Category: Cover Feature

One evening last January, Brenda Grant was on her way home from work when she got a call from her daughter. An animal-control officer was at their house and trying to take the family’s three dogs.

When Grant arrived home a short while later, there were four police cars surrounding the house; her daughter was sitting in the back of one of them. Grant’s dogs were in an animal-control vehicle.

According to an elderly neighbor, Grant’s 14-year-old daughter and the animal-control officer had gotten into a verbal confrontation, and when the officer tried to enter the house to get the dog she had seen running loose in the front yard, Grant’s daughter shoved her arm out of the doorway. The officer at some point decided to take all three dogs, even the two that were still chained in the backyard.

Grant was issued a ticket for having two dogs running at large and for four dogs without licenses or vaccinations. She was also issued a Juvenile Court summons for her daughter. But Brenda Grant’s ordeal was far from over.

Grant called the Memphis Animal Shelter and was told that impounded animals were held for three days for the owner and then were held another seven if deemed suitable for adoption. Because she works two jobs, she had a friend call and ask as well, just to make sure she knew the timetable.

According to Grant, her dogs were taken on Wednesday night. She remembers because she doesn’t work on Tuesdays, and at the time she thought about calling her mother but remembered she’d be at the church she attends on Wednesdays. Her ticket, however, handwritten by the animal-control officer, says the date was Tuesday, January 23rd.

Depending on who you believe, Saturday would have been either the dogs’ third or fourth day at the shelter. Grant, her mother, and a friend arrived at 10 a.m. Saturday, the time the shelter opens to the public. They found their dogs, took the cards off the cages — tags used to identify each dog with date impounded, date due out, sex, and breed — and went to the front to pay. They stood in line for 10 to 15 minutes before getting to the window and giving the tags to the man at the counter.

“He called back to the back and then said into the phone, ‘You’re kidding.’ And then he looked at me and said, ‘They’ve already been put down,'” says Grant.

“They had removed my dogs from cages that had no tags on them and put them to sleep while we were in line waiting to pay the fines and take them home.”

The Memphis Animal Shelter is a squat gray brick building near the airport on Tchulahoma Road. Inside it sounds as if the very hounds of hell have been unleashed — the barking is ear-splittingly continuous. The smell is a combination of warm bodies, wet fur, fear, and ammonia. And it seems as if in almost every inch of space is a kennel or a cage with one or two animals inside, watching everyone who passes by.

R. Kenneth Childress has been the shelter’s manager since 1991; before that he worked with humane societies in Orlando and Washington state. He says that by city ordinance a stray animal — any animal not surrendered by the owner at the shelter — has 72 hours, or three days, for the owner to claim it.

“You don’t count the first day, you don’t count the last day, and you don’t count any days that we are closed,” says Childress.

He says that Grant came in one day after the holding period but acknowledges that things like that can and have happened.

“Saturday is a bad day for us, and they didn’t do euthanasia before the shelter opened one time and a similar situation happened. It’s just one of those things,” says Childress. “Because euthanasia is such a part of the daily routine here. It’s picking the wrong animal. It’s not verifying the numbers.

“None of the people can put an animal to sleep if none of that works. They have to come get a supervisor and have it signed off, but it doesn’t prevent accidents from happening. It doesn’t prevent the officer who picks up your dog today, on the 17th, to put down the 16th. And if the dog was entered on the 16th, and you come in Saturday to get it, it wouldn’t be here.

“On the other side of the coin, from a technician’s and the shelter’s point of view, life goes on. You don’t even expect [the owners] to come get [the animals] the majority of the time.”

Grant says that no one ever apologized, but instead she was told that animal control had been out to the house on numerous occasions. “Bottom line, they put the blame on me,” she says.

“I’ve lost a lot of faith in the system. The card is there for them to know what dog to get. Without the card, why did they even take them?”

Incidents like this one, as well as stories much worse, have kept humane and animal-rescue groups concerned about what’s going on inside the city-run facility. Although many local group members would not go on the record for fear of repercussions from the shelter administration, rumors involving animal mistreatment at the shelter — if not outright cruelty — abound within the circle of rescue workers.

Grant’s three dogs were just a few of the 16,000 impounded by the shelter each year. That averages out to 1,300 per month or about 44 per day. Most of these animals never leave the shelter. Because of irresponsible pet owners as well as the shelter’s shortcomings in organization, policy, and community outreach, about 1,100 animals are destroyed every month.

Last year, the shelter went through a thorough evaluation of everything from administrative practices to the outside appearance of the building. And now shelter officials, still investigating a payroll problem discovered in late January, say they’re in the process of changing for the better. But can an old dog learn new tricks?

HOUNDS IN HELL

Over 20 years ago, Beverly King founded the Animal Protection Association of Memphis (APA) because of something her sister told her. Members of a humane society in South Carolina had been trying to outlaw a euthanasia device they considered inhumane. King found out that the Memphis shelter used the same device and began a campaign against it that eventually led to the 1980 Tennessee Dog and Cat Humane Death Act.

Meanwhile, the group remained involved with the shelter. During the next 20 years they helped organize and run the “low cost” and “almost free” spay and neuter programs at the shelter.

A few years ago, they started hearing about something that chilled them to the bone. In 1997, the animal shelter in West Memphis, Arkansas, was short-staffed. Sherrie Beede was that shelter’s worker charged with the task of bringing Arkansas’ strays to the Memphis Animal Shelter for euthanasia.

“I said, ‘Sherrie, this will be a good experience,'” says Julanne Ingram, the president of the Humane Society of East Arkansas, a group that works within the West Memphis shelter. Ingram assumed Beede would learn how other shelters did the lethal procedure. Instead, says Ingram, “she came back absolutely horrified.”

Beede declined to be interviewed for this article, as did Memphis Animal Shelter employees. However, in a signed statement from 1997, Beede said, “Every time I carried puppies or cats, they were always given an IC [intracardiac] injection with no sedation beforehand. The animals would holler, but no one ever came back to check on what was happening.” After being injected, the statement continues, she saw puppies get off the floor and flop around for about 15 minutes before dying.

Ingram called Grace Thompson, then-president of the APA, who called Childress and Memphis Director of Public Services and Neighborhoods Donnie Mitchell.

The animal activists were told it did not happen and that Beede did not know what she was seeing. “But,” says Ingram, “an animal is either sedated or it’s not.”

An IC or intracardiac injection is delivered directly into the animal’s heart, where it is pumped immediately to the brain. Of the different types of pentobarbital injections — intravenous, intracardiac, intraperitoneal, and intraheptic, injected into the veins, heart, abdomen, and liver, respectively — the intracardiac is the fastest-acting yet is also one of the most difficult to perform. According to the Handbook of Pentobarbital Euthanasia, a guidebook with input from the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), “an injection into a conscious animal’s chest is stressful and undoubtedly painful, especially if the technician is unable to locate the heart on the first attempt. For this reason, an IC injection should be administered only to an animal that is already unconscious.”

Rumors of other incidents continued to proliferate: dogs with obvious medical conditions — broken hips or puncture wounds still oozing blood — being ignored; a dog being stepped on to complete a failed euthanasia attempt; animals that were being put down before their time was officially up; others that would simply “disappear.” And it was hard not to notice shelter employees hosing cages down to clean them while the animals shivered inside.

In January 1999 the APA asked Donnie Mitchell if the shelter could go through a National Animal Control Association (NACA) evaluation. The group cited a list of problems that they had observed “as ongoing” at the shelter during the previous two to three years, including various problems with security, housing, sanitation, food, euthanasia, and violations of city and state cruelty codes.

“We kept seeing things go wrong,” says King. “Donnie Mitchell didn’t know about NACA. We said, ‘This is what they do. APA will pay.'” Mitchell agreed, and the city and the APA split the cost.

Around the same time, though, the shelter in Marion, Arkansas, was also training a technician.

“She came to our shelter to get some hands-on training in euthanasia,” says Ingram. “She said, ‘I’m just stunned. It’s so quiet.'” Ingram asked her what she meant and the woman explained that they, too, had been taking their animals to the Memphis shelter for euthanasia.

“She said, ‘There is no way for me to describe what they do. It’s horrendous. They were just sticking unsedated puppies.'”

Because animals are different sizes and breeds, finding the heart is not always easy. If the animal is sedated, it makes it relatively easier for both the technician and the animal. But if animals are scared, unsedated, and trying to move around, it can take numerous tries before the injection finds its target.

Ingram scheduled a meeting that included the Arkansas trainee, Ken Childress, Donnie Mitchell, Keenon McCloy (deputy director of the Division of Public Services and Neighborhoods), and several witnesses.

After the meeting Mitchell issued a statement reading in part: “Ingram’s group told Ms. McCloy and Mr. Childress that six months or a year before, one of the Marion, Arkansas, employees had witnessed one of our employees heart-sticking a dog without anesthetizing it first. Upon hearing this allegation, I immediately investigated the matter and issued a directive to all animal shelter employees that under no circumstance should an animal be euthanized in that manner.”

NACA UNEARTHS A BONE

NACA is a non-profit organization based in Kansas City, Missouri. Started in 1978, its primary focus has always been training people in animal control. In 1993, however, they started doing program evalutions at shelters around the country and now visit about 10 shelters a year.

Johnnie Mays, the executive director of the association, and one of his staff members spent about a week at the Memphis Animal Shelter last year, conducting interviews with staff and community members and watching the day-to-day activities of the shelter.

“Our job is to point out the strengths and weaknesses,” says Mays.

NACA evaluated the shelter’s physical structure, administration, field operations, procedures, and community relations. Then they listed over 100 items they felt the shelter could improve upon, rating them as either a 1 (an immediate need), a 2 (should be implemented in 3-6 months), or a 3 (should be implemented in 6-12 months).

“Overcrowding was a problem. They need more room,” Mays says when asked about his general impressions of the shelter. “There were also some staffing issues. They were short-staffed both in the field and in the kennel.”

NACA also reported that animals routinely stay in the kennels while the kennels are hosed down, due in part to the understaffing. It rated this situation a 1, adding that animals should be moved while the kennels are being cleaned. The report acknowledged that such a change would increase staff cleaning time but would help prevent the spread of disease.

As for Brenda Grant’s situation, in which her dogs were put down while she waited to pay for their release, the audit suggests this could happen to anyone: “On one occasion, a staff member was unable to confirm the proper identification of an animal scheduled for euthanasia. This situation was brought to the attention of a supervisor, who ‘signed off’ on the euthanasia without determining the correct animal had been selected.

“Animals are frequently euthanized prior to the shelter opening for the public in the morning. Although these animals may be eligible for adoption on their fourth day (or even had a potential adopter assigned to it), some animals are not given the opportunity to be placed in a new home. A few citizens interviewed stated that they had traveled to the Animal Shelter on the fourth day of an animal’s impoundment, hoping to adopt a specific animal, then discovered that it had been euthanized.”

And although Childress says that euthanasia is performed only in the morning, the study team was told that it is performed any time the shelter needs more space.

But perhaps the most shocking part of the audit was that NACA reported seeing the same thing that had horrified the rescue groups: animals being given intracardiac injections without anesthetic.

“During the course of the on-site study, workers were observed on several occasions performing IC injections on alert dogs and cats (these animals were not offered any anesthetizing agent prior to the lethal injection),” said the audit. NACA added a side note saying that it, the AVMA, and the HSUS all agree that intracardiac injections should never be performed on alert animals.

After he got the report, Childress says he called NACA to double-check the finding. Then he met with the staff.

“I said, ‘Having somebody from the inspection team there, why would anybody not follow protocol? I was nonplussed. It was outrageous,” says Childress.

To ensure it wouldn’t happen again, the shelter manager added another person to do euthanasia and gave the technicians more time so they wouldn’t feel rushed. And the person Childress suspects as being the one NACA saw doing IC injections no longer works at the facility.

“Shelter workers try to detach themselves from that, but you’ve got to be careful,” says Childress, “because all of a sudden you get out of sync and instead of being caring anymore, you just have a disregard. And that’s a common problem with shelters everywhere.”

Mays also has a possible reason why the IC injections had been done without sedation.

“It used to be a common practice in this business several years ago. Typically, it’s an issue of lack of training,” says Mays. “I don’t see it as people doing it intentionally [to be cruel].”

Before the NACA evaluation, most of the training at the shelter was on-the-job, with a one-day orientation before beginning work. Euthanasia is done by certified technicians who have completed three days of training.

After reporting that “some field personnel have very little confidence in their own animal-handling techniques,” and that the catch-pole, a device used to restrain wild or aggressive animals, was overused, NACA observed that “increased training in animal behavior and capture technique is needed.”

“Training is too often viewed as a luxury and is thus often the target of budget-cutting initiatives. It is also common for supervisory and mid-management personnel to complain about the scheduling of in-service training because it pulls people out of the field,” said the NACA audit.

But even though extensive and continuous training could solve most of the shelter’s problems, there is one that will remain: the sheer volume of animals impounded by the shelter each year. And that problem in turn causes others — such as overcrowding — that cannot be corrected so easily.

