LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – The public corporation charged with investing tax revenue in Louisville’s West End can remove certain board members that don’t follow internal rules, the Kentucky legislature has decided.
The state House and Senate voted Friday to override Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto of Senate Bill 259 and make it law. In his veto message, the governor claimed the bill could allow “outside influencers or organizations to take control of the board.”
The Senate quashed the veto on a 30-7 vote, with only two Democrats siding with fellow Democrat Beshear -- the bill's sponsor, Sen. Denise Harper Angel of Louisville, and Sen. Robin Webb of Grayson. Hours later, the House followed suit on a 63-31 vote.
The measure exposed tensions between the Louisville NAACP and the leadership of the West End Opportunity Partnership, the agency created by the legislature in 2021 to oversee a sprawling tax increment financing district in nine western Louisville neighborhoods.
At issue is the NAACP’s admitted failure to abide by the partnership’s bylaws, which require some organizations whose seats on the board are enshrined in Kentucky law to provide multiple candidates for board vacancies.
The civil rights group was asked not to reappoint its current board member, Jeana Dunlap, because she had been “disruptive,” according to an account provided to WDRB News by Raoul Cunningham, president of the NAACP’s Louisville branch.
Laura Douglas, the partnership’s interim president and CEO, has not disputed that account. She declined to discuss her conversation with Cunningham in an interview last month.
Douglas said she asked Harper Angel to sponsor SB 259. It would make law the current partnership rule that requires the NAACP and six other organizations to propose more than one candidate when vacancies occur; and it would put those entities at risk of losing their board seats if they refuse.
Douglas told the partnership board at a meeting last month that she approached Harper Angel with the knowledge of several members, including board chair Mary Milliner.
But other board members have argued – to state lawmakers and at the partnership’s March meeting – that the full board should have been notified.
“You have effectively gone about changing our bylaws without coming through this organization to do so,” Lyndon Pryor, president and CEO of the Louisville Urban League, told Douglas at the march 25 meeting.
Douglas and “board leadership” urged lawmakers to override Beshear’s veto.
“Having a process that is equitable and honors the decision-making authority of the Board regarding nominations and elections is fundamentally necessary in maintaining equity, confidence, the integrity of the decision-making process, and it ensures a consistently high-performing and credible organization,” they said in a statement.
The partnership will receive revenue from the tax increment financing, or TIF, district that covers more than 12 square miles and include all or parts of nine neighborhoods. For 20 years, a portion of tax money generated there would be diverted from government coffers and invested in the area on yet-to-be-determined projects.
The Kentucky Department of Revenue has yet to make public its estimates on how much money is generated in that area.
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