When a politician discloses his retirement intentions 13 months in advance, he’s laying some groundwork for both his successor and himself.

Shelby County Mayor Jim Rout did that this week in an announcement that managed to be stunning, if not all that surprising. Still politically ambitious, but vexed with or maybe simply tired of some of the current conundrums of county government and sincerely devoted to his family, this highly capable public servant just wanted out.

What his successor does, and who he or she is, makes for an interesting discussion. But the bigger issue is what Rout still the county mayor and a functioning, hands-on version at that if he continues to steel himself to the job can get done in the next year, absent reelection pressures.

Without going into detail at his withdrawal announcement Tuesday, he mentioned fixing the jail and the school-funding formula as his two top priorities. As far as the jail currently under various court mandates is concerned, Rout is only one of four major players, the others being Attorney General Bill Gibbons, Sheriff A.C. Gilless, and U.S. District Judge Jon McCalla. For that reason, and because it will take much longer than 13 months to fix the various problems that are rampant in the overcrowded facility, we don’t see the jail, for better or for worse, as constituting the pièce de résistance in Rout’s legacy.

Schools and the companion issue of consolidation of government services are another matter. Rout and Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton can change the world, or at least this part of it. If a politically secure black city mayor and a political lame-duck white county mayor with over half a century of experience in local government can’t do it, nobody can.

No more study committees or blue-ribbon task forces! What we would like to see is ready? the Rout/Herenton Plan, a state-of-the-art blueprint for change and reform, possible if the mayors put their personal differences behind them and stand together as they were able to during the recent NBA sales job. They did that deal in a few months. Let’s see what they can accomplish by the end of the year on schools and consolidation.

In touting up his achievements Tuesday, Rout said he had cut a full one-fifth of the county payroll in seven years. “Bravo!” we say. And “Encore!” Honestly now, mayor, how much more is there that could be safely eliminated on the grounds that it duplicates a city function? What is essential and what is a political sacred cow? What, if any, form of consolidation makes sense?

For Mayor Herenton, now is the time to share all he knows about what works and doesn’t work in education, integration, and funding. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the Memphis Area Chamber of Commerce appear willing to get behind single-source funding of schools. City superintendent Johnnie B. Watson and county superintendent James Mitchell are openminded veterans without personal agendas.

Rout and Herenton must lead the way to lasting solutions now, while both are in their prime and there is an open field in front of them. We have every reason to believe they will take advantage of the fact.

The regular session of the 2001 Tennessee General Assembly is now history,
in more senses than one. For the first time ever, a session of the legislature
went overtime, with no budget ready in time for the next fiscal year.

For the first time, also, the Assembly finally emerged with a
budget that everyone knows is only temporary (“stopgap” is the going
term) and will most likely need to be repaired in some kind of reconvening
later this year.

For the first time in memory, vital services are likely to be cut
rather than held even or expanded. And — almost certainly for the first time
since the Civil War — the process by which law was made in Tennessee was
directly influenced by a mass of aroused individuals standing watch over
proceedings and basically dictating the outcome.

Perhaps we should count ourselves lucky that the crowd that
overwhelmed the Capitol grounds, laid siege to the building itself, and
essentially held the members of the state Senate and House hostage in their
chambers did not, so far as we know, possess weapons. But they smashed
windows, roughed up legislators, and kept up a torrent of abuse that
effectively prevented negotiators on both sides of the political spectrum from
reaching a mutually satisfactory agreement.

Last week’s mob outburst may provide some explanation for why the
men and women whom Tennesseans elected to send to Nashville behaved so
fecklessly and fearfully for so long — wasting not only the six months of the
super-elongated 2001 legislative session but spending most of the previous two
years dodging the fiscal realities that Governor Don Sundquist and a few
legislative leaders in both parties have pleaded with them to deal with.

