Month: March 2003

BARONS OF THE BLUFF

If a lottery, as someone said, is a tax on stupidity, then a subsidy is a tax reward for cleverness and initiative.

If the Tennessee General Assembly can work out the details, by the end of this year Memphians, stupid or otherwise, will be able to advance the college educations of children of the middle-class by buying lottery tickets

at convenience stores all over town. As the director of the Georgia Lottery told Tennessee lawmakers recently, the goal is pretty simple. Get people to play early and play often!

While the lottery makes headlines, another plan to game the tax system is working its way through the Center City Commission (CCC) enroute to the City Council and County Commission. Like the lottery, this one keeps public money out of general funds and dedicates it to a specific area or group, in this case the CCC and downtown.

In the works for several months, the plan is called a tax increment financing or “TIF” district, encompassing much of downtown from the Wolf River to Crump Boulevard. Some 25 years ago, the CCC started giving subsidies in the form of property tax freezes to approximately 200 downtown projects so far, from apartment buildings to The Peabody. The idea was that the subsidy would help downtown get back on its feet, at which time developers and property owners would start paying taxes like everyone else.

The older tax freezes are starting to expire. But if the plan goes through, the tax payments won’t go into the city or county’s general fund. They’ll be captured by the TIF district and stay right at home to finance projects on the CCC’s $588 million 30-year wish list, including a land bridge to Mud Island.

What could be controversial about this plan as it makes its way into the public agenda is that downtown has no monopoly on need and blight. Every dollar that goes into the land bridge is a dollar that won’t be used to fill a pothole or pay a policeman in Raleigh, Frayser, Whitehaven, or Midtown.

The difference is that downtowners hold all the high cards. The Uptown redevelopment around St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the Riverfront Development Corporation (RDC), the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB), the Center City Commission, the expanded Memphis Cook Convention Center, and the FedEx Forum already get dedicated public revenue streams or tax subsidies or both. Developer Henry Turley as well as Jeff Sanford, Benny Lendermon, and Kevin Kane head honchos of the CCC, RDC, and CVB respectively all live or work on the bluff. City Councilman Rickey Peete, chairman of the CCC board, is head of the Beale Street Merchants Association. Fine fellows and independent thinkers one and all, but a stacked deck is a stacked deck.

Where does the shoe store owner in the Mall of Memphis or Raleigh Springs Mall, which have lost their anchor tenants, go to get a tax subsidy and a TIF to fight blight?

Where in Midtown does Stewart Brothers Hardware, which is getting squeezed by Home Depot and trolley disruption, go for special treatment and dedicated taxes? Or Ken Barton’s Car Care, whose insurance premiums are going through the roof because cars are being stolen right off his lot?

Where do the residents of Frayser and Whitehaven go to insure that the Ed Rice Community Center and the Roark-Whitehaven Tennis Center are as well maintained as the riverfront and the South Bluffs for the next 30 years?

To which special agency, professionally staffed and with a board stacked with politicians and business leaders, do neighborhoods go to attract a fraction of the thousands of new expensive houses and market-rate apartments that have been built downtown in the last decade?

They go to City Hall. They don’t have special agencies. They have elected representatives who are stretched thin and associations staffed by volunteers, and they compete for scarce tax dollars in the messy public process.

A big tax storm is coming. The insiders are loading up now so they can live comfortably while the cold winds blow. The outsiders get to buy fur coats, mittens, and hot chocolate for the insiders. Which are you? As they say in poker, if you look around the table and you don’t know who the chump is …

*******

Their minds are made up; don’t confuse them with facts. David Pickler, the chairman of the Shelby County Board of Education, doesn’t miss a chance to knock the Memphis City Schools, urban school systems, or school system consolidation. The Commercial Appeal turned him loose in an op-ed column last weekend.

“Enrollment in the Nashville-Davidson County school system has declined from nearly 82,000 pupils at the time of consolidation to just 48,000 today during a period of unprecedented growth in Middle Tennessee,” Pickler wrote.

No it has not. The actual enrollment, according to the Metropolitan Nashville Public School System and the Tennessee Department of Education, is 68,277. Apparently plus-or-minus 30 percent is close enough for the county board and the CA, which did not correct the error. School system consolidation, by the way, occurred in 1964. If Nashvillians are still reeling from it, that’s one heck of a hangover.

The ability of people with no first-hand experience with an urban school system to intuit the motives of thousands of people 200 miles away for 39 years is amazing.

