Title VI states that no person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.

The problem here in the city of Clarksville, Montgomery County government and the state of Tennessee is that minorities are not involved in the decision-making process of how federal dollars are being spent here. Local and state officials are often confused and perplexed as to how Title VI actually works and presently to date have no Title VI implementation plans on the city or county levels.

When citizens approached the Tennessee Title VI Compliance Commission with their complaints and concerns members of the commission could not achieve a quorum to review and discuss Title VI complaints that were filed against state public agencies receiving federal financial assistance

The Vice-President of the Commission, a Mr. Jerry Jerkins  has stated publicly that the commission achieved little if any success between the years 2003 throughout 2008. however, a current investigation being conducted by federal officials has revealed that more-than 10,000,000 (10 million) dollars most of it being federal monies was spent to develop, implement and operate the commission cannot be all accounted for.

This possible mis-use of federal funds can no longer be over-looked by auditors in Washington D.C., especially with President Obama supposedly counting all the wasted dollars.

The following questions come to mind;

Who all received pay and compensation and for what?

How much was the director of the commission John Birdsong paid?

How many Title VI complaints were actually answered/resolved by the commission?

What was the money actually used for if the commission never achieved a quorum in over five years?

If these questions are not answered then our government has wasted and possibly cannot account for well over $10,000,000 dollars. Or to put it simply people were paid to do nothing.