The problems remain, however. And they will worsen with time. The
basic reason why Tennessee is in the fix it is in, having to restrict services
— basic medical and educational ones among them — while trying to fend off
enormous deficits is that, as Sundquist and his advisers have said, time has
passed the state’s tax structure by.

No longer will the sales tax — a revenue device designed for the
retail-oriented 1920s — serve Tennessee’s purposes. Even during the recent
economic boom, the sales tax, though pegged to abnormally high levels, did not
generate enough revenue to enable the state, now dominated by a largely tax-
free service economy, to hold its own. Most legislators had the good sense to
resist the lure of another sales-tax increase.

A poll sponsored by the boosters of a proposed state income tax
seems to show that a majority of Tennesseans would welcome — and profit from
— a shift to an income tax as a basic revenue device. But, whether it
represented the feelings of a minority or not, the anti-income tax sentiment
which culminated in last week’s disturbances is quite real.

Faced with unpalatable choices, the legislature this year put off
the issue by looting the entire $560 million which was the state’s share of
national tobacco-settlement money. It was an act equivalent to raiding one’s
personal savings just to pay the rent.

We urge Governor Sundquist to veto the budget enacted last week
and, if overridden, to call the legislature back into special session and keep
it there until it decides, come what may, to deal with the specter of an
economically threatened future that will soon be upon us.

The Fourth of July, the great celebration of national self-assertion and independence which is the centerpiece of the current week for most of us, must have a wholly different feel this year to the members of the Tennessee General Assembly.

After all, the 132 men and women who have been elected to uphold the best interests of our state are obliged to go back to work in Nashville on the day after the holiday this year — in the full knowledge that they have upheld nothing of consequence, have failed to assert themselves significantly, and have done no justice whatsoever to the name of independent self-government. The Fourth of July was surely experienced as a reproach by the members of the 102nd General Assembly.

In half a year’s work so far — and with plenty of advance notice, given the fact that each of the last several regular and special legislative sessions had highlighted the problem — they have utterly failed to produce a budget — their Number One constitutional mandate — to pay for the basic needs and services of state government.

They have failed to do so because a majority of them clearly do not possess the sense to grasp the obvious or the guts to face up to it — or the sense of duty to their constituents to do either. All they could bring themselves to do before the end of the fiscal year was enact the most rudimentary stopgap budget, one that can last only a month or two before it must be supplanted by a real one. Hence, the unprecedented return to work in July.

One legislative veteran, Rep. Shelby Rhinehart of Spencer, went so far as to call this Legislature “dastardly” for its neglect of duty.

As things stand, the state will be short of necessary funding by as much as $800 million. Education, health services, and the state’s bond rating (which took a hit last year when the Assembly also ducked its obligations), are all at stake.

At least the Legislature has held back (so far) from imposing yet another sales tax increase, one that would bring this outmoded levy to the dimensions of a 10 percent tithe. Most members of the Assembly have come to understand that tax-free Internet sales, plus the drain of retail business to establishments across the border from Tennessee, have made the sales tax no option at all.

And even a patchwork budget employing ad hoc taxes here and there, plus use of tobacco-settlement funds and the state’s “rainy day” emergency account, has proved impossible to attain. The special interests that dominate these less-than-independent legislators have seen to that.

Some members of the General Assembly have performed responsibly, to be sure. Senators Bob Rochelle and Gene Elsea and Rep. Tommy Head have proposed a common-sense graduated income tax that would constitute real reform, pay for essential services, and save most Tennesseans considerable money. Our own Senator Jim Kyle, chair of the House-Senate conference committee, has done his best to move the Legislature to make sensible decisions. And Senator John Ford, in his firebrand way, has both proposed a feasible flat-tax alternative and challenged the Assembly’s leadership to resign if it cannot act responsibly.

Who could disagree? If this Legislature cannot face up to its duty, it will both bankrupt the state and dishonor the traditions of democracy.