“The volume of animals — it’s unbelievable,” says Mitchell. “It’s so many and we’re moving so fast, some of them get euthanized early.”

Sixty percent of the roughly 16,000 animals the shelter impounds a year are strays. The rest come from pet owners who, for whatever reason, surrender them to the system.

“People ask how we can reduce euthanasia. I’ll tell you right now,” says Childress. “I can reduce it by 40 percent. We can just not take in all the pets from the owners who don’t want their animals anymore.”

“Animal control is just treating a symptom,” adds Childress, “a symptom of irresponsible pet ownership.” To him, the public sees animal control as the villains for putting the animals to sleep. What they don’t see is where the problem comes from in the first place. They don’t see the people who have not spayed or neutered their pets, or the ones who don’t train their pets when they’re young, so that later the animal develops behavioral problems and has to be put to sleep.

“If you asked everybody what causes pollution, they’ll say, well, ‘Exxon,’ or ‘all these chemical companies,'” says Childress. “But you know who causes pollution?” he asks. “We all do.”

CHANGING THEIR SPOTS

After receiving a copy of NACA’s evaluation and suggested implementation plan for the shelter, Childress began a training program wherein experienced members of the staff, with Childress co-training, teach their co-workers.

“The training side was where a lot of things fell through,” says Childress. “[The new training program] is probably one of the best things we’ve done here.”

Not that it’s been easy.

“When you run shifts and you run a 24-hour operation and you don’t have enough people to begin with, you’re stretched. And we’ve not done training for a long period of time, so making a commitment to do it was a big leap,” says Childress. But it’s something to which shelter officials say they are committed.

The shelter also plans to make another big leap in a few years — into a new facility. The city has appropriated $7.7 million for the plan over the next two years and Mitchell says they’re currently trying to find a suitable location, as well as looking at other shelters around the country.

The current facility on Tchulahoma was built in the 1970s on 10 acres of the airport’s land. It has about 150 kennels and almost 200 cages and runs at 100 percent capacity most of the year.

“It’s the pits,” says Childress. “We can’t really do anything else about it.” Recently, they finished about $100,000 worth of work on one wing of the shelter, including new kennels and benches for animals to sit on while the cages are being cleaned.

“We just went to San Francisco,” says Mitchell. “That’s the place area rescue people say to go to.” The city has two shelters, one of them run by the SPCA that will take any treatable animals the other shelter, run by city animal control, is not able to place. Mitchell says he is interested in implementing a happy medium between the two.

“We want to move from being a shelter that’s just warehousing animals,” says Mitchell.

Childress agrees. “The concept when they built this shelter is going to be different from what our concept is going to be when we build a new shelter.” Instead of just a place to house stray animals, Childress wants a place where people will feel comfortable coming and adopting a pet.

“We want to get a larger share of the animals going into homes in our community. We’re going to try to focus on that.” Childress says that they’re thinking about working more closely with volunteers and rescue groups in the future to help with adoption outreaches.

And in the plans for the new facility Mitchell is also looking for input from animal-rescue groups. He says that together they can come up with a system that works.

“We’re not going to run the same type of operation,” says Mitchell. “We have work to do, and we plan to do it.”

You can e-mail Mary Cashiola at cashiola@memphisflyer.com.

Brian Parker has just picked up his media credentials at Madison Square Garden. And now, approximately an hour before the first semifinal game of the National Invitation Tournament, he walks to the arena floor.

“This is sweet!” he exclaims upon finding the seats that have been assigned to him and his colleague Jay Laney. As far as the NIT is concerned, Parker and Laney are in New York representing “Tiger Illustrated,” a Web site dedicated to University of Memphis athletics. (Parker operates the site.) But the real reason Parker has come to the Big Apple is to be seen. And his seat along the baseline of the historic court affords him plenty of visibility.

Two of the four teams in the Final Four of the NIT are Alabama and the University of Memphis — two teams that are part of Parker’s territory. He is partner and lead negotiator for Mid-South Sports Management. In other words, Parker, 25, is a sports agent.

His courtside seat is meant to impress the players from both Alabama and Memphis. It is done in the unobtrusive manner that Parker often employs. He isn’t flashy. He’s quietly persistent.

Sports agents have been both vilified and romanticized in recent years, the former by sports fans who blame them for the sky-rocketing salaries which they see precipitating the total destruction of sports and the latter in fictional characterizations such as the Oscar-winning movie Jerry Maguire and the HBO series Arliss.

To Parker it is a business, though, one that he has been involved in since college when he became a runner for Athletic Resource Management, the successful Memphis sports agency founded by Kyle Rote Jr. and Jimmy Sexton. There Parker learned the business from two of the most successful sports agents in the country. It was also where he formed friendships with Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant, two of ARM’s most visible clients. In fact, Parker traveled with the Chicago Bulls on many of their road trips during the glory days of Michael Jordan. In Parker’s home is a pair of Pippen’s sneakers from the days when he played with the Bulls. A pair from Grant is on display in his office.

But there is another side to Parker. He is a Christian who doesn’t drink or smoke. “My foul mouth is my only vice,” he says. Parker recently passed up an invitation to fly to Las Vegas for a friend’s bachelor party.

He tells of a mutual friend who did go and wonders how Parker could have passed it up. “It conflicts with my life goals,” he said. He has a knack for saying things like that. After a while it sounds natural, expected.

The conflict for Parker is to stay straight in the midst of all the temptation that is a natural part of being a sports agent.

“Anytime you have money involved there is the potential for corruption,” says Britton Wilkins, a longtime Parker friend. “When you have money and stiff competition like there is in the sports agent business, I think there is a tendency for people to bend or to put their morals aside. That is my encouragement for Brian, for him not to do that. And as far as I know, thus far he hasn’t.”

Wilkins, a former linebacker at the University of Memphis and, like Parker, a graduate of Evangelical Christian School, is one of several Christian friends the young sports agent turns to for what he calls “accountability.” Others include former UT running back Aaron Hayden and basketball player John Wilfong who played at Memphis in the mid-1980s.

Parker may have to enlarge his accountability board if he is to stay clean in what is universally considered a dirty business.

“There is a lot of cheating that goes on. Unfortunately, integrity is not a given in any business. All I can do is worry about my own actions,” Parker says. “Is it going on all around me? Sure. This business is like any other, you’ve got your good and your bad people in it. I just choose to be on the good side, or at least make an attempt to be.”

Dale Brown, the former basketball coach at LSU, is another Parker friend who helps keep him straight.

“When he told me he was going to become an agent, I said, ‘I am going to be honest with you. I don’t have real good feelings about a great number of agents. I just hope you never ever become flexible or compromise,'” Brown says. “One of the stimulants that made me retire from coaching was that I couldn’t find enough guys I wanted to hug and care about anymore. There was too much narcissism and delusions of grandeur and laziness academically. I told Brian, ‘I just hope your vision isn’t shattered,’ and he said, ‘Well, if it ever is, I’ll get out of it.'”

Parker says he thinks of Brown as a second father. And Brown sounds like a dad who is worried. “He loves sports. He is similar to me in that he has still got a kind of a Pollyanna attitude about it. He’ll get burned a few times, you know, somebody will say something, or lie to him, or cheat him, and then he’ll have to keep his spirits up because it is a dog-eat-dog affair. In Shaquille’s new book he mentions that an agent with a briefcase with $80,000 was ready to give him the money — no note signed, no nothing — and get his parents a new home if he let him represent him. And Shaquille said, ‘The guy must think I was stupid. I would never want to get hooked up with people like that.'”

Top pro prospects are recruited by sports agents, just as they were out of high school by their college coaches. To maintain an amateur standing with the NCAA, the players are not allowed to sign with an agent or accept any gifts — monetary or otherwise — before they play their final game. This sometimes puts coaches, who desperately want to safeguard their players’ eligibility, and agents, who want to win the player’s signature, in an adversarial position.

Parker says he wants to be known as an ethical agent and tries not to do anything that would get him crossways with a coach, especially at any of the Mid-South schools which he targets.

“Recruiting is obviously the dirtiest aspect of this business,” he says. “I’m a firm believer that if I bust my tail and do it the right way and work hard, if my actions honor God in all that I do, He promises that in the end He will honor me.”

When a player signs a contract with an agent, the agent receives, under union rules, a maximum 3 percent for an NFL player and 4 percent for an NBA player. The agent gets paid over the length of the contract at the same time that the player gets paid. A $10 million NBA contract is worth $400,000 to the agent who negotiates the deal.

The NBA minimum salary for rookies is $316,969. It will increase to $332,817 in 2002. In the more budget-conscious NFL the minimum is $209,000. Either way, an agent’s cut can be serious money.

Currently 1,112 agents are certified by the NFL Players Association (NFLPA). Meanwhile only 328 athletes are invited to the NFL combine where the highest-rated players are tested and evaluated. Just under 400 agents have at least one client. Only 110 represent five or more players.

The NFL draft this weekend is important to Parker and Mid-South Sports Management.They have four clients that Parker expects to be drafted, most in the fourth- to fifth-round range. They are linebacker Matt Stewart of Vanderbilt; Arkansas State’s Robert Kilow, a wide receiver; defensive lineman Ellis Wyms of Mississippi State; and Corey Holmes, a running back from Mississippi Valley State. Holmes and Kilow, skill-position players from schools that fly below the radar of TV, probably have the best opportunity to surprise in the NFL. Stewart is thought to be a solid player who could last a long time because of his experience as a deep-snapper.

The sports pages are full of stories about professional athletes who have squandered the money they made. Part of Parker’s pitch to prospective clients includes a reality check and the promise to provide a personal touch.

“The average length of a pro football player’s career is just over three years. It is my job to help him save as much money as possible in order for him to live a comfortable life once his career is over,” says Parker. “We help our clients maintain a budget and teach them throughout their career the value of what they have and how to manage it. It is a learning process for the player and the reward and satisfaction you get being an agent is knowing you have made a positive impact in someone’s life.”

Not having any first-round draft picks lined up doesn’t bother Parker. “My goal is to continue building this company with quality clients who have productive careers and are good citizens,” he says. “It really doesn’t matter what round they are drafted in. Terrell Davis [Denver Broncos] was a late-round pick and look at what he has accomplished. Isaac Bruce was a third-round pick and he is on pace to become one of the greatest wide receivers of all time. Evaluating talent is such an inexact science it is really difficult to tell who will be a player and who won’t.”

Stewart, a linebacker from Vanderbilt, will be watching the draft nervously. His parents will come down from Maryland to be at his house in Nashville. Projected to be a fourth- or fifth-round pick, Stewart will probably call Parker several times during the two-day draft.

Since signing with Mid-South Sports Management, Stewart and Parker have become close. Not surprising, since they are close to the same age. Parker traveled with Stewart to Montgomery, Alabama, where the linebacker improved his stock in the draft by being named the Gray MVP in the annual Blue-Gray Game. The two also traveled to the West Coast for the East-West Shrine Classic. Early last month Stewart came to Memphis where he worked out with fitness guru Dean Lotz.

“I got to meet his parents. It seems like they instilled some good values in him,” Stewart says of Jack Parker, the longtime CFO of Union Planters Bank Corporation and his wife, Gloria. “I can tell by the way he talks that he is a man of morals. He seems really honest.”

The fact that his agent is only a few years older than him did not give Stewart pause. “He seemed like he has a lot of experience even though he’s only 25,” the player says. “So that really didn’t enter into my mind.”

How do you define success?

Brian Parker believes in the old-fashioned definition. In fact he prefers the original Webster’s definition: “fortunate, happy, kind, prosperous.” Of course he knows that’s from 1806.

He drives a fully loaded 2000 BMW. For business, there’s the company car, a 2001 Black Yukon with leather interior and On-Star technology. He lives in Eagleride, a gated subdivision on the eighth hole of Colonial Country Club. He travels extensively and runs up large expense accounts, which his company expects. He’s movie-star handsome with the kind of twinkling eyes that make women hand him their phone numbers when they first meet him.

You keep reminding yourself, he is only 25. But his most productive days are still ahead of him. Already he is living the life of Riley. And he knows it.

Through Dale Brown, Parker has gotten to know John Wooden, the 90-year old who is universally considered the best college basketball coach ever.

“I had a dinner appointment with John Wooden and I asked Brian to come and he almost had a heart attack!” Brown says. “He and Coach Wooden really hit it off. I think John has a knack of seeing through people. He really seemed to like Brian.”

Parker is working the underclassmen at the schools where he believes his business will be made — Tennessee, Alabama, and the other SEC schools. He also considers the U of M a key school. He signed Marcus Moody last week. Most think that Moody is most likely looking at a career in Europe, but Parker didn’t hesitate to sign him. Because “he’s a good kid and a Memphis kid.” He doesn’t say it, but it might also give him an advantage when Kelly Wise needs an agent, whether it is this year or next.

