An expo envisioned as a healing moment for Minneapolis’ Black community flopped in February, with only a few thousand people registering for an event that was supposed to draw 20,000. So how did it turn into a public disappointment, and why was a behind-the scenes scramble necessary to ensure the event took place at all?
The outside firm hired by the city to investigate those questions found no evidence of a detailed plan for the “I Am My Ancestors Wildest Dreams” expo on Feb. 25 and noted that the now-former director of the city’s Racial Equity, Inclusion and Belonging office seemed to struggle to grasp the city’s contracting rules, despite “multiple offers of assistance” from other city staff.
Consulting firm Baker Tilly on Tuesday recommended the city develop and implement better training in procurement and purchasing and create a process for planning and hosting large events. It also said city officials should explore trying to get back at least part of the $33,500 cost for a performance that never happened.
While the report pointed out possible duplicated invoices and revealed the city spent $681,000 in general funds — not federal stimulus dollars — on the Black History Month event, the consultants made clear it was not a full financial audit.
Tyeastia Green, who oversaw the racial equity office planning the event at time, told MinnPost that Baker Tilly’s investigators never contacted or interviewed her. She learned about the report — which the city commissioned at a cost not to exceed $175,000 — by watching Tuesday’s presentation at the city Audit Committee.
The report bolstered city officials’ contention that they bent numerous procurement and contracting rules as part of a good-faith effort to guarantee the event went on as planned.
“In this report, you see every department in our city working together until the very last minute trying to make this particular event successful,” said City Council Vice President Linea Palmisano. “When we realized we missed the mark, we invested the time and the money … to figure out what we could do better.”
But Green — whose employment with the city ended shortly after the event — disputed many of the report’s findings. In an interview, Green said that city staff gave her contradictory information throughout the planning process. She also objected to the reasons staff slowed key contracts, including city officials’ concerns that she had “hand-picked” Black performers — an absurd concern, she thought, for a Black History Month event.
“They kept moving the goalposts,” said Green, who has provided MinnPost with numerous documents — including secretly-recorded audio from a Feb. 14 meeting with Mayor Jacob Frey, City Council leaders and top city officials — that, she argues, prove the city has been trying to unfairly blame her for the event’s failure.
Why this report matters
The Baker Tilly report represented the city’s latest attempt to figure out what went wrong with the “I Am My Ancestors Wildest Dreams” expo. Early in her tenure as the city’s race and equity director, Green had pitched the event as both a healing moment for Minneapolis’ Black community and as a way for city officials to signal they “understand that the world is watching Minneapolis” in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the subsequent uprisings.
Instead of 20,000 attendees, the report found the city received only 3,700 registrations, and actual attendance was likely lower than that. It angered some vendors, who’d expected bigger crowds.
Still, Green’s departure has now sent the city searching for its third race and equity director in as many years. Her defenders say the pattern points to deeper problems in the city’s attitude toward equity and inclusion efforts — or even more simply to a lack of support for new hires: The Baker Tilly report pointed out city employees receive “minimal training and guidance on procurement and purchasing requirements.”
Green said she felt boxed in. During that Feb. 14 meeting, Green pushed back calls to cancel the event, fearing damage to the city’s reputation with the Black community. But Green also provided screenshots of text messages from Feb. 9 in which she practically begged her boss, interim City Operations Officer Heather Johnston, to call off the event amid the confusion about hiring and contracting.
“The event isn’t happening,” Green texted Johnston, according to the screenshots.
“I think there are ways to make it work,” Johnston replied, outlining a plan of action.
What the report found
Investigators combed through the city’s spending records and determined that Minneapolis spent just under $681,000 on the event, including a $108,000 internal transfer of funds to the city-owned Convention Center. This number is new; for months, city officials haven’t been able to definitively say how much the event cost.
Of that total, the city spent nearly $500,000 hiring vendors to perform, speak or provide services at the event. Investigators said that more than half of that amount ($269,000) was spent on out-of-state vendors, including $226,000 to vendors in Georgia — including for the Atlanta-based event planner, Touched Apparel, LLC.