One contest is now over — that between the adherents of building a new arena in Memphis for the soon-to-be-transplanted Grizzlies of the National Basketball Association and the opponents of such an arena (or at least of the public financing of it).

Through vigorous efforts on the part of Mayors Herenton and Rout and numerous influential private citizens, solutions were found to the most vexing issues raised by the opposition. What these came down to were doubts about tying the county’s property tax to the project via general obligation bonds and concerns about getting more private money into the arrangement.

Both objections were dealt with — the former by a decision to shift the local-government burden from G.O. bonds to revenue bonds, which do not directly involve the taxpayer, and the latter by pledges from local citizens, both members of the proposed ownership group and others, to pony up for season-ticket commitments and a share of the arena financing.

With that, the previously unknown Heidi Shafer, an ad hoc activist who had started vigorously promoting a petition drive to force a referendum on the subject of the arena, threw in the towel. As she noted, her reason for carrying on the fight no longer existed, and she wondered out loud about the switch to revenue bonds: Why wasn’t it done that way in the first place?

The answer to that, we suspect, lies in a phrase used — in a wholly different context — by Shelby County commissioner Walter Bailey, another arena opponent. “Bait and switch,” charged Bailey about the shift to revenue bonds, but his focus was on the local taxpayer, not the current Vancouver Grizzlies ownership and the NBA, who were the real foils in that maneuver. Whether intentionally or not, Grizzlies owner Michael Heisley and league officials were baited with general obligation bonds and switched over to the riskier (for them) revenue bonds once they had virtually set up camp in Memphis and it was difficult, if not virtually impossible, for them to turn back.

The fact is, the bait-and-switch aspects of the deal, improvisational and inadvertent as they no doubt were, proved to be indispensable to its completion. It is hard to imagine any other way in which the local opposition, which was beginning to be considerable, could have been stilled. In that sense, Shafer and her fellow grass-roots operatives were not losers but winners, in that they forced an arrangement far more advantageous to Memphis and Shelby County.

The same can be said of the indefatigable Bailey, who promised — once a commission vote to approve the arena project seemed certain — to do his best to make sure the whole thing “works out.” His way of doing that, most recently, was to keep bearing down on the local donors who have promised financial input to make sure they follow through. With that kind of hard-nosed watchdog on our case, who among us would not do just as he had promised?

The Baileys and Shafers and other skeptics are a large part of the reason we can all celebrate the outcome. We think the city and county have come out ahead, and we look forward to the Grizzlies’ first games here this fall at The Pyramid and the beginning of a new season in which all of us are finally on the same side.

In many ways, Mayors Rout and Herenton and other city and county officials — as well as members of the private sector — have worked wonders in honing the pending deal with the NBA and the ownership of the Vancouver Grizzlies to build a new arena and bring the franchise here.

The proposed “Memorandum of Agreement” (MOA) unveiled before the city council and county commission on Monday is reassuring in numerous particulars — notably in its promise of new private moneys for arena construction and in its provision of safeguards against an untimely departure by the team.

So far, so good. Have we got a deal? Not yet, in our opinion. Some key members of the Shelby County Commission, which will follow the council’s vote this week with one of their own next week, have raised some concerns that we, too, are troubled by.

Most notable is the clause of the agreement titled “Competition,” whereby “HOOPS” (the ad hoc designation for a reconstituted Grizzlies management, including its proposed local part-owners) is given, in effect, veto power over the acts and events that could appear in other local venues such as The Pyramid and the Mid-South Coliseum. HOOPS would have to give its written consent before these and other publicly built facilities could book any attractions that might “compete” with the new arena. Further, HOOPS would maintain the right to match any pending offer on behalf of the new facility.

In one of the more uncertain passages of an otherwise eloquent pitch for the MOA, Shelby County mayor Jim Rout told the county commission it is understandable that the Grizzlies ownership would want to shore up its situation since it would be responsible for operating losses at the new arena. But, as Rout also noted, there is still some room for negotiation on that score.

