Kentucky bill exposes rift between NAACP and West End Opportunity Partnership

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A bill in the Kentucky legislature would give the West End Opportunity Partnership the power to strip board seats from institutions that don’t follow new bylaws, a move prompted by the NAACP’s intentional failure to do so.

The legislation has shed light on tension between the civil rights organization’s Louisville branch and the partnership, a public corporation that will guide investments from a sweeping tax increment financing (TIF) district in western Louisville.

And it has raised concerns from other board members about whether they should have been informed of interim president and CEO Laura Douglas pushing for changes to state law without their knowledge.

At issue is a policy that applies to the NAACP and six other groups represented on the partnership’s 21-member board. It requires the seven organizations to provide more than one candidate when vacancies occur.

But the local NAACP says it believes it’s best suited to choose its representative.

Douglas said Senate Bill 259, introduced by Sen. Denise Harper Angel (D-Louisville) simply codifies into law the board’s current policy. However, the bill goes a step further and puts those entities at risk of losing a board seat if they fail to submit multiple candidates for review by the partnership’s board development committee.

In an interview with WDRB News, Douglas said state legislation is needed because the NAACP isn’t complying with the new bylaws.

“You are a board member. Your board has passed a board bylaw that you are willfully refusing to abide by,” she said. “That's a problem.”

Raoul Cunningham, president of the NAACP’s Louisville branch, said his organization decided not to follow those rules – a decision he says stems from Douglas’ request to get the NAACP’s representative, Jeana Dunlap, off the board.

Cunningham said Douglas asked him in October 2022 not to reappoint Dunlap, who had held the NAACP’s seat on the partnership board since its creation by the state legislature in 2021. Dunlap is a former director of redevelopment strategies for Metro government who was named a 2019 Loeb Fellow at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. 

Cunningham said Douglas told him that Dunlap had been “disruptive.” His account was first reported by Louisville Public Media.

Douglas did not dispute Cunningham’s remarks but declined to discuss her private conversation with him. But she said the legislation is “not impacted by Jeana or whoever else the NAACP will want to put up. It's impacted by the fact that there is a board organization that is willfully refusing to follow the board processes.”

For his part, Cunningham said the NAACP’s executive committee considered the request to not return Dunlap to the board to be “an attempt to remove Jeana.”

Dunlap’s term expired in June 2023. That August, the partnership’s board development committee met for the first time since January and introduced proposed changes to the appointment procedures for seven institutions with board seats. Five are named in Kentucky law -- the NAACP; Louisville Urban League; OneWest; Volunteers of America, Federal Reserve Bank in Louisville – while a bank and a locally-based foundation can vary.

The partnership has three types of members on the 21-person board. It includes the seven institutions listed above – although the Federal Reserve has declined the seat. It also has nine board members chosen from the West End neighborhoods in the TIF district.

And it has a slate of members picked by Kentucky’s governor, Louisville’s mayor, the Metro Council, the University of Louisville and Simmons College. Because of how the law was written, those five aren’t subject to the same requirement that they offer multiple candidates when vacancies occur, Amy Cubbage, the partnership’s attorney, told the board development committee in August.

Jennifer Hancock, the board development committee chair, said at that meeting that the proposal would give the committee “more autonomy and flexibility and authority regarding who is nominated to the board.”  

Douglas told WDRB the proposal was not in reaction to Dunlap’s term as the NAACP representative expiring.  At the time, the seats of the NAACP and Republic Bank had expired.

Republic Bank subsequently has followed the bylaws, she said. 

The bylaw change passed on a 10-2 vote on September 25. Board members Khris Romaine, who represents Park DuValle, and Mike Neagle of Portland voted against the measure. Two other board members – Dunlap and Lyndon Pryor, the Urban League’s president and CEO – abstained from voting.

Cunningham said he received a letter from Douglas and Hancock on October 13 notifying the NAACP that Dunlap’s seat had expired and to submit the names of two candidates for the post.  

Dunlap, Cunningham told WDRB, was the “best qualified.” He said the NAACP’s executive committee then voted not to submit two names.

“Now, if that's in violation of their policy -- I'm sorry,” Cunningham said. “Organizations that were placed in there by the legislation (in 2021) should be able to send whom we think would represent us best.”

Douglas said she asked Harper Angel to file the bill without first consulting with the board, saying there’s “nothing inappropriate” about her request.

“I have the ability as the CEO to address those issues that may be limiting for the organization, to address those issues that need some type of legislative fix or some type of fix,” she said. “It was in that spirit that I approached Sen. Harper Angel.”

But several board members who spoke with WDRB raised concerns about partnership staff pushing legislation without their knowledge.

Pryor, of the Urban League, said Douglas certainly has the right to discuss issues with legislators, such as development opportunities in the TIF area. But he claims her advocacy of SB 259 goes beyond that.

“We're talking about her lobbying specifically to change statute that governs our board and thus governs our bylaws and our ability to govern,” he said. “And that is a problem because a staff member cannot and should not do that outside of the approval of the board.”

In a LinkedIn post, Pryor called Dunlap "an outstanding board member" and said from "an academic and professional experience perspective, she is the most qualified person in that room."

Metro Council member Tammy Hawkins (D-1^st District) represents the city council on the partnership board. She said the board should have been consulted about the legislation.

“Transparency is important,” she said.

Harper Angel did not respond to phone and emailed requests for comment for this story.

SB 259 has been assigned to the Kentucky General Assembly’s state and local government committee. It is scheduled to be heard in that committee at noon Wednesday.

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