It looks like we’ll never know the real details behind Rick Snyder’s secretive NERD Fund non-profit. He’s shutting it and launching a new “transparent” non-profit.
The only responsible reaction, in the face of Snyder’s continued and brazen effort to circumvent transparency and open government, is to assume the worst. The NERD Fund was probably awash in money from questionable donors or vested interests and likely used to advance quid pro quo deals.
We have to assume this because, as Oakland County Executive Brooks Patterson has so clearly demonstrated with his non-profit, full and transparent disclosure is neither difficult nor problematic.
Yet, despite a firestorm of criticism, Snyder still refuses to let Michigan citizens look behind the curtain of an operation designed to help fund policy-making in the state capitol. The announcement of this new “transparent” non-profit only reinforces the suspicion that all was not kosher with the NERD Fund. After all, when we are told the new fund will "run on the theme of transparency," what Team Snyder is saying essentially is the NERD Fund was deliberately not transparent.
If the NERD Fund programs went through normal government channels, the record would be open as a matter of law. Instead, Rick Snyder used this non-profit to create a kind of extra-legal shadow government within his administration.
By all appearances, the NERD Fund operated not of/for/by the people like our Founding Fathers expected from government in our republic, but of/for/by the oligarchical interests that paid to play. Who were these interests? Public contractors? Out-of-state pressure groups? Saudi oil princes? The People’s Republic of China? Honestly, no guess is too outlandish.
So, as Michigan looks toward the 2014 gubernatorial election, voters would be prudent to make some assumptions about Snyder and soon-to-be dissolved dark money fund.
Let’s assume Detroit’s creditors have, through the NERD Fund, financed Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr’s downtown condo while negotiating across the table from Orr.
Let’s assume the “Skunk Works” education reform effort managed by Snyder aid Richard Baird—salary paid by the NERD Fund—was more about securing lucrative public contracts for “friend of the program” firms than it was about improving public education.
Let’s assume that Rick DiBartolomeo, the former Snyder campaign manager-turned-civil service “senior investment manager” for state government, received his $48K NERD Fund salary not for (as claimed) ten hours of hard work every week but rather as a way for donors to make friends with someone who now helps manage some $60 billion in public assets.
We must assume these things are true because it would be politically advantageous for Team Snyder to open up the NERD Fund records and prove otherwise. They haven’t and it’s impossible to know why, except they likely have something to hide.
If Governor Snyder feels these assumptions are unjust and do not reflect what actually occurred, he can present evidence (i.e. the NERD Fund’s donor records, financial statements, and internal communications) that refutes them. Facts are always preferable to assumptions.
He’s certainly free to send any and all information along to jeff@deadlinedetroit.com. In the meantime, though, assume the worst. There’s nothing in the record to suggest otherwise.
