Our small town mayors have more herrings than a Scandanavian fisherman.
The only difference is that theirs are red.
They switch from one talking point to another, playing “what if” in an effort to poison the well before their constituents have had a voice in the charter for a new government being written by the Memphis/Shelby County Charter Commission.
Despite their Greek chorus of fear and anxiety, it is an idea whose time has come. Put simply, it’s time to get rid of one of the governments that overlap, duplicate services and waste our money.
In one respect, we do agree with the town mayors. We are against consolidation too.
New, Improved
Rather, as we said a couple of years ago, we are for using the Tennessee Metropolitan Act to create a totally new government – rather than simply following Nashville’s example and welding together city and county governments.
It’s not as if time has stood still in the about four decades since Nashville got the jump on our community by streamlining its local government. The payoffs are obvious. Yes, we can learn from the lessons of the wave of traditional consolidations in the 1960’s, but we have the chance to think about how we can have the most innovative, economical government in the U.S., something totally new and something totally different.
That’s why we like the approach of Charter Commission Chair Julie Ellis and her colleagues. They could have done the simple thing – take both city and county org charts and put them together and adjourn after a couple of meetings.
But small ideas and simple notions won’t fix the broken business models of our governments. And suggestions that functional consolidation and interlocal agreements are the answer are absurdist thinking since the government we have today comes from 30 years of this approach.
Boss Crump Lives
And yet, the town mayors call for scrapping our chance to invent a new government before it’s even started. It’s the suburban reincarnation of Boss Crump as they tell Mrs. Ellis that she’s not welcome to hold public hearings in their towns, deciding unilaterally that their citizens don’t deserve the opportunity to get involved in the charter commission’s work.
All of this is pulsating with political irony since the mayors have spent years complaining about both Memphis and Shelby County Governments – as recently as last week when they got down to griping about a 75-cent fee to Shelby County Mayor Joe Ford.
Of course, they are not alone. It seems often that the people most tenaciously fighting a change are the ones who’ve complained the loudest about Memphis for years, and now, given the opportunity for a countywide government in which they have a fuller voice, they cling to the status quo like a life preserver.
Deja Vu
The fact that all of it is cloaked in a faux populism makes it no less easy to see through it, and the racial overtones expressed by the town mayor on the Charter Commission in a recent visit from the Jacksonville General Counsel put it all in a pretty graphic frame. We’ve said before that we refuse to believe that the town mayors are motivated by prejudice or racism, but like the McCain/Palin campaign, they stoke the raw emotions of those who are motivated by those ugly feelings, and like Senator John McCain, the mayors need to call a halt to the ugliest rhetoric and use of code words once and for all.
In the meantime though, the mayors continue to stridently oppose “consolidation” although they don’t even know what will be written into a new charter yet. It seems obvious that they’re not really motivated just by the fear of the unknown but by the preferential treatment that they’ve received from county government for decades and decades.
There was a time when county government was controlled by the small towns. Although Memphis represented the majority of Shelby County, the forerunner to the Shelby County Board of Commissioners – the Quarterly Court – was governed by a majority elected from outside Memphis. It took the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling – Baker v. Carr, the so-called “one man, one vote” case – to force fair representation on Shelby County.
Despite this change, county government’s agenda – and its skyrocketing – debt has been driven by its obsession with delivering the roads and schools that developers wanted outside Memphis, fueling sprawl and subsidizing the largest out-migration in Memphis’ history. The town mayors haven’t grasped yet that those days are over – county government is financially strapped and all property tax revenues are spent today for schools, justice and health.
Doing Nothing Is Not an Option
Absent the creation of a new government, the future will feature more annexations by Memphis and fewer services from Shelby County, and if nothing changes, voters outside Memphis will continue to have a mere 3 of the 26 votes on the city and county legislative bodies that will decide the future of their community.
In other words, we think there are compelling reasons that every Shelby Countian – including those living outside Memphis – should consider a new government as godsend, but first, we’ll have to listen hard to hear the facts over the roars of the mayors. And we’ll have to read closely and watch closely to get the facts from a news media whose default mode is to define everything in the public sector by conflict and as a horse race.
