any “smoking gun” evidence to explain the garage fiasco, which is costing the City of Memphis $6.3 million in federal funds…
Some members of the commission, however, said they are certain that fraud or deception was at play in the matter.
Commissioner Walter Bailey, a longtime critic of the arena project, said he’s convinced there was “subterfuge and chicanery” involved in the deal, which resulted in the Grizzlies receiving profits from garage operations. “This thing was intentional,” he said. Fellow arena critic, Commissioner John Willingham, said with all the attorneys who worked on the arena project, he was skeptical that no one was aware the garage did not meet the federal requirements.
“Not everybody is a dummy. There were plenty of smart people involved,” Willingham said.
How great is that quote? “Not everybody is a dummy.” Yeah, but enough people were stupid enough to let them get away with stealing 6.3 million dollars from the federal grant that I’m going to have to repay in taxes. Thanks for looking out for me, smart guys.
