Council gets out of nonprofit decision-making

Wilson City Council has voted to move decisions about nonprofit funding to the Wilson County United Way. It's a sensible solution — at least a partial solution — to a process born of needless guilt and embarrassment that had become a political football and a sore spot for council members. Taking the city's decisions about which nonprofits are funded out of the hands of council members and putting it in the hands of United Way officials (full disclosure: I am a member of the United Way Board of Directors) removes politics and gives the thankless job to a group more attuned to community needs and more accustomed to evaluating charitable agencies.

That said, however, council needs to go further with this change of policy. The nonprofit funding controversy grew out of council's decision in the late 1980s or early 1990s to impose a $10 fee on late payment of utility bills. The policy was a sensible business decision that any provider of services or financing (check to see what a late credit card payment costs you) would impose. But council cowered at the criticism over the new fee and agreed to give the money to local nonprofits. That set off a gold rush among nonprofits, nearly all of which were worthwhile and responsible charities. Each year council had trouble deciding which of the applicants should be funded. Some choices, such as the Arts Council and Imagination Station, were obvious. Other funded applicants failed to provide audited financial information. It was a mess.

After several convolutions, council is now ready to hand off the hot potato to United Way, which is better able to handle it. Council should make one more decision: Unlink the amount of charitable funding from the late utility payment fees. There is no logical reason why the two should be linked. The late fees are a business necessity. Nonprofit funding is a contribution to local needs the city is not otherwise addressing. Conservatives, who think charities should not receive government money, and liberals, who think government money can solve all of society's problems, will debate whether city/county/state/federal funding is appropriate, but there's no reason to tie the amount the city contributes to charity (less than half of one percent of the city budget) to utility late fees.

For its part, United Way will want to use the same standards of fiscal responsibility and transparency it applies to its allocations to member agencies in deciding who receives city money. But the city's contributions should be handled and disbursed separately from the United Way contributions from individuals and businesses. And, yes, I believe it is entirely appropriate for the city to separately fund the Arts Council of Wilson in compensation for its operation of a youth theater program once run by city recreation and for its management of the city-owned Edna Boykin Cultural Center.

Job search might clash with involvement

This morning, I'm headed out for a meeting of a local charitable organization. Next week, I'll have a lunch meeting with another charity and an evening meeting of a church committee. In between, I'll be job hunting and filling out applications for any openings I might find. Although I am submitting applications for jobs within a 50-mile radius of Wilson, I am concerned about what a job in another city and a long commute would mean to my civic involvement.

Soon after I was laid off last fall, my wife and I concluded that we would stay in Wilson, meaning I would search for jobs only within Wilson or within a reasonable commuting distance. But commuting to another city or taking a job that allowed no flexibility would mean that I could no longer be involved in the charitable organizations to which I've given my time over the past several years.

When I first entered journalism, ethics and behavior codes were as prevalent in discussions as layoffs are now. At the time, conduct codes prevented a reporter from accepting a rose from the garden of a man she was interviewing. Newspaper editors were urged to seal themselves off from civic involvement so as to prevent any bias, actual or perceived, in news coverage. So I refrained from joining charitable organizations' boards or even civic clubs. Over the years, I and some of the navel-gazing philosophers of the business concluded that sealing oneself off from the community made it made it difficult to cover the news of that community. I eased into involvement in a few charities, such as Red Cross and United Way. More recently, I have been involved in other charities.

When I left the newspaper business, thinking I'd never return, I realized that I might have no more restrictions on being involved in the charities and nonprofits I  believed in. But as my job search has faltered, I now realize that a new job might mean the end of my involvement in all those organizations that meet at lunch or anytime during the normal work day.

Although I'll regret giving up that involvement, that contribution to the community to which I've hitched my future, a job is a job, and a job is increasingly hard to find.

Decouple utility fees from nonprofit funding

Wilson City Council has a proposal to terminate a program that has dogged council for years. If the plan is approved, the city will eliminate its contributions to the nonprofits by 2012. One of these nonprofits, the Arts Council of Wilson, would receive funding through the city's General Fund in recognition that the Arts Council operates a youth theater program that had been part of the city's Recreation Department.

This proposal from City Manager Grant Goings would get the city out of the business of funding nonprofits, but it will not eliminate the criticisms, as can be seen by online comments at wilsontimes.com. Some critics go apoplectic at the thought of funding the Arts Council or any arts-related organization. But funding of the arts in some form — programs, facilities or public art — is common among N.C. municipalities, which see these appropriations as beneficial to the community.

To understand how City Council got into this dilemma, a little history is necessary. Years ago, City Council made a business decision to impose a $10 late fee on utility bills paid after the due date. The late fee, despite its being a sensible and ubiquitous business policy, caused an uproar. (Try paying your credit card late and see what the penalty is!) To quell the criticisms, the city announced it would give away the late fee revenues to nonprofits. Thus, a standard business revenue stream became a charitable donation — and a political football. Council had difficulty each year dividing up the nearly half-million-dollar pool of late-fee revenues.

Who could blame City Council members for wanting this political hot potato taken off their hands?

Decoupling late-fee revenues from nonprofit funding should be the first step in fixing this simmering controversy. Late-fee revenues should be deposited in the utility fund and blended with all other utility revenues. Nonprofit funding, art funding, charitable funding should be based on merit alone. The city has no obligation to fund these services in the way the county, for example, has a legal obligation to operate a heath department. However, there is no legal barrier to the city funding nonprofits if it finds the nonprofit's services in the public interest and worth the cost.

I would suggest that the city (and county, if it's willing to go along) distinguish between local institutions that contribute to overall community assets and those charities that provide a worthy service. I would include in the first category the Boykin Cultural Center, the Arts Council, N.C. Baseball Museum, Imagination Station and the Round House Museum. These are assets that attract people to our community and contribute to the quality of life. Governmental funding is appropriate as a supplement to private donations and as a base for grant requests. The Tourism Development Authority should recognize the value of these assets and provide an annual revenue stream to them. Each attracts people to Wilson more consistently than the occasional events or interstate billboards in which the tourism group has invested the county's lodging tax.

Other nonprofits, which provide valuable services, might also receive some public funding. Wilson OIC, the Wesley Shelter, Hope Station, WCIA and other groups would fall in this category. But City Council is ill-equipped to judge which groups are most deserving or most in need of funding. If the city or county wishes to make contributions to local  charitable services, the decision of who gets how much would best be left to an organization such as United Way, which is geared to making those decisions and requiring financial statements that show both need and effectiveness. (And, by the way, to the critic at wilsontimes.com who claimed there were multiple six-figure executives at United Way, that might be true in some places, but not at Wilson County United Way.)

However the city spends its tax and enterprise fund dollars, there will be critics (many of them sadly misinformed or spewing malevolent disinformation). The city must decouple utility late fees from its nonprofit funding, then find a fair and defensible means of distributing the funds the people and their elected representatives find appropriate.