John Ford will beat the rap by wrapping himself in TennCare. The more the media, state investigators, plaintiff’s attorneys, and rival politicians bore in on him, the greater Ford’s chances of being acquitted on federal criminal charges of extortion. The investigations will blur in the public mind and look like piling on.
There is no connection between E-Cycle Management — the bogus company in the F.B.I. Tennessee Waltz sting — and United American HealthCare (UAHC) — the parent of TennCare provider UAHC Health Plan of Tennessee. But Ford has already said he was singled out for indictment by TennCare cutters. If there are criminal indictments stemming from an investigation by the TennCare inspector general’s office, which was created by the General Assembly in 2004, or Tennessee Insurance Commissioner Paula Flowers, who put UAHC of Tennessee on administrative supervision in April, Ford will cry dirty politics. And his cry will resonate in Memphis, which has more TennCare recipients who stand to lose their coverage than any other part of the state.
Ford didn’t invent the concept of the high-paid consultant, he just refined it as a legislator. This week the Government Accountability Office reported that 34 states used consultants paid on contingency fees to get more Medicaid and Medicare money.
If Ford is tried by a Memphis jury, he will walk.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on eminent domain in Kelo v. New London will not help the Riverfront Development Corporation in its efforts to develop the downtown Promenade. In fact, it will hurt it by focusing attention on the land bridge, which is the most expensive and controversial part of the RDC plan.
You can read the entire opinion in less than 10 minutes at this Web site: straylight.law.cornell.edu. It is nuanced, balanced, and bears little resemblance to the simplifications and mischaracterizations of it in media accounts. The New London Development Corporation is somewhat similar to the RDC. A small group of private-property owners whose properties were not blighted fought the development plan and lost. The case turned on whether the plan served “public purpose,” which is not the same as “public use.” See for yourself how economic development serves public purpose.
The RDC wants to take some public land for private use to help finance public improvements. The only way to get the land bridge through is by stealth. When the focus, for whatever reason, shifts to the cost, whether it is $100 million or $250 million, it’s a dead duck. Boss Crump recommended a land bridge to Mud Island in a newspaper interview in 1953, the year before he died. The most powerful man in Memphis history couldn’t make it happen, and neither will the RDC.
The Memphis Grizzlies will wear out their welcome if they don’t boost their contributions to the city in a big way. There is no causal connection, but the fact is that public parks and boulevards and golf courses are suffering while the $250 million FedExForum sits idle, the NBA finals get lousy ratings, Grizzlies malcontents making $8 million a year whine and can’t get fired up to win a playoff game, and publicists try to get us to care about the 19th pick in this week’s draft. Pitiful. How ironic that “surplus” funds from the MLGW water division are helping to pay off the bonds for FedExForum while the city can’t water the greens at the Links of Galloway golf course.
The Pyramid reuse recommendation — an indoor theme park and a shopping mall — won’t happen. It’s not that the ideas are bad. It’s that they require public subsidies, giving away the building, or both. And this is not the time to be spending public money to promote tourism or economic impact. With the arena, baseball stadium, trolley, Mud Island, and The Pyramid in place and the highest property taxes in the state, the era of big public projects in Memphis is over.
Which brings us to this: The next mayor of Memphis will run and win on a program of a better Memphis for Memphians through revitalized neighborhood parks and public spaces. His or her model will be Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley, who has been singing this song for years.
“As schools lost their effectiveness as community anchors, the same thing happened to parks, libraries, and other public spaces,” Daley has said. “People stopped using them and the city stopped taking care of them. Or maybe people stopped using them because the city stopped taking care of them. … The nice thing is, if you improve the quality of life for people in your city, you will end up attracting new people and employers.”
Nothing gets the public stirred up like uncut grass or unpicked-up garbage.