[image_credit]City of Minneapolis[/image_credit][image_caption]Tyeastia Green learned about the report — which the city commissioned at a cost not to exceed $175,000 — by watching Tuesday’s presentation at the city Audit Committee.[/image_caption]
But Palmisano said the event was meant to bolster Minneapolis’ Black community: “I don’t think we should spend our local city government dollars to support the economic interests of Georgia.”
According to the report, the city ultimately spent $33,500 for a performance that didn’t take place and received 49 invoices filled out on the same document template — which was apparently drawn up by Touched Apparel, though they were signed using a different name — using the same invoice number. Of those 49 invoices, 14 were duplicates of each other, which prompted questions from the Audit Committee about whether these reflected possible wrongdoing.
Green said investigators could’ve cleared this up by giving her a call: She said that in February, the City Attorney’s Office had abruptly raised concerns that Green might have not opened the opportunities to perform at the Black History Month event to non-Black performers.
Green was offended by this suggestion, but a city spokesperson told MinnPost in March that “government entities cannot limit opportunities to contract based on race in hiring vendors, including performers.”
In any event, Green said before attorneys raised red flags, 14 vendors had already submitted invoices. How confident is she that these are the same 14 duplicates that the report flagged? “100% sure,” she said.
The backstory — and how the report has changed what we know about it
In September 2022, Green proposed staging a city-run expo to mark Black History Month.
In Green’s previous job working for the city of Burlington, Vermont, she had worked with Touched Apparel, and its proprietor, Casey Elleby, to organize similar events. In Minneapolis, Green also hoped to hire Elleby again to take the lead on curating and organizing the expo.
Palmisano said she felt Green’s selection of Touched Apparel raised concerns about a potential conflict of interest: “It leaves me with more questions than I have answers … but it does seem a bit problematic.”
Green countered that she was always been open about her desire to bring on Touched Apparel, which offered the expo concept she was hoping to bring to Minneapolis. Green noted that the report’s timeline noted that on Sept. 22, she submitted forms that would allow the city to hire Touched Apparel without a public bidding process, but that staff ultimately rejected this request.
In late October and November, the city put the event planning contract up through two different public bidding processes. Three vendors applied, including Touched Apparel, which ultimately won the contract.
Palmisano on Tuesday questioned who made the decision to pass over the other two. In her interview, Green said she was open to the idea of picking another local vendor and that she even met with another bidder, though she couldn’t recall which one.
Early on, Green also began soliciting thousands of dollars from outside donors to pay for the event.
However, in mid-October, a city attorney warned Green that ethics rules barred her from soliciting donations directly from outside funders. Green said she was baffled: She claimed she had already told the mayor, council president and other top city officials about her plans — and none had told her fundraising was against the rules.
Another month passed before Green learned about a workaround: city officials often partner with an outside philanthropy to accept and spend donated funds on the city’s behalf. Green had a plan to find such a partner, but her father died unexpectedly in late November, and by the time she returned to work more than a month later, it was too late.
Ultimately, Green has publicly claimed she had to turn away “almost $200,000 in funds” that she’d lined up for the expo in fall 2022.
Just two weeks before the event, City Council members gathered for a hastily-convened meeting to transfer hundreds of thousands in contingency funds to Green to shore up the expo.
Green contends this move was unnecessary — and perhaps even orchestrated to publicly blame for the expo’s failure on her. Green insisted she could have covered the expo’s full cost out of her own department’s discretionary budget. In the secretly-recorded Feb. 14 meeting, top staffers advised the City Council’s president and vice-president that a public vote wasn’t necessary to transfer funds to cover event costs.
“I don’t even know why we’re here,” council President Andrea Jenkins said at one point during the meeting, according to the recording Green shared with MinnPost.
But city leaders have disputed Green’s contention that the public vote was unnecessary theater (and Tuesday’s report is likely to provide new fodder for their arguments).