On the day off in New York (between the semifinals and championship games) Parker dines at Mickey Mantle’s Restaurant then takes a stroll through Central Park. During the afternoon he is constantly getting e-mail messages on his toll-free beeper. One is from Lorenzen Wright, the former Tiger and Booker T. Washington High School star who signed a multi-year, $42 million contract with the Atlanta Hawks last year.

Wright is a friend but not a client. And though he had a good game the night before (getting a highlight on SportsCenter) it is his new look (an afro and headband to make him look taller) that he is writing to Parker about. It is the sort of exchange two teenagers might carry on. In fact, Wright and Parker first became friends during their teen years. Back in 1994, Parker was the only white player on the local team that finished as the third-best AAU team in the United States (they lost in the national tournament to Vince Carter’s Florida team). The center on that Memphis team was Lorenzen Wright. Last year Wright invited Parker to the New Year’s Eve party he hosted in Atlanta.

Although he thinks that it was unlikely that he could nab him this late in the game, while in New York Parker makes a pass at Rashad Phillips, the point guard who is the all-time scoring leader for Detroit-Mercy, a Jesuit school also in the NIT finals. Parker is rewarded with a chance to make a presentation in his hotel room (all the teams stayed at the Marriott-Marquis in Times Square). Phillips, who because of his size and quickness is often compared to Allen Iverson, eventually decides on a New York agent, but Parker knows that getting a chance to make a presentation to a player is the first step.

“You would not believe the amount of players we miss out on because of the market we are in,” he says.

But don’t expect Mid-South Sports Management to move to New York anytime soon. There may be advantages, but Brian Parker’s quiet determination and old-fashioned values probably play better in Memphis. Besides, this is where his family is. This is home. This is sweet.

Sports Agencies in Memphis

There are two firms in Memphis that represent professional athletes. Athletic Resource Management (ARM) is owned by Morgan Keegan and is the veteran agency, called by The Chicago Sun Times “one of the top 12 sports management firms in the country.” The principals are Kyle Rote Jr., Jimmy Sexton, and Reggie Barnes.

The other local firm is Mid-South Sports Management, founded by Duncan Williams, the president of Duncan Williams, Inc., a Memphis-based investment firm. Besides Parker and client service director Jay Laney, the firm employs Allan Wade as its attorney to handle tax returns and assist in contract negotiations. Wade, an attorney at Baker, Donelson, Bearman, and Caldwell, is also the attorney for the Memphis City Council. Mid-South has offices in the Falls Building downtown with a majestic view of the Mississippi River.

Parker started out as a 19-year-old “runner” for ARM. He worked for Sexton and Rote until 1999, when Williams made him an offer to good to refuse. “Competition is good. It’s healthy competition. I have a lot of fun going up against Jimmy and Kyle,” Parker says.

There is a rule in the sports agent biz: Never say anything publicly — good or bad — about the competition. So both sides are a little reluctant to discuss the rivalry which has reportedly gotten heated in the past few months.

“I think that is what America is all about — creating opportunity, dreaming dreams, and setting goals. It doesn’t bother me at all,” says Rote about Parker’s leaving.

“My experience working for Kyle and Jimmy is one I will always cherish,” Parker says.

“I am very thankful that he noticed and appreciated what Jimmy and I have tried to do with our company,” responds Rote. “We need as many good people in our industry as we can get. I am very hopeful that he will be able to follow that moral and ethical path.” — DF

THE NBA IN MEMPHIS:

Five questions for an insider.

1. In what ways will the NBA coming to Memphis help your business? Will it mean more competition?

PARKER: Having a pro franchise in Memphis will add validity to Memphis being a major-league sports city. There are already lots of positives about being based in Memphis. There are plenty of talented players from Mid-South colleges that are easy to target as potential clients, so an NBA team coming to town is icing on the cake for me. It will also be easier to keep a pulse on the day-to-day activities of the league, which is vital for a sports agent. I’m sure more competition will pop up as a result, but a little healthy competition never hurt anyone.

2. On the other hand, how will the NBA benefit other businesses and even ordinary folks?

PARKER: Long-term economic gain is the goal. Economists all tell us that the multiplier effect is approximately seven to one, which means every dollar spent will turn over at least seven times, which will eventually create more jobs in the city. Not only will this help the pursuit team, which represents a number of the large corporations based in Memphis, it will help all major businesses attract and retain top-notch employees. Those employees will then begin spending their money right here in Memphis starting with the purchase of a new home.

3. What about those who say there aren’t enough people in Memphis who can afford NBA tickets?

PARKER: All of the publicity about the high-priced ticket average is misleading and there will be more than enough low-priced tickets for everybody that wants to attend an NBA game. I think Memphis is currently experiencing the beginning of a sweetheart stage economically that cities like Charlotte and Nashville experienced a decade ago. There are so many positives taking place in our city, like the $2.1 billion expansion of St. Jude’s hospital downtown. That project alone will add 1,000 new jobs to the city. The expansion and improvement of the Cook Convention Center and FedEx’s new deal with the post office, which will bring a big number of new pilots to town, will only improve our economy. Along with the continued improvements in our demographics and the rise in per capita income, the dollars will be there to support an NBA team.

4. In your travels, can you tell the difference in cities that have big-league sports teams and those that don’t?

PARKER: No question. Having a pro sports team brings a city together. Take New Orleans for example; even when the Saints are terrible (and that’s most of the time), pro football is all people there want to talk about. People from different backgrounds have something to discuss with each other on the street or on the subway. Nashville and Jacksonville are completely different cities since the Titans and Jags came to town. If you visit those places enough you will see the impact the NFL has had on the city’s self-image. I think Memphis has struggled greatly in the self-image department and a pro team is just what we need.

5. What if we build the arena and the team doesn’t succeed here?

PARKER: There is no question it is better for Memphis to try. Fear of failure causes a lot of people to end up mediocre. We weren’t willing to step up to the plate and build a new stadium when we had a chance to secure an NFL franchise, and that hurt the city. All you have to do is look three hours down I-40 at what an NFL team can do for a city. Successful people are not afraid to fail, and I think the city of Memphis needs to take that same attitude.

Yes, this has risks, but it also has big rewards. If done properly there will be great economic rewards, but how do you put a price on the intangible reward of city pride and togetherness an NBA franchise can bring to the table? To me it’s a no-brainer. I can envision what Memphis will look like in 10 years. With the development of the riverfront in the works and the creation of Uptown Memphis [formerly the Greenlaw district], an NBA arena downtown near AutoZone Park would be the finishing touch.– DF

Without electricity Mamie Parker’s son Keith’s life hangs in the balance, and there’s nothing she nor modern medicine can do about it. If 19-month-old Keith has an asthma attack while the power is turned off, his electrically powered breathing machine is useless. Memphis Light, Gas & Water has already shut off her power once and Parker says the utility has threatened to turn it off again if she does not pay $500 by April 12th. She has asked MLGW representatives numerous times about their publicized payment plans but each time she has been told that the plans do not exist. Parker, who makes $600 a month, is trying to cope with a $700 utility bill. She is frustrated and she wants to know why it was so high.

Parker is not alone. A lot of Memphians want to know why their utility bills were so high this winter. Unfortunately, the answer isn’t as simple as plugging a cord into a socket. It’s much more complicated.

Over the past year a number of forces coalesced, and unforeseen factors materialized and meshed and rolled over the utility’s customers like a storm, a perfect storm. Perfectly horrible. Perfectly breaking bank accounts across Shelby County. If anything good came from this winter’s astronomical gas bills it was that everyone — black, white, Hispanic, Asian, young, old, rich, poor, gay, straight — was united in their anger at Memphis Light, Gas, & Water.

It was a storm brewed with a powerful combination of elements: record cold weather, inexperienced gas purchasers, a badly-timed customer warning, poorly executed or nonexistent payment plans, and a discrimination lawsuit filed by a former manager. The result: gas bills that were 25 percent over the national average.

Unfortunately, the storm hit low-income Memphians like Mamie Parker the hardest. Elderly poor, those on fixed incomes, single mothers, middle-class families staggering under hefty Christmas bills — these are the people who got hurt the most. Now two questions remain: How did it happen, and will we ever get the money back?

In the Storm’s Wake

When the first steep heating bills began arriving in January, you can be sure city council members heard about it. It was the coldest winter in recorded history, we were told, and as icicles lengthened and pipes froze, the highest utility bills most people had ever seen began to arrive in the mail. Many Memphians simply couldn’t pay their utility bills; elderly citizens told of being forced to choose between food and heat; and most people below the middle-income line feared their power would be turned off. Something had to be done.

On January 30th MLGW and city council member Rickey Peete announced a payment plan that would prevent cutoffs and allow utility customers to spread their bill payments over several months. Peete and MLGW crafted three payment policies: “Smart Pay,” a 12-month program that would average winter bills into equal monthly installments; a plan for lower-income customers that would spread December and January’s bills over 12 months; and a plan to credit customers for water leaks.

However, Parker and other Memphians interviewed by the Flyer say they went to the MLGW offices to sign up for these programs and were told the alternate billing plans, particularly Smart Pay, were not available. Parker’s experience, and others’, also indicate that the utility did not cease power cutoffs as they’d promised.

When Diane Moore-Trombi’s heating bill increased from $54 for the month of November to $333 in December, she tried to take advantage of the advertised payment options. When she went to the MLGW bill payment office on Main Street, she too was told that no such plans existed.

“I asked the girl behind the counter specifically about the 12-month payment option,” says Moore-Trombi, “and she became very coy and said, ‘We’re finding out that that plan doesn’t really work.’ There was no 12-month plan. I was not offered any other plan and I asked about all of them. The payment plans simply didn’t exist.”

“If in fact this is true,” says Peete, “I’m totally shocked and concerned that MLGW would make a public commitment to the citizens and the council and not honor that commitment.”

Mark Heuberger, MLGW’s director of corporate communications, says the utility has signed up more than 7500 people on the Smart Pay and emergency pay plans.

While citizens like Parker and Moore-Trombi were being frustrated by a lack of payment options and assistance, the utility was still putting on a good face for the city council. At City Hall on February 6th, members of the council praised MLGW for the utility’s willingness to work with rate-payers and establish payment plans. Brent Taylor and Rickey Peete read a lengthy proclamation from the North Little Rock City Council thanking MLGW for its help during that community’s December ice storm.

Was the lack of payment options available to some customers simply a service error, a matter of MLGW personnel being ignorant of their employer’s own payment plans? Or was the utility trying to keep participation down? Memphians will probably never know, but by publicly introducing the payment plans the utility undoubtedly deflected much of the negative attention it had been receiving.

However, another critical omission does call MLGW’s motives into question. In promoting the new payment programs the utility neglected to mention that Smart Pay would not be available until March — after gas prices and high gas usage dropped.

Eddie Baker, manager of customer-service field operations for MLGW, says that if customers attempted to enroll in Smart Pay during the month of February they would have been turned down because the program did not begin until March.

Baker did say that customers like Moore-Trombi can now enroll in the Smart Pay program, and if their winter bills are not yet paid off, they can begin the program with a balance.

“We’ll work with customers to find an arrangement that’s mutually satisfactory,” says Baker.

But finding a way for customers to pay their bills still begs another question: Why were they so high in the first place?

Fuzzy Math

The Flyer reported in its March 22nd issue that MLGW charged its customers 25 percent more for natural gas than the national average for the months of December and January. Using information provided by the gas industry publications Inside FERC and Gas Daily, the Flyer compared the monthly and daily amounts billed by natural-gas suppliers Texas Gas Transmission Corporation and Trunkline Gas Company to the amount MLGW reports that it paid for the same resource this past winter.

For the months of November, December, January, and February MLGW billed its residential customers $0.50, $0.82, $1.31, and $0.41, respectively, per 100 cubic feet (CCF) of gas. For the same months the average amounts paid by other customers of Texas Gas and Trunkline were $0.45, $0.60, $0.99, and $0.62.

MLGW’s Dana Jeanes, assistant manager for budget, plant, and rates, told the Flyer that there were other factors to consider.

“You compared what appears to be the first-of-the-month index prices on each pipeline to the PGA,” said Jeanes, referring to the Purchase Gas Adjustment (PGA) amount the utility adds to the embedded cost of gas to establish the billing amount. “A more valid comparison is that between MLGW’s gas costs and the index prices. Even then, some caution is in order. MLGW could not purchase its entire requirements at the first-of-the-month index prices.”

Jeanes explained that in periods of extremely cold weather, when gas usage increases, MLGW has to buy gas on the spot market to supplement the gas already purchased by the utility. He says that the spot market cost of gas is typically higher than the index price.

However, when the Flyer compared gas costs as billed by MLGW to Gas Daily‘s price indices, which report the average daily price paid for natural gas, the numbers still did not match up. The Gas Daily indices show that the highest average price paid for any day in December was $10.52 per thousand British Thermal Units (mmbtu). Adjusted for delivery costs and converted to CCF, this equals $1.12 per CCF. MLGW billed $1.31 per CCF, a significantly higher amount. Furthermore, in December natural gas prices only reached this highest level for five days. For most of the month the gas prices were much lower, making the $1.31 per CCF figure billed by MLGW even more out of line.

