NASHVILLE—The Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus is renewing his call for State Comptroller Justin Mumpower to audit Governor Bill Lee’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. This is the third such request by Caucus Chairman John Ray Clemmons to Comptroller Mumpower in nine months. The initial request was made last August and renewed in September following news reports in The Tennessean involving the office’s budget. Last year, Lee appropriated $1.2 million dollars of taxpayer money to the office. These funds are exclusively controlled and spent by the governor’s hand-picked board of directors. This week, The Tennessean published a new report detailing how Lance Villio, the current director of the office, ran a now-defunct tech company that “flirted with bankruptcy” while serving in his public capacity and getting paid $165,000 per year by taxpayers. The report says the company, Think Native LLC, closed its doors shortly after The Tennessean began making inquiries into its operations.
In a letter sent to the Comptroller’s office on Monday, April 1st, (see attached), Clemmons says “the taxpayers of Tennessee deserve to know whether state resources were improperly used on Villio’s private business endeavor and how much of his time and energy was committed to that private endeavor while he was being paid $165,000 per year by Tennessee taxpayers.” It goes on to note that “The Office directed by Villio receives in excess of one million dollars of public funds, and unelected political appointees control funds. Again, it is imperative for Tennesseans to know whether such a large sum of funds is being appropriately handled and used to conduct the business that was represented to the Tennessee General Assembly.”
