Pondering the Imponderables # 4

It was the quote that caught our eye. “For every dollar that comes into the city and county coffers, $1.57 will have to be paid in social costs,” argued Bill Wheeler, executive director of Families First, in his opposition to video gambling in West Memphis. Gosh, we thought he was talking about Wal-Mart.

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Shep Wilbun must be asking himself: Where do I go to get my apology? After two years of whispered allegations and hundreds of column inches in the daily newspaper, his state indictment has just quietly evaporated, dismissed by special prosecutor John Overton of Savannah. In the end, the only thing accomplished by the investigation was that it cost him an election as Juvenile Court Clerk, rekindling feelings in Democratic Party circles from three years ago that this was the purpose all along.

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Nothing is quite as silly as a public agency fighting to keep from releasing public records. The tug of war continues between local legislative bodies and the Memphis and Shelby County New Memphis Arena Public Building Authority, fueled by the authority’s stonewalling whenever questions were asked about the budgets of the $250 million FedEx Forum. Local legislators have refused to release “storm damage” funds for the arena until their questions are answered. A few months ago, with the Grizzlies about to tip off their second season in the Forum, the long-requested financial reports for the past three years for the city’s most expensive public project were finally sent to county commissioners and City Council members. PBA officials act shocked by the adversarial response they have received from legislative bodies in recent weeks, but it’s basic Government 101: the best thing to do with public records is to make them public.

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City Council member TaJuan Stout Mitchell leads the efforts to rein in tax freezes, complaining rightly that no single entity seems to be keeping up with the total amount of taxes that are being waived. Four groups were cited as having the power to give PILOTs (Payments in lieu of taxes) – Memphis and Shelby County Industrial Development Board; Memphis and Shelby County Center City Revenue Finance Corporation; the Memphis Health, Educational and Housing Facilities Board; and the Shelby County Health, Educational and Housing Facilities Board. However, the problem is even greater than that, because no one has any idea of the total taxes being waived in other ways, such as by profit-making companies with facilities on tax-exempt land, like Memphis International Airport and Agricenter International. As the Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations points out, frequently overlooked are the taxes being waived by sports authorities (like the Memphis and Shelby County Sports Authority which was the financing arm for FedEx Forum); enterprise zone development corporations (like the Tourism Development Zone set up to pay for FedEx Forum); tax increment financing projects (like Uptown); and city and county property (like the Memphis and Shelby County Airport Authority).

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Just to prove that consolidation looks easier from a distance, two days ago, the proposal for a merger of the police and the sheriff in Indianapolis went down in defeat. Mayor Bart Peterson proposed the creation of a single dpeartment with the sheriff in charge as a way to save $9 million a year. It failed by a vote of the city-county Council 15-14, when one lone Democrat cross the partisan lines and voted against the proposal. It proves yet again that the merger of law enforcement is always one of the thorniest issues of consolidation. By the way, Indianpolis is the only place where city and county governments were consolidated by an act of the legislature.

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The state of Connecticut is considering a novel idea to encourage regional thinking –bring back county governments. There, some believe, reinstating the governments abolished in 1960 would end the competition between towns for business investments. County government, they believe, produces the cooperation that eliminates the towns’ division on issues like education, transportation and economic development. If only it were so.

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It was only a few months ago when Council member Carol Chumney’s call for an independent auditor to examine the city books was used to justify her status as a pariah on the city legislative body. These days, she’s looking absolutely prescient. Her call for an independent report on the reason for the shortfalls and a full accounting of all revenues and expenditures sounds like something that’s still needed for the public confidence in the Council’s role as budget watchdog to be restored.

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A main reason that the public has no confidence in Washington politicians these days is their views are situational. They don’t seem to have any philosophical center from which their views spring. Rather, a position can change 180 degrees in 24 hours, depending on whose ox is getting gored. A favorite example these days (as frequently happens) is the Radical Religious Right, who is fervent that the next Supreme Court justice must be someone who understands that states should be left alone to make decisions on the important issues facing its citizens, on an issue, say, like abortion. Of course, it was only a few months ago when some states legalized same-sex marriage that the same people argued that the states had no business making these kinds of decisions, because they rightfully belonged to Congress.