How Your Bill is Calculated

Understanding the gas portion of your MLGW bill is tricky.

Here’s a nuts-and-bolts explanation: In 1993, the Memphis City Council approved a gas rate adjuster as a part of the residential rate. In addition, the council approved an assumed purchase cost of gas of $0.22 per CCF that would also be embedded in the residential rate. These two components added together should reflect MLGW’s purchase cost for gas.

To cover its own fixed costs, MLGW subtracts the assumed cost of gas from the residential rate. When the purchase cost of gas for MLGW is different from this assumed gas cost, MLGW adds or subtracts a purchase gas adjustment (PGA) amount to determine the final amount billed to customers. The PGA is listed on each customer’s monthly bill.

The city council approved the PGA in 1993 because the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) had deregulated the natural gas market and MLGW felt that having a variable PGA would allow it to stay flexible during market fluctuations. But in order to adjust the price, the utility had to have an assumed cost of gas to adjust from, so it established the embedded adjuster, which is currently $0.22 per CCF, according to Dana Jeanes.

The upside (and the downside) to the gas rate adjuster for residential customers is that MLGW can pass fluctuations in the cost of gas on to its customers. For the last few years, though, the utility has not purchased gas at less than $0.22 per CCF.

Unfortunately there appears to be little financial incentive for MLGW to secure natural gas contracts at the lowest prices. If the utility pays more for gas than it should, the increased amount can simply be passed on to the customers.

By instituting the gas rate adjustor, MLGW gained financial security, assuring that it would be repaid for gas purchased regardless of what it paid. The utility could then “hedge” gas on the spot market to minimize price fluctuations to its customers. Unfortunately, it appears MLGW did not hedge significant amounts of gas for this winter, despite several warnings and the advice of their futures consultant.

Here’s how it played out this winter: In November 2000, the embedded cost was $0.22, the PGA was $0.28, and the gas cost component of the amount billed to customers was $0.50. These numbers add up to near the national average and everything’s kosher, right? Wrong.

In December 2000, the embedded rate was still $0.22, but market fluctuations caused the PGA to nearly triple to $0.60, and the cost of gas billed to customers was $0.82. However, the average price paid for gas nationally in December, according to Inside FERC, was $0.58 — a full $0.24 cents per CCF less than MLGW customers paid.

Even worse, in January with the embedded cost still at $0.22, MLGW’s PGA skyrocketed to $1.09, and customers were billed $1.31 per CCF. But the national average for January was $0.95, or $0.36 per CCF less than MLGW customers paid.

Ignoring the Forecasts

In a normal year, rate-payers probably wouldn’t have noticed the fuzzy math on their bills. But coupled with this year’s unprecedented natural gas prices, the sticker shock was too painful to ignore. And it’s of little comfort now to learn that steps could have been taken to protect Memphians from rising natural gas prices.

Long before the skies darkened over the utility’s billing and public relations departments, conditions were rocky in the utility’s gas-purchasing system. MLGW officials knew as early as November of 1998 that gas prices this winter could soar but did not act to insulate the utility and its customers.

Prior to the 1993 deregulation of the gas market, purchasing gas for a major utility was a relatively easy job. Purchase prices were set by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and utility officials responsible for purchasing entered into contracts with the pipelines serving Memphis. But as the 1993 deadline for deregulation loomed, the roles of gas purchasers began to change. Gas deregulation meant that MLGW would assume full accountability for purchasing. Executives responsible for gas purchasing now needed to analyze the market to ensure that they would be purchasing gas from reliable suppliers at the market’s best prices. Utilities everywhere began restructuring their purchasing departments and MLGW was considered among the most innovative in the country.

A January 1994 article in the Journal of Commerce, a business magazine focused on supply planning and shipping, praised MLGW’s futures contracts system as a model for other utilities to follow in the wake of deregulation.

Seth Wilson, then the industrial marketing representative for MLGW, was quoted by the Journal of Commerce as saying, “Futures contracts, which specify delivery by a certain date at a guaranteed price, have helped the city control its fuel costs by locking in prices when they are favorable.”

MLGW was the first municipal utility to institute a program using natural gas futures, options, and financial derivatives to hedge MLGW’s natural gas portfolio in order to provide price stabilization to customers in a deregulated market. The utility began this program in 1990 as a pilot program and then expanded it in 1993 when the gas industry became fully deregulated. At that time MLGW was able to hedge 100 percent of its anticipated gas needs.

From 1991 until 1999, the gas market stayed fairly flat. The only significant fluctuations in price were seasonal and therefore predictable. But the stable market wouldn’t last, as executives at MLGW were aware. In hopes of circumventing major market changes, the utility enlisted the services of Walter Zimmerman.

Zimmerman, one of the nation’s foremost experts on the gas futures market, is vice president of United Energy, Inc. and studied under Dr. Ilya Prigogine, who was named a 1977 Nobel Laureate in chemistry for a study titled “Non-Equilibrium Dissipated Structures.” Using what he learned with Prigogine, Zimmerman applies chaos theory to the futures market in order to identify market price patterns. This is what he is currently paid to do for MLGW.

In November 1998 Zimmerman made his first official visit to Memphis when MLGW executives invited him to talk to the utility’s executives about the changes in the gas market.

“I spoke to employees at MLGW about the outlook for natural gas prices,” says Zimmerman of his 1998 lecture. “I predicted higher natural gas prices with a record high preseason rally in 2000. I didn’t tell them that prices would get as high as $10 [per CCF] because it’s hard to predict what panic can do to the market. I predicted that prices could get as high as $7 per CCF, though.”

He also explained the 60-year nature of economic cycles to the MLGW execs. This theory holds that inflation and deflation follow 20-year patterns: inflation for 20 years followed by 20 years of deflation. Zimmerman explained to those in attendance that the new cycle would begin in February 1999, ushering in 20 years of inflation. Prices would then accelerate in January 2000, beginning the uptrend. Zimmerman specifically warned MLGW officials in 1998 that natural gas prices would likely double for the winter of 2000-2001.

Moving from lecturer to consultant, Zimmerman stayed on at MLGW. According to MLGW’s Heuberger, Zimmerman receives $21,600 a year to advise the utility on the natural gas market fluctuations.

Zimmerman says that though this winter’s brutally cold temperatures were unforeseeable, the market fluctuations occurred on cue.

“It happens most every year that prices will spike up fast and then come down just as fast,” says Zimmerman. “They tend to peak out between late October and late December. The worst month is usually January. We usually get pummeled early in the month of January, and then prices collapse later in January.”

Though no one could have predicted the staggering heights that prices in the natural gas market would eventually reach, MLGW officials had been warned that the market could hit a high in January and then fall to near-normal levels at the end of the month. With Zimmerman’s warnings two years ago and his ongoing consultations, MLGW should have been one of the most insulated utilities in the country against the wild gas-price spikes. One option would have been for the utility to purchase gas futures in advance when prices were relatively low.

Zimmerman, though, is quick to add that it’s unfair to judge MLGW for not acting differently.

“I’ve learned that looking back is just fruitless speculation,” says Zimmerman. “Any company that survived this winter’s fluctuations did something right. What happened during the fourth quarter with natural gas is unprecedented with physical commodities in history.”

He also says that MLGW officials may not have taken his predictions seriously because they were so dramatic.

“If your forecasts are too far outside the normal price range, they tend to be dismissed,” says Zimmerman. “Nobody thought natural gas would go from $2 to $10.”

Inadequate Warnings

MLGW’s decision to keep Zimmerman’s warnings under wraps is a bit like the National Weather Service deciding that there’s no point in worrying people over a potential tornado. But the utility soon learned that when you ignore the forces of nature, there’s public-relations hell to pay.

Should MLGW have used Zimmerman’s predictions to warn customers of upcoming higher prices? Doing so would certainly have given customers a better chance to budget for upcoming increases. Other gas companies, like Mississippi Valley Gas of Jackson, Mississippi, seemed to think this was a prudent plan. That utility mailed a warning letter to all of its customers on September 20, 2000, which read, in part: “At Mississippi Valley Gas, we expect prices could rise as much as 50 percent. But, if our winter is colder than normal, gas bills could rise even more.”

MLGW, however, did not make an official announcement until January 2, 2001 — just days before customers would begin receiving their hefty December bills. Prior to the January announcement the utility had made no public mention of the gas-price increase other than in an October 6th Commercial Appeal article. Even then the article only hinted at rising prices and focused instead on the highly publicized 13 percent temporary rate decrease MLGW was initiating.

The Commercial Appeal article quotes Mark Winfield, MLGW’s manager of budget, plant, and rates, as saying that the rate decrease would “soften the blow” to customers, causing them to pay on average $77 more for the January to March heating period than in years past. This was well below the increase most customers actually received on their bills, many of which were triple and quadruple what they had paid in recent years.

In fact, instead of issuing a warning about the increase, the utility made much ado about its temporary rate decrease. According to the October 6th article, without the rate decrease, MLGW customers would be paying on average $112 more than they had the year before.

This action caused many MLGW customers to believe that they would be protected from the nationally predicted gas-price increase this past winter. Only when they received their utility bills did rate-payers realize that they were not protected by the rate “decrease” but were in fact were paying higher rates than ever before.

Herman Morris

Jumping Ship

Just as the sailors in Sebastian Junger’s novel The Perfect Storm needed a skilled captain and crew to sail as far as they did, MLGW customers needed an experienced captain and crew at the helm this year. Unfortunately, many of MLGW’s experienced hands have left the utility in recent years.

On December 31, 1996, Bill Crawford stepped down as president of MLGW. Crawford had spent 39 years with the utility, five-and-a-half of them as president and eight as senior vice president. He was replaced by Herman Morris, an appointee of Mayor Willie Herenton. Morris had worked as general counsel in MLGW’s legal department since 1989. But aside from advising the utility on legal issues, Morris had little prior hands-on experience with light, gas, or water operations.

Next to go was Sandy Novick, vice president of operations and a critical figure in the creation of the futures contract program. Novick retired in March 1997 and was replaced by Alonzo Weaver. Weaver, like Morris, has strong connections with MLGW board members and leaders, but little experience with regulatory issues or gas purchasing. He has been manager for electric operations and has a strong engineering background. His MLGW job description states that he is now “responsible for the control and operation of the electric, gas, and water utility systems and for the acquisition/production of electric power, natural gas, and water supplies for the utility.”

Paul Harris, senior vice president and chief operations officer, retired from MLGW in 1998 after 30 years of service. The utility promoted Larry Thompson to the position, who has had relatively few dealings in gas acquisition. Though Thompson has worked for MLGW since 1965, he dealt primarily with construction-related issues.

Henry Nickell, manager of systems operations and energy resources, was replaced in April 2000 by Lee Smart, who has a degree in electrical engineering and has spent 22 years working for MLGW in the construction department. He has no prior experience in supply planning or gas acquisitions.

But Nickell’s story is not so simple. He’s going down fighting.

Manager Sues

On December 18, 1997, Nickell filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charge of discrimination based on race and age against MLGW when he was passed over for a promotion. Nickell, who is white, claims that after he filed the complaint working conditions for him at MLGW worsened. He then filed a lawsuit against the utility claiming that he was harmed by MLGW’s retaliatory actions against him and that he suffered humiliation, depression, anxiety, and other emotional and physical suffering. Nickell is asking $5.2 million in compensatory and punitive damages.

Nickell’s suit specifically alleges that in 1997 Herman Morris began intentionally excluding Nickell from meetings that he was required to attend in order to perform his job. Nickell claims that Morris would not inform him of the time or location of these meetings. He also says that he was assigned additional responsibilities but not allocated the staff or resources to complete the work and that deadlines for completing assigned tasks were changed without Nickell receiving notice.

Nickell declined comment for this story because his lawsuit is still pending.

In January 1999 Nickell received notice from MLGW’s human resource department that a survey conducted by the American Gas Association showed that Nickell was the only employee in his department who was substantially underpaid. Mike Magness, director of human resources for MLGW, told Nickell that he (Magness) had recommended that Nickell’s salary be increased. However, no adjustment was made.

While Nickell was still employed by the utility, he says that MLGW security circulated “wanted” posters with Nickell’s picture on them and guards were told that Nickell was no longer allowed in the building. Nickell alleges that MLGW employees were instructed to take detailed notes during any conversations with him and that those notes were to be turned in to Alonzo Weaver. While Nickell was technically still the manager, the access code to the door was changed and the new code was not given to Nickell. The acting manager, Bill Bullock, is alleged to have told employees to use their discretion when deciding whether or not to allow Nickell, still their boss, in the office.

Nickell also alleges that his replacement, Lee Smart, is less than qualified and received his job based on connections rather than competence.

An excerpt from MLGW’s Alonzo Weaver’s deposition in Nickell’s lawsuit is revealing:

Nickell’s attorney, Kathleen Caldwell: “Have you ever put your name on a report written by Henry Nickell? Did you change the name on any report so that it showed that it was coming from you?”

