Knoxville, Tenn., mayor defends NS confidentiality agreement

Written by jrood

Knoxville, Tenn., mayor defends NS confidentiality agreement   It has caused him no end of political heat, but Jefferson County Mayor Alan Palmieri says that signing a confidentiality agreement with Norfolk Southern was the right thing to do, according to the Knoxville News-Sentinel. He doesn't regret it and says he would do it again. While some residents who have concerns about Norfolk Southern's plans for an intermodal facility fear that the agreement cloaks behind-doors dealings, Palmieri denies this is the case.

"There have been no
secret meetings and nobody with the county has signed anything with Norfolk
Southern," he said, referring to agreements other than the pledge of
confidentiality.

 

Public officials routinely
sign confidentiality agreements with companies that are looking at moving into
an area but don’t want to alert competitors or real estate speculators,
Palmieri said.

 

Norfolk Southern has announced
that it wants to build a transfer operation in New Market, Tenn., where truck
trailers and containers are on- and off-loaded from rail cars for long-distance
shipping. The corporation seeks to build the $60-million intermodal facility on
280 acres along Highway 11E between New Market Elementary School and Bruner
Road. Two studies project that the NS facility would generate 1,801 jobs in
Jefferson County by 2020 and 2,600 to 2,700 jobs by 2025.

 

The project has created
conflict between those who see it as a threat to farmland and quality of life
in Jefferson County and those, including Palmieri, who see it as a lifeline to
pull the local economy out of the depths of 15 percent unemployment.

 

The Norfolk Southern
confidentiality agreement was his introduction to the project in 2007, Palmieri
said.

 

"Don Cason (Jefferson
County Chamber of Commerce president and CEO) came in one day and said here is
something important that you need to sign," he said.

 

Palmieri signed it, as he
said he has done for many other companies. He said the Chamber of Commerce
circulated the confidentiality forms for the railroad and that as far as he
knew, he and Jefferson County Commission members Phil Kindred and Murrel
Jarnigan were the only elected officials asked to sign. He believes about 20
people in all, mostly from the business community, signed.

 

Palmieri and others have
received requests to produce the documents signed, notably from the Jefferson
County Tomorrow citizens’ group, but Palmieri said he signed the three-page
form letter and handed it back to Cason without making a copy. Cason said the
Chamber of Commerce has no plans to make the signed confidentiality documents public.
To do so could set a precedent that might scare off other companies looking to
locate in Jefferson County, Cason said.

 

"The next time a
business prospect comes to Jefferson County and wants to talk confidentially
about a project, they are going to say, ‘the last project that came through
here, you handed out the confidentiality agreement. Are you going to do that
with ours?’ " Cason said.

 

Kindred said he agreed that
the confidentiality pledge was necessary.

 

"If you lived in a
perfect world where everybody played by the rules, you could just come into
town and start talking to people about what you planned to do, but there are
people who make a living in land speculation," Kindred said.

 

Susan Terpay, spokeswoman
for Norfolk Southern in Norfolk, Va., said the railroad would not release the
signed forms from Jefferson County, but said they are the standard form the
railroad uses when it is assessing a new project location. Besides protecting
the company from competitors and land speculators, it is also needed to protect
proprietary information Norfolk that Southern might share. The forms are routinely
signed by elected officials, she said.

 

"It is a standard
legal document we use in a project where someone would be looking at
confidential information," Terpay said.

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