Metro Arts board votes to approve director's resignation settlement; new lawsuit filed

Metro Arts executive director Daniel Singh is set to resign from his position after a unanimous vote at a special called Metro Arts Commission meeting Friday. New allegations against Singh have also emerged this week in a lawsuit filed by a former Metro Arts staffer.

Per a subsequent unanimous vote by the commission, Singh's paid leave will be extended until June 6, two days after the issue is set to be taken up by Metro Council. He has been on paid administrative leave since April 18 and was previously on family and medical leave since Feb. 23.

If the action is approved by Metro Council, Singh will collect a $200,000 one-time payment following his resignation, which he is required to make official with written notice by June 6, per the terms of the agreement.

As of August 2023, Singh's annual salary was $201,135.

"This is a walk-away settlement by both sides," said Metro Law Director Wallace Dietz in his presentation to the commission. The money will not come from the Metro Arts budget, Dietz said, but from a previous allocation to Metro Law via Metro's director of finance.

Dietz said he met Monday night with Jamie Hollin, an attorney representing Singh, to discuss Singh's employment. According to Dietz, Hollin aimed to reach an agreement that would not include Singh being terminated from the position. The pair negotiated the monetary payment throughout the week before coming to an agreement late Thursday night, Dietz said.

The commission previously met on May 16 to take up the issue of Singh's employment status but failed to take action before losing quorum about 45 minutes into the meeting. Paulette Coleman is currently serving as an interim director for Metro Arts.

The decision comes after months of uncertainty and divisions within the commission following a contested rewriting of the commission's grant-making process.

After a yearslong push to shape a grant process more equitable for individual artists and smaller organizations, the commission in July 2023 approved a funding model devoting more dollars to those applicants, many of whom are minorities. That decision was subsequently reversed after Metro Legal advised that the new model may have been unconstitutional because commissioners had discussed impacts on racial groups before voting on it.

New lawsuit filed against Metro Arts

Metro Arts was hit with a lawsuit Thursday from its former grants program manager who accused Singh of discrimination, harassment and retaliation.

The 12-page complaint, filed in Davidson County Chancery Court, was scant on details. The plaintiff, Jonathan Saad, who worked for the commission from July 2022 to January 2024, stated Singh and “his consultant friends” took several actions Saad believed “would be in violation of civil, regulatory, and possibly even criminal laws.”

Saad lobbed several accusations at Singh, including inappropriate use of commission money and circumventing contract bidding requirements, but he didn't describe specific, dated incidents that matched those descriptions.

Saad stated when he began to speak out, Singh began excluding him from meetings. Then, once Metro opened applications for a permanent grants program manager — a position Saad had held years before and was rehired to perform on a contract basis in 2022 — Saad said his application was repeatedly passed over.

When a replacement was hired, Singh asked Saad to stick around and teach that person, in exchange for four months’ severance pay when his employment ended, according to the complaint. Saad said he was told on Jan. 31 it was his last day, but he has not yet seen the money.

Saad says his termination, the refusal to consider his application and “other negative treatment” was due to his “race, color, age, and/or sex” and in retaliation for having complained about “discriminatory and harassing treatment.”

Dietz said he had no comment on the lawsuit at the time of publication.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nashville's arts director set to resign, get $200K payout