Alonzo Weaver: “I don’t remember.”

Caldwell: “Is it possible?”

Weaver: “It’s possible.”

Caldwell: “Would you agree that you had a lot to learn in a short amount of time in order to effectively handle the job of vice president of operations?”

Weaver: “I’ve had a lot to learn, yes.”

Caldwell: “Did you talk to Herman Morris about an executive position before he became president of MLGW?”

Weaver: “I do not remember; it’s possible that I did.”

Caldwell: “Did you meet with Franketta Guinn [chairman of the board for MLGW] for about half a day just prior to you being named acting vice president?”

Weaver: “I do not recollect.”

Caldwell: “Have you ever discussed your future with her?”

Weaver: “I may have.”

Caldwell: “Have you ever told any of your co-workers at MLGW that you know the mayor?”

Weaver: “It’s possible.”

On April 21, 2000, Nickell tendered his resignation on the advice of his physician. Nickell says in his complaint that working conditions at MLGW were so difficult or unpleasant that a reasonable person in Nickell’s shoes would have felt compelled to resign.

MLGW’s Heuberger responded to the Flyer‘s request for information on Nickell and on other former employees with this faxed statement:

“In order to protect the privacy of our employees, we will not discuss personnel records or conditions of employment about any current or former MLGW employee.”

After the Storm

Recovering from the financial pain MLGW inflicted on its customers this winter will take time. Some, like Mamie Parker, will keep trying to have excessive bills spread out so that she can make smaller payments. Others, who could afford the increase but wrote their checks reluctantly, are no doubt thinking of ways they would have rather spent the money. Everyone wants to know if such a thing could happen again.

Unfortunately, the answer is probably yes. MLGW is still managed by those who brought on this year’s financial and public relations fiasco, a group that didn’t properly heed the cautions of its own paid consultant. Cronyism is rampant, insiders and former employees say. And as long as MLGW is allowed to use a PGA to determine the amount to bill customers, the utility will have the leeway to adjust prices up or down to cover its losses — alleviating a major incentive to purchase gas at the lowest prices. The bottom line: If MLGW could charge its customers 25 percent more than the national average in December and January with no repercussions, then what’s to stop it from doing the same — or worse — next winter? n

You can e-mail Rebekah Gleaves at gleaves@memphisflyer.com.

Ahhhmstahdahm,” she says into the phone, her voice sounding
like a combination of cashmere and cosmopolitans.

Who would know that on the other end, Betty Lamar is standing
near racks of sexy dress-up outfits, 6-inch-high-heeled mules, and, in a back
room not far away, a 12-inch dildo known as the Conquistador.

Lamar is the Betty behind Betty’s Resale and Betty’s Amsterdam,
two shops on Madison Avenue near Overton Square. In 1995, she opened the
Resale store and, whereas once she only stocked used clothing, she later
branched out into selling new shoes, club wear, and most recently, at
Amsterdam, sex toys.

Sitting on a display at her new location one afternoon, Lamar is
at ease, joking with customers, answering the phone, and wearing an outfit
that consists of a sweatshirt, baseball cap, and a pair of black leather
pants.

When a woman in a low-cut blouse comes into the store to replace
a pair of fake eye lashes, she and Lamar talk about a sparkling cobweb of a
dress that she’s been lusting over. The customer says she’d accessorize it
with pasties and a little something “down there.”

“Ooh, girl, that would be on,” Lamar says.
“Yeah, that would be sharp.”

When the woman leaves, Lamar says, “I’ve known her since
before she got those breasts.” She waits to see if anyone’s shocked: The
woman wasn’t always a woman.

This is Lamar — fun-loving, frank, and frankly sexual. Mostly,
though, she seems a bundle of pure energy, punctuated by giggles and laughter.
She’s a slender, single 45 — but looks half her age — who has an ever-
present smile. She calls herself, alternately, a diva, a fighter, and an
exotic bird.

“I love to trip around at home in the 6-inch mules,”
Lamar says. “I won’t say what some people call them — come ‘blank’ me
shoes — but I like to walk around in the mules and some cute little
thing.”

“Every now and then I go out and everybody dresses up diva-
style. I might just put on my leather pants and corset.” As she talks she
mimes the shape of the clothes as if she were wearing them and pouts a little.
“I like that Gunsmoke look, you know, Miss Kitty, where the girls
wore the corsets and the big skirts and stuff. They could lift them up and
walk around in thigh-highs and it was so sexy.”

Lamar, who has lived in Memphis for much of her life, acts as if
she could just play all day. But as much as she jokes around, her business
here is very important to her.

“Even growing up, I knew she was very ambitious,” says
Lamar’s sister Linda Spann. “She wanted to conquer the world. In the time
we grew up, and the size of our family, we didn’t have a lot. Most girls
wanted to get a boyfriend and have kids, but that was never her
goal.”

Feeding the Need

In 1986, Lamar had just quit her job and the rent was due. To
make ends meet, she decided she would have to sell some of her belongings.

“I started from my closet. I invited my friends — they had
always liked my style in clothing — and they would come over and I would sell
my clothes,” says Lamar.

She then started buying clothes especially for resale. “My
house became completely engulfed with clothing to the point where my friends
were bringing their friends.”

She had never worked in retail before, but because she didn’t
want so many people coming into her home, she decided to rent a booth in a
Midtown flea market. Later she would get space in Southaven, Mississippi, and
in 1995, she opened Betty’s Resale in the current Amsterdam location on
Madison Avenue.

At some point, drag queens started frequenting her business and
she became “Betty’s — where the divas shop,” something she says she
owes to a national lingerie chain.

“Frederick’s of Hollywood got wind that I had heels. They
had discontinued heels in their store — you could still order them — but
there were so many women, men, whatever, looking for heels,” says Lamar.
Frederick’s called her store and asked for a stack of her business cards.
Then, any time a customer needed heels immediately, the lingerie retailer
would send them to Betty’s.

“They [customers] would tell me what they wanted so I
started getting high heels and thigh-high boots and stuff, and they said,
‘Betty, why don’t you get clothes for us? Now that you have the shoes, we can
come in and get our clothes and lingerie and all that stuff here,
too.'”

“So I said, Okay, cool, and I started shopping in markets,
getting on planes, and finding some unique things,” says Lamar. “It
went from one thing to another.”

Lamar says that Betty’s also became where the divas shop because
she’s always been very gay-friendly. Many retailers that carry formal dresses
have policies against letting men try on merchandise or returning anything
they buy for themselves.

“The word spread that you can go to this store, Betty’s, and
she’s really cool,” says Lamar. “She’ll actually let you try on her
clothes. The word spread: Go to Betty’s.”

Lamar takes that same attitude toward all her customers, and it’s
what she credits her success to. Whatever her customers want, whatever they
need, she’ll do her best to get it for them.

“They ask, ‘Do you have neon-colored wigs?’ ‘Well, no, but I
can get them.’ And then I get on the phone, get on the plane, and I find
some.

“I ask, Is there a need for it out there. If they say,
‘Yeah, Betty, a lot of people are talking about it.’ Okay, so then I get
some.”

Memphis’ Red Light District

On a Friday night at Amsterdam, the store is closed, but four models
in formal dresses or club wear stand, dance, and lounge in the red-lit
windows. Passersby — college kids and middle-aged men and women — wave to
the girls through the windows or stop and stare. The girls just smile and keep
swaying to the music.

Lamar, watching from the back of the store, is dolled up with
ringlets in her hair, a short skirt, and, of course, high heels. Earlier in
the day, a few drag queens were trying on heels and Lamar decided to put on a
pair as well. “I told them, ‘You can’t beat me, I’m a real
girl.'”

She calls herself an Amsterdammer; she visits the European city
twice a year and would visit more often if she could because, she says simply,
she feels free there. It was after a trip last summer that she decided to
create her own Amsterdam.

“I told my friend, I’m going to do this sex shop. But I
don’t want it to be like the others; I want to create an ambience. I put
chandeliers in there and gave it a soft touch to make people feel like, it’s
okay, it’s clean, instead of a stereotypical adult store located on the side
of the highway.” To give the store a personal touch, she greets her
customers at the door and she makes sure to answer any questions people have
about her items. Amsterdam also has two entrances: an ornate one facing
Madison Avenue and a back door for anyone who doesn’t want to be seen going
in.

“I don’t like sleaze,” she says. “When I came up
with Amsterdam, I wanted to take the sleaze out of the business.”

She also wanted to make women feel comfortable.

“When women come in and women are running it [the store],
they feel better. They still feel a little uncomfortable, but once you mellow
them out a little bit, they’re okay.”

Of course, a sex shop in Overton Square didn’t go over
quietly.

During her grand opening party last September, which included
exotic dancers eating fire, the power mysteriously went out around 10 p.m. As
the revelers left, Lamar went across the street to wait. She wanted to make
sure her store would be okay. Shortly after everyone was gone, though, the
power came back on.

But Lamar’s problems didn’t stop there. Another nearby business
owner started a petition to get her removed. The words “nigger” and
“whore” were written on her front window in red lipstick.

Lamar shut down the store after city code enforcement came by and
told her that she was not zoned for sex toys and that she would be issued a
$50 citation every day she continued to sell them.

“We didn’t feel that [selling the sex toys] was
illegal,” says Lamar’s lawyer, Randall Songstad. “There were no
churches or schools around. We went to the city and had them upgrade our
license.” But because of harassment and what Lamar calls negativity
surrounding the location, she decided to move her operation a block west, to
the Gilmore building.

“But then the Gilmore said they’d have to add an addendum to
her lease and that she couldn’t sell the sex toys or the adult
entertainment,” says Songstad. “It was like, Now what am I going to
do?”

Near bankruptcy, Lamar and Songstad decided the best thing for
her to do was move Amsterdam back to Overton Square. The space was still set
up for Amsterdam, Lamar had the zoning from the city, and Songstad sent cease
and desist letters to parties Lamar felt had been harassing her.

“I’m a fighter,” says the former Army recruit,
“but at some point, I don’t want to fight. I have responsibilities,
things I care about that I don’t want to lose because I’m fighting
you.”

For Lamar, though, the conflict wasn’t about sex or sex toys or
drag queens and girls dancing in her windows, but another issue altogether:
after-hours parking.

“You know how people will try to make something out of
another thing? They made it about the girls in the window.”

“I’ve always been a good neighbor. I don’t bother anybody.
I’m still Betty.”

For now, though, the conflict with her neighbors appears to be
resolved. Amsterdam is open again and selling sex toys. Lamar threw herself a
Second Chance Party Saturday, March 10th; the electricity stayed on and
everybody seemed to have a good time.

People perused the sex toys, sat on couches and chatted, and
watched the windows. The models, wearing beaded formal dresses, white sheer
nighties, and slinky cocktail dresses, played to the crowd, some of them
lounging on chaises while others swung from poles and gyrated like kitchen
appliances.

Outside, cars slowed to a halt on the street and two clean-cut
guys walking together on the sidewalk tripped into one another, obviously
captivated by the dancers.

“Adults need toys, too. After awhile we can’t play with
Barbie dolls anymore,” Lamar says.

And as always, the diva is looking after her customers. “The
toys are very much a part of Amsterdam. I saw a need for that in Midtown; my
customers expressed that need.”

Doing It For Yourself

After a controversial opening night, Betty says she’ll no longer have dancers in her store windows.

At the Gilmore building, customers look for retro belts, vintage
furs, tuxedo pants, and all the other goodies Lamar’s professional buyers find
for the store.

After moving Amsterdam back into Overton Square, Lamar decided to
make the Gilmore location her high-end store, housing sexy party dresses,
thongs, and a female police officer’s “uniform” that even a cop
would get cited for wearing. At the Gilmore, she would sell her used items,
which she says makes it better all around.

“Sometimes it causes problems to have your old and your new
merchandise together,” she explains. “Like when things go on
sale.”

But because the original plan was to house both Amsterdam and
Resale in the Gilmore, she suddenly found herself with empty space in both
locations. So the woman who doesn’t like shopping for herself saw the extra
room in the Gilmore as an opportunity for her to start carrying antiques.

“I love furniture. I was taught a long time ago that you
will basically be successful in something that you like. Because if you don’t
like it, you’re not going to put everything into it,” Lamar says.

As a single black woman running a business, Lamar credits her
family and friends with helping her make it.

“I’m very fortunate because I have family support,” she
says. “They come out and help if I need them.”

Which sometimes she does. Lamar does a lot of work at her stores
herself — not just selling and stocking but cleaning out old storage closets
and hanging ceiling tile. And her support system is always there to lend a
hand. After she separated her new and used items, Lamar sent some of her drag
queen friends into the Gilmore to do some decorating, an idea she says worked
out great.

“It looks so good now.”

Lamar also tries to return the favor. Spann started working with
Lamar while she was between jobs. Spann’s son worked for Lamar when he needed
extra money to fix his car.

