from The Lebanon Democrat::Feb. 16, 2009
Local man files ethics complaint against squires
By: J.R. LIND

February 13, 2009 – A Bible Park opponent has filed an ethics complaint against 18 members of the Wilson County commission.

In the complaint filed Thursday, Derek Dodson charges the 18 squires – those that voted for advancing the theme park's taxing proposal – with "assisting and advancing fraud."

"It's blatantly obvious 18 county commissioners have not done their homework in regards to the Bible Park and voted to advance an unethical deception," he said at Thursday's meeting of the Budget Committee, before delivering his complaint to County Attorney Mike Jennings.

Dodson has been an outspoken advocate against the park nearly since the announcement last summer it would locate in Lebanon.

In a five-page complaint, Dodson charges that three of the four commissioners on the Budget Committee – Bernie Ash, Jeff Joines and Mike Justice – "failed to engage in an effort to fulfill their fiduciary responsibility to the citizens of Wilson County" by voting to move the park plan out of committee and to the full county commission.

Dodson argues that the Bible Park is an investment scheme and "designed and expected to fail," using bonds backed by tax-increment financing and a 5 percent privilege tax to generate profit for the company that backed the park in Rutherford County – SafeHarbor Holdings, a New York-based investment group headed by Armon Bar-Tur – and local landowners and investers.

Dodson said the commissioners who voted to advance the park's bonds failed to thoroughly engage the park team – now headed by Robert Wyatt of 18-month-old California-based theme-parl developers EDG – as to their financial plan, the equivalent of being party to fraud.