Bredesen Administration Reminds Us Of Our Place

Even paranoiacs have enemies.

And while we fight the birthright to regard Nashville as the evil empire, we can’t summon the same attitude toward State of Tennessee government.

As witnesses for the prosecution, we call on the heads of three state departments – Economic and Community Development, Department of Human Services and Department of Education. Each of them is charged with benign neglect toward our city and possession of a Nashville-centric view of the world.

Distressed Logic

Case in point is the absurdity of the designation by state economic development bureaucrats of Nashville as an economically-distressed county. Meanwhile, we are treated as if there are no similar economic challenges here.

More to the point, this preferential treatment gives Nashville a serious advantage when our cities go head-to-head in recruiting and responding to the same business prospects. In point of fact, this simple designation means that Nashville gets twice as much in economic incentives as Memphis, or put another way, it means that Memphis gets about $2,000 from the state in incentives per job while Nashville gets more than $4,000.

Apparently, state officials think that our math skills are so weak that we can’t crack this simple equation -- when it comes to Nashville, there are rules and then there are rules for the rest of us. When this incentive-based program was created, it was actually aimed at helping out the limping economies of Tennessee’s rural counties.

Different Strokes For Different Folks

But when it comes to Nashville, all things are possible, so when the center of the universe experienced a couple of plant closings, Economic and Community Development acted as if Western Civilization hung n the balanced and classified Nashville as economically disadvantaged.

Unfortunately, this double standard exacerbates local government’s overreliance on tax freezes, which results in large part to the lack of a coherent, effective toolkit of economic incentives by state government. Because of this special treatment for Nashville, even more pressure is put on our economic development officials to cough up even more tax freezes.

A University of Memphis economist tells us that the unemployment rate here is likely to rise to 12% before things improve, and it’s worth remembering that a significant number of people aren’t even counted anymore because they don’t even look for work anymore.

Blowing Up The System

Nashville’s not the only place that’s losing jobs. And yet, somehow, it’s the only big city that seems to deserve the concern of state officials. But that theme has been relatively consistent for a Democratic Administration that acts like the homecoming queen that only speaks to us when it’s time for her election.

Strike One.

Meanwhile, Tennessee Department of Human Services cavalierly ended a 45-year program in which our Juvenile Court collected child support payments. While papering their justification with buzzwords like “performance-based,” “collection goals” and “competitive process,” the decision to cut ties with our local court felt most like the extension of the partisan dispute about whether a second Juvenile Court judgeship should be created.

That Certain Smell

While we’ve agreed with Juvenile Court Judge Curtis Person on occasion and agreed with Shelby County Commissioners at other times, it’s hard to avoid the feeling that the Bredesen Administration is more intent on weakening the Republican incumbent than on strengthening the collection of child support payments.

There’s several things about this one that has a certain odor rising from it. First, if Juvenile Court was such a failure in hitting the benchmarks set by the state, why wasn’t it eliminated from even submitting a proposal?

Second, Maximus, the Virginia-based company, got the five-year contract, although the out-of-state firm lost its contract in five other West Tennessee counties for inefficiency and customer complaints.

The Lowest Of All

Third, state government touted the fact that Maximus was the lowest bid, while we’d be more interested in knowing that they represented the “lowest and best” bid, because some clear judgment is missing if the evaluation was essentially based on price.

Finally, DHS Commissioner Virginia Lodge’s letters and messages about a possible change have the heavy ring of a decision that was already made and then a justification was developed for it. In her op-ed column in The Commercial Appeal this week, she expressed a lot of opinions, but never offered a single statistic to back them up.

For us, because of the importance of child support payments to a significant number of Memphis mothers and because of the imposing impact of a now fractured system, the state owes Memphis more than political platitudes and justifications. DHS officials owe all of us a detailed, rational explanation of why it nuked a program that really didn’t need fixing.

Strike Two.

Failing All Round

Then, there’s the Tennessee Department of Education, which continues to show a special commitment to the Nashville school district that’s never been shown here although students in the capital’s schools are actually outperforming ours.

The actions of DOE reaffirm one thing that we’ve always suspected: there is no longer any question that Nashville schools receive preferential treatment. It’s been answered conclusively by the DOE’s actions in Nashville and its inaction in Memphis. When Memphis City Schools found itself on the state’s high-priority list, the same as Nashville today, there was the unmistakable feeling that DOE couldn’t wait to get out of here.

It was only a few years ago that the Department of Education, given a chance to force transformative change in our district, accepted the so-called and aptly named “Proposal for Expenditures of Additional State Revenues,” largely a list of everybody’s favorite ideas with no thread of academic philosophy underpinning them.

K-K-K

Compare that to Nashville. There, the DOE mobilized into action and focused its considerable influence and resources on turning things around, taking unprecedented action to change the organizational structure of the Nashville district. State officials even appointed three associate superintendents to oversee instruction, along with new leaders for the district’s federal, gifted and special ed programs.

The state replaced 60 principles and assistant principals who were considered ineffective and the curriculum was changed to emphasize literacy and numeracy. Small learning academies were opened at some high schools along with more career and technical programs.

Strike Three. Unfortunately, it’s Memphis that’s out. In the cold.