We should hope so. In fact, we would insist on altering that segment of the agreement — which amounts as of now to an unconscionable restraint of trade, one that could be enormously damaging to facilities that have served us well and that represent so much previous long-term commitment by local taxpayers.

And that consideration gives rise to a larger thought: If and when the arena gets built, Memphis will find itself faced with a veritable garage sale of used sports and entertainment facilities — the Coliseum, The Pyramid, Tim McCarver Stadium, the Mid-South Fairgrounds, and Crump Stadium. Not to mention Mud Island Amphitheater.

What we need — as an addendum to the MOA, if necessary — is a commitment in writing from the mayors and the movers and shakers of HOOPS to rally around the cause of doing something about this detritus — knocking some down, replacing some, selling some off if possible. The guiding principle should be a public-private partnership for participant sports facilities in the mode of the Mike Rose Soccer Complex and Southaven’s baseball fields and various tennis centers.

One of the attractions of the Grizzlies deal is that it promises to provide genuine and lasting revitalization of the downtown area. But that should not come at the expense of the rest of the metropolitan area, especially at a time when so many of our city youth have poor sports facilities or none at all.

The NBA package still requires amendment, and we trust the county commission will see to it. For it to truly be a deal we can live with, it should be the first step toward a wholesale revitalization of the whole community.

According to scripture, one of humankind’s first tasks was to name the animals. Our species has done a far better job at that than in coming up with proper political classifications.

Consider that the oppressive government of North Korea still masquerades as a “democratic republic,” when no practice or administrative structure of that government can remotely be said to deserve either part of the title.

In our own country there are some verbal anomalies as well. To be sure, our two major political parties have evolved names for themselves which, in a rough sense, define the difference between them. The Democrats, true to their name, aim their appeal at the broad masses, while the Republicans evoke more distinctly the idea of a representative (as against a participatory) democracy.

But every now and then an officeholder finds himself in the wrong party and goes through a changeover. Some years back, for example, Richard Shelby, a senator from Alabama, judged correctly that his political positions were far too conservative for him to remain a Democrat. He changed.

And now, in a switch that will have far more profound consequences, Vermont’s Senator Jim Jeffords has publicly renounced his Republican affiliation — ancestral as much as anything else — and declared himself an “independent.” More to the point, he has promised to vote with the Senate’s Democrats on organizational questions — as he already does on most ideological ones.

Jeffords’ decision has brought upon him more of the kind of abuse from the Bush administration and GOP party elders that hastened his departure in the first place. The switch comes after the ill-advised tax cut which has just passed the Congress but in time to have major influence on such weighty matters as judicial appointments and environmental legislation. Most important of all, it gives the Democrats control of the Senate’s parliamentary apparatus and committee chairmanships.

What it will end up doing — especially if other Republican moderates such as Arizona’s John McCain follow suit — is restore a broken promise of the 2000 presidential election, in which George W. Bush (whose ultimate victory was, to say the least, technical) ran as a centrist and “compassionate conservative.” Since his accession to the presidency with a minority of the popular vote, Bush has governed instead from the extreme right, with a minimum of consideration for the rest of the spectrum. In his public leave-taking, Jeffords said as much.

Good for him. In the long run, he may end up a Democrat. In the short run, “independent” sounds just about right. In that same vein, “centrist” is utterly and absolutely wrong for Bush, who so far has been an unblinking servant of the party’s extreme right wing.

Dutch Treat

Our congratulations to the men and women of Memphis in May, who put on a number of first-class events this year — the stellar Beale Street Music Fest (which drew record crowds), the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest, and the Great Southern Food Festival among them.

The weather cooperated beautifully and everything seemed to go off without a hitch. The MIM organization seems to have risen above its troubles of a couple of years back and soared to new heights. Kudos to Jim Holt, Diane Hampton, and the hundreds of others who made Memphis in May a triumph this year.