Budget and Finance Committee approves Downtown Partnership grants to MNPD after conflict-of-interest concerns

The Metropolitan Nashville Budget and Finance Committee on Thursday approved a set of measures converting donations from the Nashville Downtown Partnership into grant agreements that will supply the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department with 15 video cameras and several tactical vehicles and command units.

The committee adopted substitutes on the items to change the original monetary donations into grant agreements that add a reporting requirement: MNPD would provide publicly available data to the Downtown Partnership as part of the partnership’s reporting obligations to the state, Director Wilson said.

The substitutes drew public comment and questions from councilmembers before the committee voted. Mike Lacy, a public commenter, told the committee: "This seems like a very blatant conflict of interest that there is a potentially tens or $100,000,000 liability between an entity and there are donations being sought directly through conversations with the mayor's office." Lacy also criticized the choice of the Nashville Downtown Partnership as the donor and…