"Its perfectly legal, perfectly ethical and quite a clever way to reduce staff and overhead costs for projects while maintaining continuity. Its not nefarious, its not murky. Its effecient and straightforward."

The DDA structure is designed to minimize public input and public oversight while maintaining the appearance of a public body. The creation of the DEGC and the outsourcing of the DDA activities to the DEGC further obscures the ability of the public to know what's going on. The idea that the DDA exercises any real oversight of the DDA activities is a joke. The DDA largely rubberstamps what Jackson and the DEGC do. It's no different than the board of directors at many major corporations who allowed their CEOs to drive the companies off the economic cliff. The DDA board doesn't need to micromanage the activities of the staff. But they need to set appropriate policy direction and they need to ask questions.

Geo. Jackson operates with almost zero oversight or limits because the DDA board allows him to do so. He has no interest in putting in place policies like prioritizing historic preservation over demolition because it would place limits on his ability to wheel-and-deal and at the end of the day, making "a deal" is all that Mr. Jackson seems to care about accomplishing. It's economic development by press release. If there were any actual metrics evaluating job growth, retention and increase in tax base and property values, Mr. Jackson's efforts would be shown to be greatly wanting.