BARONS OF THE BLUFF

If a lottery, as someone said, is a tax on stupidity, then a subsidy is a tax reward for cleverness and initiative.

If the Tennessee General Assembly can work out the details, by the end of this year Memphians, stupid or otherwise, will be able to advance the college educations of children of the middle-class by buying lottery tickets

at convenience stores all over town. As the director of the Georgia Lottery told Tennessee lawmakers recently, the goal is pretty simple. Get people to play early and play often!

While the lottery makes headlines, another plan to game the tax system is working its way through the Center City Commission (CCC) enroute to the City Council and County Commission. Like the lottery, this one keeps public money out of general funds and dedicates it to a specific area or group, in this case the CCC and downtown.

In the works for several months, the plan is called a tax increment financing or “TIF” district, encompassing much of downtown from the Wolf River to Crump Boulevard. Some 25 years ago, the CCC started giving subsidies in the form of property tax freezes to approximately 200 downtown projects so far, from apartment buildings to The Peabody. The idea was that the subsidy would help downtown get back on its feet, at which time developers and property owners would start paying taxes like everyone else.

The older tax freezes are starting to expire. But if the plan goes through, the tax payments won’t go into the city or county’s general fund. They’ll be captured by the TIF district and stay right at home to finance projects on the CCC’s $588 million 30-year wish list, including a land bridge to Mud Island.

What could be controversial about this plan as it makes its way into the public agenda is that downtown has no monopoly on need and blight. Every dollar that goes into the land bridge is a dollar that won’t be used to fill a pothole or pay a policeman in Raleigh, Frayser, Whitehaven, or Midtown.

The difference is that downtowners hold all the high cards. The Uptown redevelopment around St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the Riverfront Development Corporation (RDC), the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB), the Center City Commission, the expanded Memphis Cook Convention Center, and the FedEx Forum already get dedicated public revenue streams or tax subsidies or both. Developer Henry Turley as well as Jeff Sanford, Benny Lendermon, and Kevin Kane head honchos of the CCC, RDC, and CVB respectively all live or work on the bluff. City Councilman Rickey Peete, chairman of the CCC board, is head of the Beale Street Merchants Association. Fine fellows and independent thinkers one and all, but a stacked deck is a stacked deck.

Where does the shoe store owner in the Mall of Memphis or Raleigh Springs Mall, which have lost their anchor tenants, go to get a tax subsidy and a TIF to fight blight?

Where in Midtown does Stewart Brothers Hardware, which is getting squeezed by Home Depot and trolley disruption, go for special treatment and dedicated taxes? Or Ken Barton’s Car Care, whose insurance premiums are going through the roof because cars are being stolen right off his lot?

Where do the residents of Frayser and Whitehaven go to insure that the Ed Rice Community Center and the Roark-Whitehaven Tennis Center are as well maintained as the riverfront and the South Bluffs for the next 30 years?

To which special agency, professionally staffed and with a board stacked with politicians and business leaders, do neighborhoods go to attract a fraction of the thousands of new expensive houses and market-rate apartments that have been built downtown in the last decade?

They go to City Hall. They don’t have special agencies. They have elected representatives who are stretched thin and associations staffed by volunteers, and they compete for scarce tax dollars in the messy public process.

A big tax storm is coming. The insiders are loading up now so they can live comfortably while the cold winds blow. The outsiders get to buy fur coats, mittens, and hot chocolate for the insiders. Which are you? As they say in poker, if you look around the table and you don’t know who the chump is …

*******

Their minds are made up; don’t confuse them with facts. David Pickler, the chairman of the Shelby County Board of Education, doesn’t miss a chance to knock the Memphis City Schools, urban school systems, or school system consolidation. The Commercial Appeal turned him loose in an op-ed column last weekend.

“Enrollment in the Nashville-Davidson County school system has declined from nearly 82,000 pupils at the time of consolidation to just 48,000 today during a period of unprecedented growth in Middle Tennessee,” Pickler wrote.

No it has not. The actual enrollment, according to the Metropolitan Nashville Public School System and the Tennessee Department of Education, is 68,277. Apparently plus-or-minus 30 percent is close enough for the county board and the CA, which did not correct the error. School system consolidation, by the way, occurred in 1964. If Nashvillians are still reeling from it, that’s one heck of a hangover.

The ability of people with no first-hand experience with an urban school system to intuit the motives of thousands of people 200 miles away for 39 years is amazing.

KUSTOFF VS. MARSHA?

Marsha Blackburn, the Nashville-area resident who defeated a largish field of opponents in last year’s 7th district congressional race and then dusted off Democrat Tim Barron of Collierville, should have every reason to feel secure in her job.