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Some council members argued it was inappropriate for city departments to shift funds internally without a public vote — especially because they believed an unused federal stimulus grant had been shunted into Green’s budget to help pay for the event. On Tuesday, Palmisano said she had concerns about whether that move would survive the additional scrutiny involved with stimulus funds.
But Tuesday’s report also offered a new, puzzling revelation on this point: Though the City Council’s vote authorized the transfer of $290,000 of stimulus funds, Baker Tilly investigators found that the city ultimately did not use stimulus funds to pay for any expo costs. In fact, city officials apparently combed through spending records to ensure only city general funds were used to cover expo expenses.
This came as a surprise to Green, who had believed stimulus funds were used.
Palmisano wasn’t certain who made the decision not to use stimulus money on the event, but said that using general funds “seemed most appropriate at the end of the day.”
Report silent on whether the Bush Foundation offered funds
The press headlines that turned the expo from an obscure misstep with underwhelming attendance into a high-profile embarrassment stemmed from a claim Green made before the event even took place.
At the Feb. 17 special council meeting, Green said that the Bush Foundation “had offered us $3 million” to stage the event, “but had some stipulations that we could not satisfy.”
But as the Star Tribune first reported in March, the Bush Foundation said Green’s story was untrue. A spokesperson for the St. Paul-based philanthropy later told MinnPost that a Bush representative did talk with Green by phone about funding the expo — but told Green that the event “was not a fit and we would not fund it.”
Green’s last day with the city was March 13, four days after the Star Tribune’s story. Green said she initially resigned, then rescinded that resignation, but was later told she was “unappointed.”
Baker Tilly’s report says nothing about Green’s interactions with the Bush Foundation, or whether investigators — who claimed to have sifted through more than 300,000 emails and spoken with 13 current and former city employees — were able to corroborate any of Green’s claims about soliciting outside funds. In both her March interview with MinnPost and on Tuesday, Green stood by her account of her interactions with Bush.
The City Council is full of activists who have never had a job which they have had measurable results and their salary was based on measurable results. They have never had to meet a payroll, or pay quarterly taxes, or put their home up for collateral on a business loan. Money means nothing to them. They just want more.
It takes over a year to plan a major event like this. Even if everybody is fully trained on event operations and purchasing. Slap dash events, planned by people without the skills, often fail miserably.
Not a particularly good news day for City Hall today. This report, and the breaking news that the council held a vote on rent stabilization while 3 members where out for a religious holiday, doesn’t exactly show.them in a positive manner.
Oh yeah, my idea “In September 2022, Green proposed staging a city-run expo to mark Black History Month” that I was in charge of top to bottom, and failed miserably, is everyone else’s fault! Sounds like the Trump defense!
Sadly this shows a chaotic city government with good intentions, but no real planning. Also sad is lack of transparency and use of our tax dollars that were lost- could have been used for a lot of critical needs from pot holes to hiring police officers to hiring transit cops….I would think this idea was also pretty delayed considered Floyd was murdered in May 2020. I would say all were pretty slow on the draw trying to get an event supporting black skinned folks- 2 years is a long time to wait. $681K is a lot of money to waste.
So many questions and problems here. But, does it seem strange to others that she returned to work after a month + after her father’s unexpected death? Do people, employed by the city, just come and go when they want? Aren’t there bereavement terms in people’s contracts?
When you can disappear for a month, and nobody even notices you’re gone, there’s a problem.
The fact your Governor just hired another woman with a sketchy history to do the same non-job for the state is just wacky.
You know, when I read about this debacle, the tens of millions that were stolen from child care subsidies and food giveaways, the absolute mayhem and chaos going on in Minneapolis every night, and the wacky laws that come out of the legislature, someone looking on from afar gets the impression Minnesota is being led by children.
I’m not sure why Minnpost seems to be so invested in salvaging Ms. Green’s reputation or perspective. The city spent $700k trying to produce an event that was her idea and her job to organize. The event flopped… those are the fact of the case and they are undisputed. Green’s primary defense keeps drifting back to a claim that she basically didn’t get proper supervision but she was not hired for an entry-level position. She must have presented herself as a capable event organizer with the necessary skill sets when she applied for the job eh? Anyone with those skill sets would know it takes time to learn an organizations structure and chain of command. And anyone who’s worked for government on any level knows that governments have specific legal and procedural requirements and limitations, you may not know what they all are, but you should know to ask, especially if you’re supposed to have some expertise in diversity and discrimination.
