Amarillo Mayor Cole Stanley held a fiery press conference on the AEDC/RANGE controversy earlier this week. During the conference, Stanley categorized the transfer at the heart of the controversy as “unlawful” but “not illegal,” while also taking aim at those criticizing his handling of the situation.

Controversy Background

The core of the controversy is a $750,000 membership payment from the Amarillo Economic Development Corporation to the RANGE Foundation, despite only $100,000 being budgeted for the item. Additionally, concerns have been raised regarding AEDC President and CEO Kevin Carter also serving on the RANGE Foundation board.

The AEDC has contended that, since they stayed within the bounds of the overall budget by finding savings within their marketing budget, the transfer was legally justified, despite the budget change not being brought before either the AEDC Board of Directors or Amarillo City Council.

Amarillo City Council Discusses Response

Amarillo City Council discussed the matter during a council meeting earlier this month, where they seemed to agree that there wasn’t a violation of existing policy. “There’s no violation of a policy that we can hold them accountable for,” said Councilman Don Tipps.

The council seemed to signal its response would be two-fold: directing an auditor to compile a spreadsheet of all AEDC expenditures greater than $25,000 over the last several years and modifying policies to prevent a similar situation from occurring again.

Stanley’s Press Conference

A week after the council’s discussion, Mayor Cole Stanley held a press conference, stating that “I think what has been communicated in the public is that this Council somehow is going backward.” In particular, Stanley seemed to take issue with the idea that the council was not going to hold the AEDC to account.

“We haven’t taken a step back, we haven’t backed up from it. What we said was is good leadership requires all of the data,” said Stanley. “Do we have a one-time issue? Where hey we had an unlawful issuance of an expenditure but only happened once or do we have a business practice? Do we have a practice of doing business that allows for this over and over? Because if it does then I'm going to tell you, we went from having a large problem to have a huge issue. And, so, with that, we’re going to have to take different measures in correcting that.”

When The Amarillo Pioneer asked about Councilman Tipps stating that there was no policy in place to hold the AEDC accountable, Stanley said “I probably would tell you he’s actually correct. I don’t know that that’s the intention of ‘we just can’t hold them accountable.’ Absolutely not. And, here’s the other thing you’ve got to hear us say. We are trying not to be the only ones holding them accountable. We are allowing, for a time, for them to hold themselves accountable.”

Stanley’s main argument was that the transfer was “unlawful” but “not illegal,” which he stated is the position of the council’s outside legal counsel George Hyde.

In particular, Stanley cited Sec. 501.073 of the Local Government Code, which states that the economic development “corporation’s authorizing unit will approve all programs and expenditures of a corporation and annually review any financial statements of the corporation.”

Attempting to distinguish “unlawful” from “illegal,” Stanley used a sports metaphor. “In a football game, you stepped out of bounds, they blow the whistle, like, ‘you stepped out of bounds.’ Is the game over? No. I mean, is the season ended? No. But, were you out of bounds and you have to blow the whistle and line back up? Yeah, you do.”

Stanley also took particular aim at those who have criticized his response to the controversy. “Nobody's saying this isn't a large issue,” said Stanley. “Nobody's saying that we should look the other way. We are saying let us go do the working. Quite frankly, any of my critics out there, they're not the ones doing the work. So we're the only ones doing the work.”

Stanley expressed hope that the data would mostly be ready in time for the next council meeting, stating that the data had already been compiled for 2023 and 2024.