“She put my niece through school,” says Spann. “My
niece was working with her and Betty told her she needed to do something with
her life.” The niece now works as a surgery technician at Methodist
Hospital but sometimes still helps Lamar out on the weekends.

But in its own way, Lamar says that Betty’s lives on because of
women.

“I’m smart enough to know that men like women. Women will
always be a major commodity in this world. Even gay men like women, not in the
same way, but they still like to emulate women.”

She jokes that even when the cops were making regular visits to
Amsterdam, it wasn’t to bother her. It was to see the girls.

But if women are the commodity, they are also the consumers. Most
of the clothes, the accessories, and the other “accessories” are
geared toward women.

“I always knew that women would be a big factor in my
success in life. I’m so happy that I’m a woman who actually likes women. I
feel as long as I have women as a part of my business, somehow, that I’m going
to do well.”

Currently Lamar is planning on using the empty space in Amsterdam
as a late-night coffee bar, a place where people can lounge after they’ve been
out clubbing. After her Second Chance Party, she decided not to have models
dancing in the windows, opting for mannequins to convey the idea of Amsterdam
instead.

“I don’t want to misrepresent Amsterdam,” she says.
“I don’t want to misrepresent Betty.” She felt that the dancers
couldn’t see her vision of what Amsterdam was, where the girls sit in the
windows and are beautiful, but not lewd.

“I don’t want it to look sleazy.”

But that isn’t stopping her from moving forward. Lamar is
franchising Amsterdam fun parties, her own special variation of the Tupperware
party theme.

And maybe there will even be a higher office in her future.
“I need to be mayor of Memphis. Betty Lamar, mayor.”

Her sister says Lamar goes whichever way the wind blows, but
Lamar just laughs at that.

“When you don’t have a love life or any babies, you don’t
have anything to do but plan,” she says.

“I’m trying to find something that not everybody else is
doing. I don’t want to be everybody else.”

You can e-mail Mary Cashiola at cashiola@memphisflyer.com.

As always, one is struck by how bashful the man appears. Whether it is a function of his Midwest Scandinavian upbringing or merely the fact of his being the prototypical grey-haired man with glasses and a blue suit, Don Sundquist, the second-term Republican governor of Tennessee, does not dominate a room — even one, like this kindergarten classroom on a day last week at Tucker’s Crossroads Elementary School outside Lebanon in Middle Tennessee, where most of his auditors are the prototypically young and impressionable.

Yet something about him, maybe his earnestness, commands attention. Or maybe it’s just that he, after all, is the governor, and even if the kiddies happen not to grasp that concept, they certainly are aware of the deference all these other adults, press people and handlers and school officials, are showing him. And so they sit still and listen as he begins a conversation, asking, among other things, that standard grown-up question: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

There are the usual choruses of race-car driver (even though this is in the wake of Dale Earnhardt’s death at Daytona) and forest ranger and the like. And one kid thinks he might want to be president someday. Nobody mentions “governor.” (But then no one mentions data processor or file clerk, either.)

The next day is Dr. Seuss’ birthday and the governor smiles, the expanse of large, even white teeth seeming literally to come out of nowhere, as he asks how many of the children know this. (They all raise their hands, having been briefed by their teachers.)

Sundquist does not read from Dr. Seuss, though. He reads a book entitled It’s Mine by one Leo Lionni. It is the story of three selfish frogs who insist on their own selfish ends and refuse to cooperate with each other, even when scolded by an older and wiser toad. Comes a flood, and the frogs are almost swamped until they land together on the safe shore of what looks like a rock but turns out to be the back of the didactic old toad. At the end of the story the three frogs are transformed into a community and have learned to say “It’s ours!” about the common world they inhabit.

When he’s done, he hands the little book to a press aide, rising almost daintily from his chair amongst the children to take his leave. Or maybe that’s just some residual frailty from what the governor’s entourage are calling “walking pneumonia” — the ailment he has been nursing for more than a week, through a weekend National Governor’s Conference in Washington, D.C., and through a demanding round of all-day discussions with aides, administration officials, and legislative leaders on the previous day.

He greets a visitor and says he’s feeling better, that his doctor tells him he’ll be “okay in about 10 days.” The teeth flash again, easily.

The governor’s upcoming round is with parents, teachers, and school board members, to whom he will explain one more time what he’s been talking about incessantly for the last two weeks: the education plan and the budget he has proposed to a legislature which has been coolly reluctant to respond to him but may at last be showing signs of thawing, now that he’s attached a pedagogical rationale to the ongoing crusade he calls “tax reform.”

On his way to that rendezvous, Sundquist stops by a computer classroom, looks in and tells one child, “You can work a computer faster than I do.” He turns to a teacher. “I was using mine the other night, and I was going like this” — he bunches his fists and goes up and down with his two index fingers, hunt-and-pecking in space — “And my wife said, ‘Is that what you learned in training?'”

His next stop is in a room where children stand atop little rocking stools while they throw balls back and forth to each other. The idea, as the governor notes, is to teach “balance, coordination, real skill.” Once again, he is self-effacing. “I wouldn’t be able to do that, but I like to watch them,” he says.

When at last he sits at a library table with the assembled adult eminences of Tucker’s Crossroads, he begins by telling them that this is either the 12th or 13th school he has visited in the course of explaining his plan and getting reactions to it.

“I want to talk about it and see what you feel about it. I want to listen. I’ll try not to talk too much. I’m not here to give a speech,” he says, then, after telling what is clearly meant to be an ice-breaking anecdote about how he and his wife Martha, a former schoolteacher, take turns doing these exemplary reading excursions (“Sometimes I sleep in, sometimes she does”), launches into his rationale. “I did this because I was hearing from people that we’re not going to compete in the future if we don’t do certain things.” The keystone of his education proposals is a reading plan — a seemingly out-of-the-way idea that gained almost instant acceptance, because, he insists, “everything begins with reading.”

The plan has an estimated price tag of $300 million over a five-year period, and that fact, plus the $500 million or so which the administration estimates will be the revenue shortfall over the same period, brings the total to $800 million — a number so large that many observers, including the governor, think it will make tax reform of some sort actually thinkable this year, after several false starts.

“We have a tight budget, as you know, but some people have asked me, ‘How can you propose a new program when the budget is so tight?’ My answer is, ‘How can we afford not to? How an we afford not to make our children competitive, to close the gap that holds them back?'”

He runs through the plan’s essentials: scholarships for teachers and other incentives, mentors for first-year teachers, extending the benefits of pre-school education to all three- and four-year-olds, testing formulas for schools and their faculties, and reading coaches in each school toward the end of bringing all third-graders up to their appropriate reading levels.

Along the way he advances a striking notion, taking as his example a chemist at East Tennessee’s commercial monolith, Eastman Chemical Company. “Why shouldn’t we be able to create a shortcut for him into teaching?” Sundquist asks. “We need to carry out lateral entrance into the school system, move some people from other professions into teaching. We’re going to have a teacher shortage, you know.”

At about that point, or maybe it’s moments later, when he discusses teacher retention in terms of establishing and keeping a “rhythm,” that it seems obvious Don Sundquist has learned to do what contemporary idiom calls “thinking outside the box.” Moreover, he is clearly versed in the jargon of the educational trade, talking up National Board exams, career ladders, Bridges programs, Gateway tests, and the rest of a pedagogical panoply with which he has quite recently become familiar. Or maybe not so recently; Martha Sundquist, after all, was once upon a time a teacher, and his apologies to this group for taking her away from the profession to become, successively, a congressional wife and a First Lady actually seem sincere.

It is Don Sundquist’s own CAreer odyssey that bemuses most observers these days, however. A little over two decades ago he had a modest advertising business in Memphis and devoted a good deal of time to political activism, most of it in Republican circles. In 1982, having logged his time in the ranks (and, lest we make too much of his anonymity, having served as president of the national Young Republican Federation), he became a candidate for the then-open 7th District congressional seat, which stretched from the suburbs of Memphis to those of Nashville, and which, popular wisdom had it, had been freshly redistricted by the Democrats in the state’s General Assembly with an eye toward electing party scion Bob Clement of suburban Nashville.

Sundquist’s get-along-to-go-along manner helped him mightily in what turned out to be a nail-biter of a race, and he found himself the upset winner on election day.

Thereafter followed 12 fairly nondescript years as a back-bench congressman. Sundquist’s voting record was pretty much party-line; his ratings were always high with the American Conservative Union, low as could be with the left-oriented Americans for Democratic Action. When 1994 came around, he was the logical GOP candidate for governor, since he was the ranking Republican official in a state which was then dominated statewide at every level by Democrats.

Once again Sundquist won, helped out by the Great Republican Tide of 1994 and by the peculiarly stiff manner of his Democratic opponent, Nashville mayor Phil Bredesen, against whom Sundquist’s own pleasant, if occasionally thin-skinned, personality played well.

Through the first four years of his gubernatorial tenure, Sundquist devoted his time to consolidating his political victory (reaching out, for example, to such Democratic allies as state Senators Steve Cohen and John Ford to get help in eliminating the Public Service Commission, a Democratic bastion) and to reorganizing governmental services according to acceptably Republican and conservative premises. His primary achievement in that first term was Families First, a welfare reform act which began paring the rolls in stages.

Fairly early in that first term, Sundquist made good on a promise to extend the Internet into every schoolroom in Tennessee, a foreshadowing perhaps of his current preoccupations and something that for years has been high on his list of boasted accomplishments.

But otherwise Governor Sundquist made few waves, and he was regarded by the state capital’s press corps more as a golfer than as a go-getter; he was seen, in fact, as the proprietor of a caretaker administration. No one regarded him especially as an innovator, and nothing he said or did in his lavishly financed 1998 re-election race against hapless Democratic leftover John Jay Hooker could have foreshadowed what was to come.

But it did come. In December 1998 and January 1999, Sundquist got briefings from John Ferguson, a fellow Memphian who was then his state finance commissioner. The import of the briefings was stunning. In the midst of an unprecedented national and statewide economic boom, Tennessee was about to go broke. Its tax code, unrevised since the 1920s, left too many loopholes for the state’s businesses to climb through unscathed and relied almost totally on constant upward revisions of the highly regressive state sales tax — which, when pumped up by permitted local-option add-ons, had reached the stratospheric, tithe-like mark of nearly 9 percent.

So in February 1999 Sundquist launched what amounted to a personal revolution as well as a doctrinal one in a State of the State address delivered to a largely unsuspecting audience of state legislators. In laying out what he chose to call the “Tax Relief and Fairness Act of 1999,” Sundquist first offered a striking remedy: He proposed to take the state sales tax off groceries, a statement prompting a Democratic state legislator to leap from her seat and shout, “Yes!”

Sundquist then went on to attack “those who have had a free ride and now object to paying their fair share,” who wanted to “preserve special breaks.” He proposed to close tax loopholes on businesses, imposing a 2.5 percent excise tax that some, like Vanderbilt University professor James Blumstein, called an income tax in disguise.

Predictably, there was a hue and cry from the legislature, especially from Sundquist’s GOP partymates. When the governor appeared before a hometown Republican audience at the 1999 Lincoln Day Dinner in Memphis, he was largely shunned at the event’s reception, then greeted with minimal applause during his after-dinner speech. The audience sat on its hands for the most part, never rising to give the native son the same standing ovation that it granted every other speaker, including an obscure barn-burning conservative congressman from the Midwest.

In this climate of hostility, aided very little by the opposition Democrats, who seemed to enjoy the spectacle of a Republican governor being attacked by his own, Sundquist floundered. He couldn’t get his business-tax plan passed during the regular session and resolved on a special session for that fall of 1999. By then he was ready to propose an out-and-out income tax (though he disguised his across-the-board version as a “flat tax,” rarely letting the words “income tax” escape his lips), and Republicans such as former state party chairman Tommy Hopper were talking impeachment and calling openly for Sundquist’s resignation.

Although Sundquist has since had to back off an income tax plan — he proposed an alternate concept two weeks ago whereby the state sales tax, reduced to 4 percent, would be extended virtually across the board in previously exempt categories — he still comes to its defense in conversation, and it may well be, as his adversaries charge, that he means for a stalemated legislature to return to it ultimately.

As he said at Tucker’s Crossroads, still calling that now dormant proposal by the name of “flat tax,” an income tax would allow “a lot of people” to pay less taxes. “Tennesseans would pay $55 million less in new taxes” because of deductions they could take on their federal income tax returns. “And the state would pick up $500 million in new income. It would involve higher elasticity. It would be a fair solution. And I’d be willing to push for a constitutional amendment that would make any increase in the tax dependent on 60 percent majorities in both the Senate and the House. You can’t get 50 percent to raise taxes, much less 60 percent!”

Sundquist has also become the leading champion of TennCare, the state-run health-care program for Tennessee’s uninsured and uninsurables. When Blue Cross/Blue Shield almost pulled out of TennCare in December 1999, Sundquist denounced the giant insurance monolith as “Ebenezer Scrooge.” He took the term back last week when he was able to announce that Blue Cross/Blue Shield had signed on again, a fact which he believes will guarantee the program’s survival.

