The horribly misguided process that Senate leadership insisted upon to push through the Louisville west end TIF continues to generate enormous blowback for the West End Opportunity Partnership’s board of directors.

Two board members resigned at the Partnership’s October 16th meeting. One former member, Sadiqua Reynolds from the Louisville Urban League, remained on the Zoom meeting as a participant.

By the end of the meeting, Ms. Reynolds was voicing a common frustration that had been shared earlier by multiple people from the west end neighborhoods:

“It is important that community members are saying ‘who was behind those who created it’…somebody was behind (drafting the legislation) and if that was a developer the community needs to understand that.”

Public records available through the Kentucky Legislative Ethics Commission (KLEC) show the Poe Companies reported spending $1,000 from January 1 to April 30, 2021 to lobby the TIF legislation. (Poe also spent $2,128 during the 2020 interim leading up to the session).

In the grand scheme, $3,128 in lobbying expenses isn’t a huge sum of money. It does, however, suggest that the Poe Companies had a place at the table as the TIF was being rammed through the legislature — a privilege that residents of the west end neighborhoods were not afforded.

An article covering the announcement of the initiative said Senate President Robert Stivers stressed the proposal grew out of nine months of work and listening to people in the community it would affect. Stivers was quoted as saying, "We came and we listened, we worked and then we listened, we drafted and then we listened."

The question Urban League President Sadiqua Reynolds appears to be raising - and it is a good one - is who exactly were the bill sponsors listening to prior to it being unveiled to the public?

Without a thorough accounting of the nine months of work that went into writing the bill and, specifically, who was involved in the drafting process, the skepticism surrounding who exactly the TIF is intended to serve isn’t likely to subside anytime soon.

Transparency is the key to this initiative’s long term success. It starts with telling the story of how the TIF came to be and who was in the room as it was being conceived.