So why didn’t someone else do her job or tell her how to do it? More than likely everyone else was doing their own jobs and didn’t get involved until problems arose. Meanwhile Ms. Green can’t seem to decide whether or not problems ever actually arose. Half the time she’s claiming everything was fine and there was no problem and the other half she’s begging to cancel the event. If there was never any shortage of funding then how did funding become an issue? whatever.
Communication is always a two way process so for every time Green claims no one told her something (which she claims A LOT) one can ask her why she didn’t ask? Clearly Green isn’t a great communicator or recipient of information. When staff specifically raised objections to hiring her previous employer based in Georgia as the event planner, she found a way to hire them anyways and then claims she didn’t realize it was a problem. She was given a pretty big hint on that, and she ignored it. As for event planners, as an event photographer I can tell you that there is absolutely no shortage of quite capable organizers and planners in the Twin Cities and there is absolutely no reason to reach out to Georgia for these services. Given the flop they ended up delivering one can easily conclude that no local planner could have done worse.
Finally, it’s relatively easy to observe that early on in the process Ms. Green became more concerned about avoiding blame for a failed event than she was about producing the event successfully. Is she REALLY claiming that half way into the planning she KNEW the event was going to flop and was recording meetings to protect herself from blame? Does a competent person with event planning skills really think that THAT is the best way to cope with a scenario like that? At any rate she cannot claim to have been any less concerned about who was going to be blamed than the people she’s accusing of being concerned about who was going to be blamed right? She’s the only one with a recording, and screen shots of texts, blah blah blah. Maybe if someone had been more focused on producing a successful event than who would blamed for a failed one the outcome might have been different.
So obviously mistakes were made, and a disfunctional City Council was part of the problem. But it’s hard not to conclude that whatever mistakes were made by the council, the biggest mistake was assuming that Green had the necessary skills and experience to produce this event, no one put the brakes on it when they should have. What happens after it begins to fall apart just post mortem minutia. The Titanic sank… who rearranged the deck chairs and how they did it while it was going down isn’t REALLY the point right?
So what are we doing here? Is this really an attempt to understand what went wrong, or is this just an excuse to heap more criticism on the MPLS City Council? This event was Green’s “vision”, and it was her job to organize it, and it flopped. Those are the facts of the case and they not disputed.
I am quite sure there is enough culpability to spread all around. Where was supervision and oversight?
Yes, spreading “culpability” seems to be a priority for some people. There’s a difference between “supervising” and taking over… she had supervision that she apparently ignored and complained about, but no one took over the project. Again… this was NOT an entry-level position she had.
First of all I will say that Minn Post has done an excellent job of covering this story. This is the most detailed article out of all that I have seen.
Baker Tilly was hired to audit, and that is what they did. Why would they need to get a response from Green? They are presenting thier findings. Green can respond afterwards if needed. I still do not understand her explanation for the 14 duplicate invoices. It makes no sense to me.
I am very seldom surprised by Government incompetence but this disaster is special. You were given 850k of taxpayer dollars to throw a party and you totally botched it. That is not easy!!
Peanuts compared to many private sector debacles.
OK sure, but a private sector debacle does not come out of the taxpayer’s funds. If the company does a bad job and doesn’t make any money they will soon go bankrupt. If they keep ripping people off they will go to jail.
I noted Paul U’s comment earlier on communication & skill sets. Here I thought it was just the city of St Paul with communication problems and skill set problems. Mayor Carter hired several friends at 6 figure salaries to help in communications when he started and other new ventures- still not working. It clearly looks like communication problem & lack of skills involving a lot of money in Mpls City government- just think was infrastructure alone they could have improved with that money. That is a LOT of money to waste.