Conservatives were wont to attack TennCare as too costly (and sometimes as “socialized medicine”), but Sundquist now believes the opposition has crested. “It makes good financial sense,” he noted at Tucker’s Crossroads, pointing out that if the state were to fall back on Medicaid, the demands for local governments to provide the indigent care that TennCare does currently would cause their property taxes to go straight up astronomically.

On the subject of health care, as with education, Sundquist can build up some rhetorical momentum, even a bit of grandiosity. “We’ve been making real progress,” he said. “Immunization rates are up, infant mortality is down, the rate of emergency room care is less than half of what it used to be. TennCare is responsible for that. My dream is to take one disease each year and come as close as we can to curing it. The first year I’d like to concentrate on diabetes. Who has it? Who needs early treatment? What are the heart problems and other ramifications? It’s in my family, you know. My mother and my father had it, and I’m borderline myself.”

At another level of consciousness, of course, Sundquist recognizes that he doesn’t have an infinite number of years to totally transform Tennessee’s educational levels and to cure all human illnesses. “I have another year left,” he notes, “and I’m going to try not to be a caretaker. I think if I can get us up to a certain point, then all that will be necessary is maintenance. People won’t have to pay new taxes every year for us to meet our goals in education and health care. People wanted those two things worked on. They wanted to be able to vote on a state lottery. We’ve done that. Now if we can get tax reform accomplished, I think I’ll have done my job.”

The governor is so intent these days on setting out goals and stalking them that sometimes, as in putting forth the fairly rigorous testing procedures he wants the state’s public-school teachers to be subject to, he can be called to account, as he was at Tucker’s Crossroads by a teacher who lamented the growing number of demands on her time, the reports to be filled out. “Like today,” she said. “It’s beautiful outside. Wouldn’t it be neat to go outside and see the daffodils?”

Sundquist seemed a bit stunned. “The school system should have responsibility if they issue a certificate. The school system should, in fact, pay for remedial education later if students haven’t been properly educated. But,” he said, relenting, “we shouldn’t have a school system where a teacher couldn’t go out and look at daffodils.”

Later on, the governor considered the question of whether he’d evolved in his fiscal thinking since his days as a congressman. “No,” he said. “We practice fiscal conservatism in state government. I believe money ought to be properly spent. But there comes a time when you go backwards if you don’t spend money. Think of TennCare as an ounce of prevention. You can spend a few dollars for pre-natal care or you can spend hundreds of thousands for a preemie. That’s fiscal solvency.”

But Sundquist allows for what others may see as a change in his emphasis. Using a phrase made famous by President Bush, the governor said, “Well, I’m a conservative, and I’m compassionate. So I guess I’m a conservative compassionate or a compassionate conservative.”

What about the negative responses he’d gotten from time to time over the last two years from audiences of his former conservative supporters — as, for example, when he was booed by an election-night crowd at Nashville’s Wild Horse Saloon at the official Bush celebration party.

“I noticed it,” he said. “You can’t be in politics for as many years as I’ve been in politics without noticing — and understanding — something like that.”

After this burst of candor, he flirts briefly with denial mode. “On election night, if you remember, Senator [Bill] Frist didn’t get much of a reception for someone who had just won an election.”

PHOTO AP

Sundquist pushes education reform to an educator at Tucker’s Crossroads Elementary in Lebanon, Tennessee.

Then with Consider-the-Source. “A lot of people who were partyers,” Sundquist says, pausing to let this unexpected word have its effect, “who came in off the street into the Wild Horse … “

But he drops that line, too, and goes right to the point. “There’s no question,” he says deliberately, “that there’s an element in our party who are against. They’re never for anything. Some of these people profit off politics, either by managing campaigns or raising money, and they use this to improve their position. But if you’re going to be an elected official you have to be consistent in your views.”

Sundquist begins a smile, and you can feel just a tad of that modest — and rare — radiance that would justify George W. Bush, that inveterate nicknamer, giving this man the name “Sunny.”

“I think I’m vindicated now,” the governor of Tennessee declares. “We’re hundreds of millions of dollars short on the budget which I vetoed and they overrode. If you believe you’re right and in what’s in your heart, whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican you have to put up with that kind of thing. And I don’t question other people’s motives.” Sundquist hearkens back to an expression from his youth, a term of art once used for measuring radio audiences. “But I had confidence when my Hooper rating was in the 40s it would bounce back, and now that it’s in the 60s, I still think I’m right.

“Part of being in leadership is to be consistent in your principles and views. And if you’re gong to lead simply by doing what the polls indicate, you’re in sad shape. I’m satisfied that by the time I finish my eight years, Lord willing, people are going to look back and say, ‘He made tough decisions. He did what was right, and he didn’t worry about a few boos or people who were saying negative things.’

“Because what I worry about are the children and the sick and the elderly and the people who want opportunities. This is an opportunity state. I am very comfortable with who I am. It is not pleasant to be around people who boo, but that comes with the territory. You have to do what’s right. You have to ignore it.”

PHOTOS BY TREY HARRISON

“Children don’t vote, foster children don’t have a powerful lobby working for them. These children don’t have a voice.”

— Ira Lustbader, attorney for Children’s Rights, Inc.

Every day many of the more than 11,000 foster children in Tennessee are sucked into a fierce downward spiral. Their lives deteriorate, their futures obliterate, their options dissolve. As you read this story, many of these children are being beaten, raped, and shuffled from home to home. They are being medicated into trances with psychotropic drugs or denied the psychological treatment necessary for them to retain a semblance of sanity. The foster care system in Tennessee devours childhoods, in some cases literally raping, killing, and permanently handicapping children, and turning others, the comparably lucky ones, out onto the streets with no money, no support system, and little hope.

As wards of the state, these are Tennessee’s children. As Tennessee citizens, we are responsible for their well-being. Yet many of these children have never lived in homes where they were safe from abuse. Many of these children have never slept undisturbed. All of these children want to live in safe homes with loving parents, but very few of them ever will.

The state of Tennessee removes infants, toddlers, youths, and teens from nightmarish horrors — forced prostitution, rapists, guardians who use burns as punishment, parents who withhold food for days — evils we’d like to think are not possible in our state. This first step is a positive one, but too often these children are then placed into situations that are just as bad, and sometimes worse. The hope is that these children will grow up to be responsible adults. But it shouln’t be surprising that the children we abandon to a flawed foster care system grow up to become rapists and murderers themselves. Many will join gangs or become thieves, welfare mothers, or dementia-addled homeless beggars. The system is failing. And in the long run it is we who will pay the price.

Charles

Charles will never be normal. He spends his waking hours peering out from underneath a helmet worn to protect him from himself. It’s a bitter irony. After years of being victimized by others, Charles’ brain now compels him to abuse himself.

Seven-year-old Charles was healthy and normal until a Department of Children’s Services (DCS) case manager suggested he be returned to his crack-addicted mother. The reunification attempt left him permanently brain-damaged and physically and developmentally handicapped after he ingested his mother’s crack and went into a violent seizure. Worst of all, Charles was doing fine before DCS sent him back to hell.

Charles was originally removed from his mother’s custody at birth, when he tested positive for crack cocaine. He was placed in the same foster home in Shelby County as four of his other siblings. They lived this way until Charles was 5 years old. At that time he was in a regular kindergarten class, and despite some behavioral and emotional difficulties resulting from being born addicted, he was progressing normally.

Though their mother continued to smoke crack, DCS took Charles and his 4-year-old sister from their foster home and returned them to her custody. The children and their mother were not monitored by DCS, and soon after being returned, Charles ate some of his mother’s crack and went into the seizure, suffering massive and permanent brain damage.

After the seizure, DCS removed Charles and his sister from the home. His sister was returned to the original foster parent, but because of his new handicapped status, Charles could not go back. Instead, DCS moved him in and out of several foster homes before placing him in permanent therapeutic care.

Besides being a child with a heartbreaking story, Charles is a named plaintiff in a lawsuit brought against Governor Sundquist and the state of Tennessee by Children’s Rights, Inc. (CRI) — a non-profit child advocacy group headquartered in New York. The suit, known as Brian A. v. Sundquist, was also filed on behalf of all 11,300 children in Tennessee’s substitute care system. It is patterned after suits filed by Children’s Rights, Inc., in other states and cities, including Connecticut, New York, New Mexico, and the cities of Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Kansas City, and Milwaukee.

The outcome of this case could be dramatic. Most likely the parties will reach a settlement agreement, the court will issue a consent decree, and DCS could be held in contempt if it does not comply with the decree. In the extreme, Tennessee could lose the right to operate its own system. This is what happened in Washington, D.C.

In 1995, a federal court judge determined that the District of Columbia was so negligent in operating its foster care system that the entire system was taken out of the district’s control and given to a private receivership. Four months after the court-appointed receiver took control he and his staff were still trying to account for all of the children living in state custody, as well as for how the budget was being spent. Before taking control, the receiver estimated that there were about 2,000 children in the district’s foster system, only to later discover 9,000 active files on children in custody. The receiver also discovered that many of the abused and neglected children had been mistakenly brought into state custody in handcuffs and then treated as juvenile delinquents.

For now, Federal Court judge Todd Campbell, who is presiding over the Brian A. v. Sundquist case, has ordered the parties to try to reach a settlement agreement.

“We are fully prepared to take this case to trial to get a court order demanding that these changes occur,” says Ira Lustbader, lead counsel for CRI in the Tennessee case. “In the worst of situations [DCS] can lose the authority to run their system. Or they can be held in contempt to comply with the federal court demands in a way that, frankly, they have not done on their own.”

Carla Aaron, public information officer for DCS, told the Flyer that DCS was prevented from speaking to the media because Judge Campbell had issued a gag order. However, clerks in Judge Campbell’s office told the Flyer on two separate occasions that no such order had been issued. At press time Aaron again refused to comment and Judge Campbell had still not issued a gag order. Representatives from Governor Sundquist’s office did not return repeated calls from the Flyer.

State officials have known for years that the foster system in Tennessee is dangerous to children. In 1998, DCS’s flaws came to the attention of state Representative Tommie Brown. At that time Brown asked the Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury to conduct a study on the children in state custody. Many of the allegations cited in CRI’s complaint are drawn directly from the comptroller’s study and from a report created in 1999 by the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA).

“After 10 or more years of failed efforts, we’ve come into play,” says Lustbader. “This is not a novel, early-on move. This is the last effort to force changes where other methods have failed. There is no doubt that Tennessee is among the worst states in the country [for foster children].”

Lustbader says that CRI decided to file the lawsuit in Tennessee after independent children’s advocates across the state began contacting CRI with evidence of “frightening, systemic problems.” CRI conducted an investigation, sending field-workers out to speak with birth parents, foster parents, children, workers at private agencies, judges, and DCS caseworkers who had recently quit working for the agency.

“We found consistent, fundamental problems everywhere,” says Lustbader. “We identified the individual children who were later named in the plaintiff’s case. These children’s problems represented the collective problems of all the children currently in state custody. Unfortunately, their circumstances are not isolated or unique.”

JACK

Jaded and callous, Jack has no roots. For most of his young life he has spent no more than six months in any one “home.” After 11 years in state custody, the 14-year-old has had 23 different homes, 23 guardians, 23 sets of foster “brothers” and “sisters.” He currently lives in a Shelby County group facility, and he knows that his 24th home is forthcoming.

Living in the group home, Jack has suffered a dislocated knee, torn ligaments, and countless bruises at the hands of the facility’s staff, who have improperly restrained him during his emotional outbursts. Jack has attended a string of schools, made and abandoned friends, and each time he settles into a new environment he is uprooted again.

Because of the frequent moves, it is unlikely that Jack will ever enjoy what many of us take for granted: friends, romantic involvements, a successful marriage. Studies and statistics show that children are permanently emotionally damaged after only four placements, especially if their moves began at a young age like Jack’s. After 23 placements, Jack may never form emotional bonds with anyone.

He has been legally free for adoption since 1996, when his biological mother’s rights were terminated, but DCS has not found a permanent home for him. He is an angry child, filled with hatred and frustration for the system. He desperately wants parents and a permanent home and has been writing poems and songs lately that speak about being “tossed around” and “stepped on.” In one poem Jack writes that he would “rather be dead.”

“What’s happening is kids are getting stuck,” says Lustbader. “They’re languishing in foster care. In Tennessee there is an alarmingly high percentage of teenagers in foster homes. There is also a shocking number of children who have been in 10 or more placements. Twenty-three percent of the children in Tennessee’s system have had 10 or more placements. As children get passed around they become more and more damaged and adoption eventually becomes impossible.”

Jack will probably never be adopted. At 14, he’s too old, and furthermore he’s black, facts that, sadly, condemn him to a life of multiple placements. As African Americans in Tennessee’s system, Jack and Charles will stay in foster care 32 percent longer than most white children do. Tennessee does not maintain records that specifically show the length of time spent in care by race, but a Children’s Program Outcome Review Team (C-PORT) report commissioned by the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth (TCCY) does show the discrepancy. According to the study, African-American children between the ages of 12 and 17 are twice as likely as white children of the same age to be in state custody. One of CRI’s allegations in the Tennessee case is that DCS does not try to place African-American children as aggressively as it does white children.