We believe the Charter Commission voted right when it didn’t include schools in its work. There are legal reasons that it was questionable that it had the authority to tackle them in the first place, but we don’t subscribe to the view that the solutions for Memphis City Schools can be found in Shelby County Schools. It’s the former that understands the challenges and realities of urban education and in dealing with that overriding purpose, the county schools offer nothing.
During Mayor A C Wharton’s “listening tour” about government merger, the mayors howled that it was all a ploy to consolidate schools, but taking that off the table did little to assuage their stated concerns. It simply morphed into a conspiracy theory about this all being the set-up for it to happen later and that it’s all about shifting school funding to county taxpayers (although it’s easier to do that now under our present structure).
Open Mouth, Close Mind
They worked hard to block the listening tour from coming to their towns, and then one complained that Mayor Wharton never came there. Now they deliver the same message to Mrs. Ellis in a classic example of “don’t confuse me with the facts, my mind is made up.” More to the point, last time we checked, the towns were part of Shelby County and the Charter Commission doesn’t need their permissions to have meetings with the public there.
Lately, they’ve taken to arguing that The Med shouldn’t be funded with county taxes because it primarily serves Memphians. However, they forget that The Med was transferred from City of Memphis to Shelby County in an agreement between the two governments before county government was restructured in the mid-1970’s. In addition, health care should be on the largest tax base since it’s a regional service.
The mayors say that city government is financially unstable and irresponsible, but Memphis delivers services cheaper than the largest county towns. In these psycho-drama, Germantown Mayor Sharon Goldsworthy is a dependable source of complaints whose solutions seem to rest in creating a better government, but the faulty syllogism seems to elude her. In her meeting with Mrs. Ellis, she said Memphis’s finances are scary and that Memphis can’t be “trusted to do the right thing.” Her answer: keep it like it is. For the record, City of Memphis goes away.
Collierville Mayor Stan Joyner said that if county government can’t tell him how his 75-cent vector control fee is being spent, how would a metro government? Perhaps the answer is found in putting the safeguards and the accountability in a new charter to make sure it happens.
Bad Faith
And to top it off, he and Mayor Goldsworthy said that they just can’t get comfortable with Memphians being the voting majority in a new government. Of course, that’s just like it is now but perhaps they want to have the unreasonable veto power that suburban voters have over the will of the people in a metro consolidation vote.
In other words, for the town mayors, there will always be something to complain because the truth is they aren’t engaging in the discussion in good faith. That said, the rest of us shouldn’t let them distract us from the important work of talking to each other – not to mention listening to each other – about what a new, improved government could be.
Through the “No Consolidation of Memphis and Shelby County Governments” group on Facebook, I recently learned about the’de-annexation’ ballot initiative (deannexmemphis.com). This is similar to the smaller government “deconsolidation” concept I have advocated for awhile. (note: I disagree with SCM that combining Memphis and Shelby County into a monolith is somehow making government smaller!)
I am glad to see this sort of concept gain steam. It will be nice to let all of Shelby County vote on this in de-annexation initiative in August!
To paraphrase SCM: The rest of us shouldn’t let the Pro-Consolidation folks distract us from the important work of talking to each other – not to mention listening to each other – about what new, improved smaller governments could be through de-annexation.
Cheers!
“developers wanted outside Memphis, fueling sprawl and subsidizing the largest out-migration in Memphis’ history.”
Begun in no small measure by the socialist attempts to force little johnny to forget football practice down the street at the neighborhood school and get up at 5:00 a.m. to ride a bus to Hamilton or some other soon-to-be free fire zone. 42,000 kids didnt show up for the experiment-many parents looking to move ‘anywhere’ out of Memphis proper.
supplanted of course by the 18 year benign neglect rule of the ‘don’t like memphis-then leave’ former Great Leader.
you reap what you sow, y’all.
