SHAPING THE NEWS
The latest example was the West/Rogers poll that City Council Chairman Brent Taylor commissioned as part of the council’s retreat last week. Some of the poll questions were silly, such as the one where respondents ranked Memphis as a “great” city ahead of New York, Atlanta, and Chicago. When the poll ventured into substantive matters such as a unified school system, the questions were so leading and skewed that the council, properly, gave them short shrift. Nevertheless, two West/Rogers employees got to sit at the table with council members, which was a symbolic victory of sorts.
Other PR firms shaping the news are the Ingram Group, which represents the New Memphis Arena Public Building Authority and chairman Arnold Perl; Thompson & Baker, working on MATA’s proposed $400 million light rail line and the chamber of commerce’s push for more business tax incentives; and McNeely Pigott and Fox, represented locally by former Commercial Appeal business editor Bob Hetherington. There are no doubt others of which I am not as aware.
Common sense, candor, and openness which don’t cost anything will usually serve public officials and agencies as well or better than consultants’ advice.
Now ask yourself: if Washington and Nashville are cutting highway money, do you think there is a chance in hell of Memphis getting $200 million in federal and state funds for a $400 million light-rail line from downtown to the airport that FedEx says isn’t even on their radar screen?
Normally I don’t correct other people’s mistakes, but I’ll make an exception. The Commercial Appeal has reported at least twice that the federal share of this proposed project is either 75 or 80 percent. I have twice heard Tom Fox, director of planning and capital projects for MATA, state otherwise. But to make sure, I asked him to clarify the federal share once more in an email.
“Statutorially, the federal share on transit capital projects can be up to 80 percent,” Fox wrote. “Practically speaking, in order to compete for discretionary funds (which are largely earmarked by Congress) the federal share requested by local project sponsors is typically in the range of 50 percent. In our presentations, we describe the proposed funding scenario for the Downtown-Airport Corridor as 50 percent federal, 25 percent state, and 25 percent local.”
The trolley has gotten this far thanks to Interstate Substitution Funds Memphis received for not building Interstate 40 through Overton Park. That money is gone.
Expensive public projects take on a life of their own when the media, oversight boards, and elected officials don’t scrutinize them. This is how the Memphis City Schools building program got out of control. Ignoring a story is one thing. Repeatedly understating the local cost of a project by $100 million is worse.
This board is a sleeping giant. It gets a fraction of the publicity of its city counterpart, which meets next door and is more prone to bickering with the superintendent, and shooting itself in the foot. It is all-white and dominated by old hands intimately familiar with county school politics. And at the moment, its decisions have more impact on more public dollars than any board in the city or county.
In its own way, it is as efficient as the city school board is clumsy. Under Carl Johnson’s chairmanship, tedious city board meetings like last week’s six-hour session will be the norm. Under David Pickler’s leadership, the county board dispatched with a significantly revamped school calendar and the antiquated “Fair Day” (no longer a holiday for county students, despite the pleas of the Mid-South Fair) in about six minutes.
Dissenters are dealt with politely but briskly. A black minister, the Rev. LaSimba Gray, wondered why black students are going to be bused past Germantown High School to Houston High School even though Germantown High has more black students and is closer to their neighborhood. Pickler told him the item will be taken up later.
I collared Gray as he left the building. “An all-white board in 2003,” he muttered. “That’s racism.”
A storm is brewing.
