Over the weekend, you may have noticed that a discussion started in the Friday Open Thread comments about how State Treasurer Chip Flowers’ first attempt to expand the duties of his office has run into something of a brick wall. If you look at the comments there, you’ll note that the Flowers’ Fan Club is out in force again, and they are hanging their defense of Chip Flowers on arguments that rely alot on conspiracy theories and not much on the facts on the ground.
One of their basic beefs here is that Celia Cohen actually wrote something about Flowers’ difficulty in setting up an Economic Development function in the Treasurer’s office. She is being accused of trying “to destroy Chip Flowers” and other nefariousness. Now, I’m not the world’s greatest fan of Ms. Cohen’s, but it is *really* hard to read her pieces here and see efforts at *destruction*. For those who are interested in making their own judgements, you can read what she has written for yourself:
“Not a Slush Fund for the State Treasurer”
The Treasurer Flubs the Law on Lawyers
I don’t see anything especially unfair here, and Allan Luddell’s account (complete with audio of his own interviews) over at WDEL is consistent with what Cohen reports.
Personally, I don’t have much of a problem with the actions of either the Cash Management Policy Board (which has specific duties — including for the Treasurer — enumerated in statue) or the AG’s office in this thing. Everyone has a job to do and helping the Treasurer to expand the reach of his office isn’t what they are chartered to do. But what this looks like to me is essentially a bunch of newbie errors — fundamentally not getting that changing government (or any large organization, really) is typically a cooperative process that needs some by-in from the folks who have some say in that change. Which usually isn’t just one person.
But don’t be suckered into the conspiracy theories, the fake martyrdom, the spin being sent out here to make (VERY badly) Chip’s case. One of the things that his supporters here want you to believe is that he can’t talk about the people or the conspiracy arrayed against him. Think about that, people — one of the most senior elected officials in this state retreats to conspiracies rather than make use of his own bully pulpit to talk about the change he wants to make. This tells me that he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that he went about this stupidly, but we’re supposed to be fooled into seeing The Man Keeping Him Down. Which might be the case, but you’d have to make that argument by noting how these people might be working specifically out of their own lane or deliberately misrepresenting actions or conversations.
One of the questions I have is whether these small local banks would even use this program. The Fed currently has a Small Business Lending Fund that is targeted to community banks. This fund also has costs, but they are pretty low and they get even lower the more the bank lends. So what kind of fees would the Treasurer’s office charge that could make this proposed program more competitive than the one the Feds have?
I probably won’t get an especially good answer to this, but this is the kind of thing that Flowers ought to prepare his people to talk about and leave the conspiracies and other BS out of it.