From the sublime to the ridiculous.
Already, it’s become clear this will be the theme for the new look Shelby County Board of Commissioners.
In time, they may even be able to make Tennessee Representative Curry Todd look intelligent. They are certainly off to a good start.
It began this week with a vote that is a poster child for the commissioners’ lack of stewardship of taxpayer money and it ended in an inane campaign by the far right members to silence anyone who sees things differently than they do.
Walking the Walk (Not)
First, the sublime.
Following the defeat of consolidated government, some county politicians have adopted the glib talking point – government’s not dysfunctional; it just has poor leaders. Well, they got one of two right. They’ve made their point about poor leaders.
Given the chance to make Shelby County Government more efficient and less costly, they instead voted for a fragmented, duplicative computer system that wastes $3-5 million every year. Put another way, the commissioners who are always espousing lower taxes when they run for office voted down a change that could have reduced the property tax rate by about 2-3 cents.
So much for campaign rhetoric. When the chips were down, politics trumped the public, and the commissioners voted for the perpetuation of political fiefdoms instead of centralized technology. In other words, the commissioners can’t even summon up the courage to consolidate Shelby County Government itself.
Perpetuating Waste
Through sheer force of personality, county mayors have created the perception that they are equals to their Memphis counterparts. But, perched atop a government littered with the fiefdoms of assorted elected officials and powerful public boards, the truth is that the county mayor has direct control over less than 20 percent of the county budget.
Within county government, the costs of inconsistent policies are legend. Only the mayor complies with personnel policies, purchasing rules, financial procedures, and technology guidelines.
That’s why one elected official bought a multimillion-dollar computer system that couldn’t “talk” to the county mainframe, another refused to put her GIS information online for public use, another paid premium prices for equipment that could have been purchased more cheaply by the mayor’s administration, and most contribute to the stupefying, fragmented online experience at county websites.
In the face of needless bureaucracy and mind-numbing waste, the board of commissioners voted to allow elected officials to opt out of a plan to consolidation county information technology.
Counterintuitive
New Commissioner Heidi Shafer made the specious argument that it was a “separation of powers” issue. We’re assuming that she’s referring to the balance of powers that sets out executive, legislative, and judicial branches. In this context, the covey of county elected officials all fall on the same side of the line: they are part of the executive branch.
Compounding their mistake, the board of commissioners voted against the hiring of a chief information officer that all “real” governments have these days to ensure that there is coherent policy, management and direction over technology. It’s no wonder that on its best day, Shelby County Government is three generations behind on technology and its applications.
We are sympathetic with Shelby County Register Tom Leatherwood, who has at least attempted to get his department online and into this century, but his justification for continued inefficiency was pretty lame. His contention is that when his website goes down or his systems don’t work, people blame him. Of course, he offered no statistics that show that there really is a problem in this regard, but it was a day for generalities, not facts.
It’s intuitive that multiple computer systems within the same organization make little sense. It’s impossible to imagine any company that would even countenance such an idea, but once again, the vote proves that campaign talk by conservative Republicans about bringing businesslike approaches to government is simply empty rhetoric.
Twitter-dee and Twitter-dum
Second, the ridiculous.
With Shelby County facing a $20 million shortfall in next year’s budget, continuing deficit issues, and climbing property tax rates, commissioners devoted time to the pressing issue of Commissioner Mike Carpenter’s tweeting habits. Unsurprisingly, Commissioner Terry Roland was the source of an enlightened view of democracy that limits the rights to people with whom he disagrees.
To his credit, Commissioner Carpenter continued his tweets as a protest of the entire charade. Mr. Roland comes from the Tea Party side of things, the group that likes to say they only support issues and programs if they’re in the U.S. Constitution. He might try reading the First Amendment.
Commissioner Chris Thomas, torn from the same cloth, supported the infringement of Commissioner Carpenter’s rights, but then again, his social media of choice is Facebook, not Twitter. We gave up on his Facebook page because the first time we expressed an opinion different from his, he went into a tirade.
Reality Show in the Making
That seems to be the theme of the entire Twitter farce. The people leading the fight to outlaw tweets are largely the same group that shouts down anyone who disagree with them rather than debating the facts. This is its virtual version.
So what was Commissioner Carpenter’s offending tweet: Repeating a joke made by Commissioner Wyatt Bunker that a ban on roadside sales of animals could result in a food shortage in Millington. The tweet got picked up by TV news, which says more about TV news than it does Commissioner Carpenter. Thereupon, Millington Mayor Richard Hodges gets mad at Commissioner Carpenter for repeating a joke by Commissioner Bunker, and voila, Commissioner Roland presents his resolution banning tweets.
You just couldn’t make this stuff up.
Perhaps, the only things in Millington that tweet end up on a dinner plate.
Ridiculous tea-party Republicans! Give us more great Democratic statesmen like Henri Brooks, Joe Brown, Julian Bolton, Franklin Roosevelt, etc!
This is maddening stuff! We are doomed with these short-sighted, ignorant fools at the helm. Of course we already knew that based on how they reacted to the consolidation debate and how they made up facts to convince their constituents to vote against it. What a bunch of yokels.
At least twice a month we know where the most concentrated gathering of ‘stupid’ can be found in the County.
Instead of feeding them lunch we should be charging them a per diem for wasting precious air.
IO,
I heard that.
Having been thru IT consolidations, I can tell you that consolidation of IT functions is often misleading. The promised savings aren’t realized. Just the mere fact that they can’t get a good grip on what the projected savings might be is an indicator that they’re blowing smoke. $3-5 million is a pretty wide range.
Would FedEx and Autozone benefit from consolidating their IT functions? Of course not … They have different goals; different databases; different customers …
Does it make sense to consolidate the county schools IT with the Registrar’s office? Probably not.
That doesn’t mean that there doesn’t need to be some reform or, at least a little common sense, introduced. Things like shared databases shouldn’t be platform specific … If you have mac or unix users, don’t put your database in Access … that is Windoze only!
Perhaps SC can save $3-5 million thru outsourcing but I doubt that they can do thru consolidation.