I suspect that the suburbanites look at Frayser, Raleigh, and Hickory Hill as examples of what mingling with the big city can do to a community. Whether their fears are warranted or not is disputable. The decline those three communities have seen over the decades is not.
It is extremely disingenuous to argue, as SCM constantly does, that the economic benefits to consolidation are clear and positive, when the evidence on that point is unclear, to be charitable. Name calling, cries of racism and odd comparisons to McCain/Palin are more satisfying to write probably but are much less convincing than reasoned argument. Arguing, or implicating, that consolidation in and of itself will lead to economic progress is shameful because it isn’t true and there is no evidence that it is. Consolidation is no get rich quick scheme and it is wrong to suggest otherwise. This debate has quickly devolved into dug in sides, name calling and no real exchange of ideas. Mayor Wharton should be commended for trying to engage in a civil discussion about this issue. SCM should follow his lead and stop writing posts like this one.
Antisocialist:
We have no problem with the Fox boys and their deannexation gambit, but we predict that it’ll never be on the ballot for practical and legal reasons. And as we’ve said frequently to you, deannexation will not lead to smaller governments. But as we have written often, we have no problem with Memphis shrinking its borders.
And from what we hear, the town mayors are worried about this referendum because they fear that they’ll lose their territory.
Good to hear from you.
Anonymous 4:44:
The economic benefits are graphically clear. Just compare economic performance of Memphis versus competitive cities that have new governments – like Jacksonville, Nashville, Indianapolis, and Louisville. We are on a dangerous trajectory and staying the course means that we drive off a cliff.
We have to get real about the positive role that government can play in the success of our entire county.
We have never suggested that it is the magic answer, but it is a big step in the right direction. And as we have written before, we were opposed to merging the governments for years, but the current momentum of our region toward the bottom rungs of metros tells us that wee can’t keep doing the same thing and expecting different results.
We have to get a business model that works.
Sorry, but we’ll probably be writing more posts like this if people refuse to even discuss the possibility of change without fulminating. And we agree with Mayor Wharton’s support for consolidation and his support for the discussion about a new government.
And in his listening tour, Mayor Wharton made a case for the economic benefits of new government many times. Again, we agree with him.
>>>but like the McCain/Palin campaign, they stoke the raw emotions of those who are motivated by those ugly feelings,
Say what? You know, SCM, it would be interesting to know how many people quit reading this blog due to your cheap throw-away lines like that. Those of us who actually remember way back to 2008 recall that Senator McCain was criticized for pulling his punches on certain issues so he wouldn’t inflame race demagogues like you. (How DOES one sit in a congregation for twenty years without knowing that his pastor is a ranting charlatan? Why DOES a compassionate liberal millionaire’s brother live in a grass hut in Kenya?)
Off-topic? Yes. And it illustrates just how annoying and distracting cheap throwaway lines are. Maybe a review of those old journalism notebooks up in the attic would be in order.
It’s got to happen or we shut down.
I’d like to know the shutdown date. There’s an invisible (to you) deadline.
What’s happened in the past is garbage, we have representative in office that represent drunks, and drug dealers, addicts and criminals, people who CAN NOT elect officials (and for good reason) and yet we have them right now. Ophelia is back, I wish I had money to buy her vote for something that would work, cuz, it’s for sale.
When you have a rogues gallery like that, it’s no surprise that there is going to be a school of red herrings in the water.
Won’t push the deadline back though.
I am amazed by how stupid these suburban mayors are. They offer nothing constructive and when all of their questions are answered, they refuse to listen and say it’s a conspiracy. There is something wrong here. It seems like to me they already have their mind made up.
Hey, Joe, it was only the truth. Get over it. And even McCain said after the election he regretted the way his campaign inspired the ugly side of voters.
So what’s the problem with the analogy? It’s the perfect one.
And if your comments about the preacher and the relatives were relevant to consolidation, I’d say go for it. But the Palin/McCain (get them in the right order for you) was precisely the problem unleashed by the mayors of these mayors whose towns would blow away without Memphis.
