June 1, 2007

Bredesen Administration Reponds to "Political Payoffs" Charge

Gov. Phil Bredesen's office has issued a statement in response to the report yesterday from the Tennessee Center for Policy Research that compared Bredesen's budget pork with the contributions to his 2002 and 2006 campaigns and found the nearly every proposed private, nonprofit and non-governmental recipient of Bredesen's last minute half-billion dollar budget request have ties to the Bredesen administration. Here's the statement from the gov's flack...

"Governor Bredesen has proposed a sensible and fiscally responsible balanced budget that includes historic investments in education and savings for our state. The Governor has worked very hard to restore public confidence in state government and to restore fiscal discipline to the budget process by working in a bipartisan fashion with the highest ethical standards. These false accusations are ridiculous and this type of sham analysis is a disservice to Tennesseans.

The statement from Bredesen's office is the political equivalent of a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar stomping his feet and declaring, "Yes I did TOO clean my room!" TCPR did not say Bredesen's budget process favored campaign contributors. It said the last-minute pork additions to the budget do. And it's hard to argue with facts like these:

Proposed grants to nonprofits whose board members or employees donated substantially to Bredesen’s reelection campaign include:

$1 million to the Ladies' Hermitage Association. Four board members of the nonprofit in charge of preserving Andrew Jackson's estate donated a total of $7,600 to Bredesen during the last election cycle.

$500,000 to the East Tennessee Veterans Memorial Association in Knoxville, whose directors and Advisory Board members gave Bredesen $11,600 in campaign contributions. Bredesen Supreme Court appointee Gary Wade and state attorney Randy Tyree are active in the leadership of the organization.

$500,000 to the African American History Foundation of Nashville, whose chairman, T.B. Boyd III, donated to Bredesen's campaign coffers in both 2006 and 2002.

$50,000 for a second consecutive year for the state Historical Society's Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture. Three of the Historical Society's board members are Bredesen contributors, and three are political cronies including Nashville Mayor Bill Purcell, state Sen. Douglas Henry (D-Nashville) and former state Rep. Joe Fowlkes (D-Cornersville).

The Bredesen administration has always been a pay-to-play administration, from the sale of trooper promotions for campaign donations to questionable TDOT contracts and now the budget pork.