After all, she won overwhelmingly in both primary and general elections, even managing to finish second place in Shelby County in the Republican primary vote, despite the fact that three — count ‘em, three — of her major opponents hailed from Shelby. They were lawyer David Kustoff, who directed the 2000 Bush presidential campaign in Tennessee and the successful Senate campaign last year of Lamar Alexander; state Senator Mark Norris; and Memphis city councilman Brent Taylor. Only Kustoff finished ahead of Blackburn in Shelby County.

Upon her election, Blackburn promptly found herself named an assistant whip for the GOP in the House of Representatives and got the appointment she coveted to a government operations subcommittee that would give her good opportunity to capitalize on the conservative-populist image that she, as a prominent income-tax opponent, had established so successfully in the state senate.

Moreover, she proved herself to be a more than adequate campaigner and has established district offices throughout the sprawling 7th, which runs from the suburbs of Memphis to those of Nashville. She even maintains a part-time residence along Highway 64 in Shelby County.

Add to this the overwhelming advantages that normally allow incumbents — absent personal or party scandal — to win renomination and reelection easily.

Why then are there persistent rumors that Kustoff is aiming to oppose her reelection in 2004? And why does Kustoff — who acknowledges having been encouraged to oppose Blackburn by “a number of people,” especially in Shelby County — choose not to rule out making the race?

“I just haven’t made any decisions whatever about what I’m going to be doing this year, next year, or in 2006, or at any point thereafter,” says Kustoff, who owns a reputation for being cautious and practical and not given to quixotic adventures.

The bottom line would seem to be that there is an appreciable body of Republicans locally who either see Blackburn’s politics as being too hard-line or believe strongly that the congressman from the 7th District should hail from Shelby County or its near vicinity — as had the last several representatives from the district.

“I’ve heard a lot of that,” concedes Kustoff, a favorite of former governor Don Sundquist, himself a former 7th District representative, who mused out loud late last year about the likelihood of an opponent for Blackburn in 2004. Blackburn’s operatives themselves are known to take the prospect of a Kustoff race seriously and periodically inquire about news of one.

Even if Blackburn draws no strong opponent in 2004, she will likely have a race on her hands in 2006 — at which time she is almost certain to run for either governor or for the Senate, if Majority Leader Bill Frist, honors his two-term pledge and begins a campaign for the presidential nomination in 2008.

Sheriff Mark Luttell is another elected official who, like Governor Phil Bredesen, campaigned on the theme of governmental economy and was taken in some circles to be merely electioneering but, like Bredesen, seems to have been serious all along.

In dealing with the regime of his predecessor, three-term sheriff A C Gilless, Luttress has been partly circumspect and partly scathing. He practices a form of charity and says that “after turning over every rock,” his administration has seen so sign of fraud. But under those selfsame rocks, says Luttrell, was “an abundance of waste.” In fact, maintains Luttrell, Gilles’ budget — the bane of the Rout administration and the county commission for years — “was a mess.”

What made it so messy was, according to the current sheriff, a superfluity of employees — to the tune of some 600, in Luttrell’s estimation. The lion’s share of that excess, as he saw it, was in the county jail. And what worsened the situation was the pay parity awarded the jailers last year. Hadn’t the jailers, whose representatives made frequent and impassioned visits to commission meetings, made the case that their job was as demanding, if not more so, than that of regular deputies in the field? Didn’t they speak vividly of having to dodge human excrement and urine thrown (or splashed) their way?

“They wouldn’t have had to dodge all that…” (actually the sheriff used some vernacular) “… if we’d had some effective procedures in place for dealing with inmates,” Luttrell answered the other night after expressing some of his concerns to a neighborhood Republican club.

Luttrell, who was county corrections director before his election as sheriff, plans to conduct a formal study of jail operations preparatory to making what he suggests will be fairly drastic budget-cutting measures.

In this, he can expect the full support of Shelby County Commissioner Bruce Thompson, chairman of the commission’s law enforcement committee and a proponent of cut-to-the-bone conservatism himself.

Says Thompson, “Sheriff Luttrell’s doing a fine job of trying to save the county money.” The commissioner notes that the commission is in the throes of debating a Luttrell proposal to privatize the handling of inmates’ assets, a function now served by publicly paid employees. The proposal, which has been criticized by Commissioner Michael Hooks as unfair to county staffers who might lose their jobs , was scheduled for committee discussion this week and for floor action by the full commission on Monday.