Hit a little too close to home for Joe.
Joe Blunt:
We promise that we wanted to engage in racial demagoguery, we could do lots better than that. We think the parallels are obvious and pertinent. We admired Sen. McCain for bringing his constituents into line, and we think the mayors owe this community no less.
Also, we assume that you didn’t read any of the posts in which we criticized Mayor Herenton for race-baiting…and there will no doubt be some more of those in the future, judging from the way his campaign has begun.
Hey Anons and SCM: How about a couple of examples of the McCain campaign’s appeal to racism, since it was the truth and all? I can’t remember a one.
I have never seen such bullshit in my life. No more “smart City”, how about “ignorant, mistake city”.
You make so many broad, inaccurate statements, it is funny .
Re consolidation: Since everyone knows, or should by now, that consolidation has no chance of winning the suburbs, for several reasons, there is after all a much simpler and much more sure-fire way of going about this: reinventing county government. Give up the COUNTY charter. Especially, get rid of a county “mayor.” Memphian or suburban, the great majority of us already have a city mayor — all the more now that most of the land in the county has been annexed or designated for annexation. Why do we need a second mayor at ribbon cuttings and ground breakings, complete with big office retinue and bodyguards? What does a county mayor do that a county administrator, answerable to the commission, couldn’t do? The county doesn’t need ordinance power now that most of the land is annexed into the cities; the cities have that power. I say reduce the county government profile to its basics, like a rural county. Keep the traditional county officers and let them do their jobs. Assign county-wide duties and capital expenditures to the county government, including schools and large public buildings that we all use, and let the cities do the rest. Such a plan reduces the double-government problem. It keeps the suburbs happy. It keeps Memphis whole, existing, and happy. It keeps the suburbanites in Shelby County. It costs moderately less than current county government. And it could pass a vote everywhere.
Memphis tax base is running away, you have to expand (annex) to expand the base and bring down taxes. Memphis taxes and gives no service for 2 decades, the mayors should be skeptical. Our ex-mayor running for Steve’s job doesn’t even know WHO is in TN legislature, he’s nuts. Ophelia is back in there, she’s nuts. We have plenty of representation for nutjobs, but, they don’t vote.
Forbes Magazine said we’re the third most miserable place to live. I think they were being nice. Nothing any politician has done in 20 years has made Memphis a decent place to live.
Hear that politicos? “In 20 years you’ve failed miserably and everyone in the USA knows it!”
MCS, MLGW, are the WORST I’ve ever seen or had to deal with in this country, MPD and the mayor’s office have changed.
Memphis speaks the language of failure fluently! Every citizen, and every leader too. If we weren’t so busy being right speaking failure, we’d probably succeed at something, but, go ahead and make me wrong, I’m sure it will suffice for actually succeeding.
Better start talking right, not “whitewashing”, not “lying”, not “feelgood”, not BS!
Why does “Smart City” support “consoldidation” when (whoever the writer is) doesn’t have any idea what the Charter will say?
It is obvious consolidation is an attempt to pillage the suburbs for money without providing any services, just as Memphis annexes areas for property taxes and then does not provide adequate services.
Joe:
We didn’t say that the campaign appealed to racism. We said it unleashed it and McCain himself had to call it down.
And most of all, if there is no chance of consolidation winning the suburbs, why not let voters decide for themselves? That’s what democracy is all about.
You have some good ideas on changes. Hope you share them with the Charter Commission or Rebuild Government so it can convey to Charter Commission.
Paul:
How is it obvious that consolidation will “pillage the suburbs” for money when the law requires that Memphians are in an urban services district that pays significantly more than the burbs.
Despite the town mayors’ propaganda, moving the cost of services to the county will not and cannot happen.
And we’d be glad to give you the facts behind any statement that you contend are not accurate. We’ve read the charters for Nashville, Jacksonville, Indianapolis, Denver, and Louisville, and we’ve analyzed the economic trends, the tax trends, and more.
Feel free to ask.