Children like Charles and Jack are what author Jennifer Toth terms “orphans of the living,” a phrase she uses as the title of her book. And in Shelby County the vast majority of these orphans are African-American. Statewide, black children account for 39 percent of all kids in foster care, though they represent only 21 percent of all children in Tennessee. The statistics are even worse nationwide. Nationally, though African Americans account for only 15 percent of those under 18, they represent 49 percent of all children in foster care.

TRACY

Tracy has spent much of her life moving. She first entered state custody when she was 4 years old, after she had been sexually abused by her father. At that time DCS placed her in four homes in four years and then decided to reunite her with her biological mother. In May 1999, Tracy’s mother physically abused her, and she and her siblings were again removed from the home.

Now 13 years old, Tracy has lived in 15 homes in a single year. Her 13-year-old brother Jeffrey has fared even worse. He was raped by several other children in the foster home where he was placed and then was left in that same home for six months after the rapes first occurred. When he was finally removed, he was placed in a wilderness camp where he was abused by a staff member until DCS returned him to his mother’s custody. Tracy’s oldest brother, 17-year-old Jerry, has been bounced between delinquency detainment and foster-care placements.

Tracy and her brothers’ stories are far from surprising to persons familiar with DCS in Tennessee and with similar agencies in other states. Recognizing that foster-care systems nationwide often do more harm than good, some caseworkers elect to leave children in their biological homes. These caseworkers have even said that if a child’s life is not in immediate danger in the natural home, they will leave the child there, even in cases of abuse. They reason that at least in the natural home the horrors are known.

A study conducted in Baltimore, Maryland, showed that reports of abuse were three times more frequent in foster homes than in biological homes. The same study found that the rate of physical abuse was seven times greater in foster homes than in biological homes.

Denise

Denise was removed from her mother’s custody at birth due to abuse and neglect. Now 8 years old, she has lived in the same foster home for her entire life. Denise has not yet been adopted because up until a few months ago she had never seen a DCS caseworker.

Though Denise was freed for adoption more than five years ago, DCS has not taken steps to secure a permanent home for her. She currently lives with five other foster children and two adopted children in a foster home. DCS has placed as many as 15 children in her home at a time and only recently asked the foster mother if she would be interested in adopting Denise. Though the number of children already in the home would make this difficult, the foster mother has inquired to see if any financial or therapeutic resources would be available if she were to adopt Denise. DCS has not responded. In the meantime, Denise waits to see if she will ever have a real, permanent parent.

Shocking though these stories are, DCS caseworkers are not entirely to blame. Caseworkers in Tennessee, with a starting annual salary of $20,184, are among the worst-paid in the nation. These caseworkers are on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, working to fix problems that often have no solution. Turnover is high, and in 1999, 23 percent of DCS caseworkers had less than one year’s experience. Even among the more experienced, the scant three weeks of training the workers receive scarcely qualifies them to determine the fates of children. The average Tennessee caseworker will manage about 45 cases at a time, making it impossible to investigate each case. By contrast, the Association of American Social Workers recommends caseworkers work up to seven cases at a time. Likewise, the Child Welfare League has specifically recommended that Tennessee decrease caseloads to 25 per caseworker. This would mean that Tennessee would have to add more than 120 new caseworkers.

Additionally, the bulk of the problems with the substitute care system in Tennessee stem from using an antiquated system to address modern problems. The current system was designed to provide shelter only for true orphans — the surviving children of deceased parents. Tennessee’s system was not designed to help the majority of the children in foster care today, who have at least one living parent who can’t or won’t care for them.

A 1990 study of foster-care systems in 19 states revealed that 46 percent of the children in custody were there because child protective service workers found them living in dangerous or abusive circumstances. The same study showed that just over 20 percent of the children were placed in foster care because their parents experienced financial hardships, incarceration, illness, handicaps, or were dead. About 13 percent of the children were placed in custody because of a troubled relationship with their parents. About 2 percent were there because the children were handicapped, and about 1 percent were placed in custody because their parents simply didn’t want them anymore.

Brian

For 10 months last year 9-year-old Brian didn’t belong anywhere. Each night he curled up with a blanket and pillow that weren’t his own, in a house he didn’t really live in, with guardians who weren’t really his. The roof over his head was that of a Shelby County temporary placement home. Though policy dictated that Brian could only stay in the home for a maximum of 30 days, he got stuck for almost a year. With nowhere to go, no one who wanted him, and no plans for his future, Brian’s only option was to wait out the days and hope that a DCS caseworker would eventually remember that he existed.

In 1996, Brian and his five siblings were removed from their home because Brian’s drug-addicted parents were essentially using the children as punching bags.

Brian had been beaten daily for most of his life, and it continued when he came under DCS’s watch. After being removed from his first foster home for behavioral problems, Brian told a counselor that the foster parent had routinely beaten him with a walking cane.

Brian’s behavioral problems worsened and he tried to run away from his next home several times. DCS workers told his then-foster parents that he would be removed from their home and placed in a therapeutic foster home so that his special needs could be better addressed. Instead, he was placed and forgotten in the grossly overcrowded “temporary” home that took nearly a year of his young life.

Because Brian had not been officially placed in a foster or adoptive home, he was ineligible for state services, including schooling and health care. He languished, nobody’s child, another victim of the nameless, faceless system that is robbing thousands of Tennessee’s children of what should be an inalienable right — a safe, decent home with responsible care providers.

In addition to being a real kid without a real guardian or a real home, Brian is another named plaintiff in the CRI lawsuit. Because of his status as a minor, all other details of Brian’s life, including his full name, are not available. However, state reports show that life in temporary placement facilities sometimes consists of children (in this case, boys) sharing space with more than 20 others. During a period beginning in September 1998 and ending in March 1999, almost 500 children were in temporary DCS placements. About 40 percent of the children in temporary placements at that time had been there longer than the permitted 30 days.

In these facilities, “school” means gathering Brian and the other boys — ages 6 to 16 — into two classrooms where they are taught by two instructors. Some of the children have been removed from their homes because they were accused of violent crimes and sexual assault. Others have been removed because they were victims of violence and sexual abuse. In the words of one judge quoted in the Tennessee comptroller’s report, “It’s like mixing predators with prey.”

DCS does not separately monitor or report abuse of dependent and neglected children while they are in state custody. The data currently available from the agency does not distinguish between the victim and the abuser, nor does it specify the type of abuse, the placement of the victim at the time of the abuse, the characteristics of the victim, or the outcome of the investigation. Because the information is not tracked, DCS officials do not know how many children are suffering while in the department’s care.

Though Tennessee does have laws that prohibit the placement of abused and neglected children in an institution designed to hold delinquent children, no laws prohibit the placement of dangerous children in temporary facilities designed for abused and neglected children. Moreover, DCS does not monitor or report the extent to which child-on-child abuse or other violent incidents occur while children are in state custody. The agency is, in effect, looking the other way while kids beat up and rape each other.

At first glance the children living in Shelby County’s temporary shelter look like any other children. Upon closer inspection their silence begins to seem eerie, their dirty, tear-streaked faces come into focus. One child pleads quietly, “I just want to go home.”

These children, mostly toddlers, spend their days with a guard, watching television and taking naps just a few doors down a fluorescent-lit hall from Shelby County’s female juvenile offenders. They enter the shelter filthy and terrified, having been removed from nightmarish situations only hours or days earlier. In the shelter these innocent kids huddle together, sometimes electing to sleep two or three to a bed, doing their undeserved time and waiting to be returned to their parents or placed in foster care.

“It’s a chaotic and dangerous system,” says Lustbader. “Children are removed from dangerous situations and placed in a foster-care situation which damages them further. Too many children are losing their childhood to foster care.”

Though federal and state laws require that all children in custody receiving TennCare aid receive Early and Periodic Screenings, Diagnosis, and Treatment (EPSDT) evaluations within 30 days of entering state custody, children in Tennessee’s foster system do not. EPSDTs are used to determine the physical and psychological needs of the children. However, a sample group of children under DCS care showed that 58 percent were in need of mental-health help and 34 percent had been sexually abused and needed, but did not receive, counseling.

Dr. Charles Glisson, director of the Children’s Mental Health Research Center at UT-Knoxville (and himself a DCS consultant), has shown that the majority of the children entering state custody were in need of clinical intervention, yet only 14 percent were referred for mental-health services. According to Glisson, “Most children who enter state custody, regardless of cause or placement, have psychosocial problems that require clinical mental-health services.”

Amy

Amy is a 16-year-old whose father used to beat her by throwing a mattress on top of her and kicking it. She has been in state custody since 1997, and since entering custody, Amy has been in 14 foster-care placements. Now, predictably, Amy exhibits severe emotional problems. Currently she is living in a Level III DCS facility in East Tennessee’s Knox County, where presumably her emotional needs are being better addressed.

However, she has only recently been moved to the Level III facility. Before, as Amy’s emotional problems increased, she was bounced from one foster placement to another. She has now been through three expensive, 30-day diagnostic and evaluation stays that could have been avoided if DCS had not misplaced Amy in foster and group homes.

During one of her stays in a Level II facility, Amy was placed on heavy medication which made her hallucinate and hear voices that told her to hurt herself and others. After her hallucinations were made known, DCS moved Amy to a hospital for a five-day evaluation and then back to the Level II facility, where her condition only worsened. The hallucinations increased, her hygiene suffered, and her weight ballooned from 115 to 240 pounds, most likely due to the medications she was prescribed. She was moved to a hospital for a 30-day evaluation, where it was determined that she was emotionally disturbed and that the medications were only making her condition worse.

During this evaluation, Amy was visited by a Court-Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) volunteer who found her living in a dirty room with food and garbage strewn about. The CASA reported that Amy was so over-medicated that she was slurring her speech and could barely form words. Her obesity was also being ignored by the hospital staff.

Amy’s situation is not unique. One juvenile court judge interviewed for the comptroller’s report believes that children in custody are not only being denied services and treatment, but that DCS is actively discouraging certain types of treatment even when need is clearly demonstrated. This judge said that DCS has told community mental-health centers not to recommend foster children for inpatient care.

Bureaucratic Bungling

Many of Tennessee’s children could be adopted much sooner if the state had the legal resources to expedite the adoptions and employed policies to move children through faster. Several states have begun using a system that allows for both the termination of parental rights and the adoption proceedings to begin simultaneously. This method prevents children from spending unnecessary time in limbo after parental rights have been terminated but before the adoption is finalized. Tennessee has not implemented this system.

In the past, DCS has not had enough attorneys to handle the termination of parental-rights hearings rapidly. Results from a 1998 C-PORT study show that approximately 10 percent (over 1,100) of the children in custody were currently ready and waiting to have parental rights terminated, all they lacked was a lawyer. In September 1998, 7,219 active cases were handled by only 16 attorneys — that’s more than 400 active cases per lawyer. Caseloads are expected to only increase as Tennessee begins adhering to the Adoption and Safe Families Act, which was signed into law in 1997. This act requires that if children have been in foster care for 15 of the prior 22 months, DCS must either terminate parental rights or reunite the children with their families. As is evident in the accounts of the children mentioned here, DCS is not in full compliance with this act. Funding was allocated in the 1999-2000 budget to add 36 new attorneys statewide, but DCS would not tell the Flyer if additional attorneys had been hired.

Charlette

Five-year-old Charlette has seen and done things that would make most adults shudder. Her biological mother is a prostitute, and while in her mother’s custody, Charlette and her brother John frequently watched their mother turn tricks. The children were also forced to watch pornographic movies, and the men who had sex with their mother often had sex with Charlette and John, too.

Without first investigating the situation, DCS placed the children with their grandparents. Things didn’t get any better in the grandparents’ home, where Charlette and John were sexually abused by their grandfather and uncles. DCS then removed the children from the grandparents’ custody, only to inexplicably place them again with their mother, where again they were abused and again they were removed, before finally being placed in a foster home.

Charlette has been prescribed medication to help her sleep at night and to assuage her recurring nightmares but has not been provided with counseling or therapy. As one might expect, her brother John exhibits sexually aggressive behavior, often toward Charlette, but also has not received any counseling or therapy.

The two children were freed for adoption in 1999 but adoptive homes have not been found for them. Charlette’s foster parents have told DCS that they would be interested in adopting both of the children if DCS can provide some assistance for the children’s expensive psychological needs. A full year has passed since the foster parents made the inquiry, and DCS has still not responded. While the foster parents wait to see if they can afford to take Charlette and John, the children also wait, fearing that they will be moved again.

Criticisms of Children’s Rights, Inc.

Not everyone working within the foster-care system believes that a federal lawsuit is the best way to solve the state’s problems. Some think that, though Tennessee’s problems need to be fixed immediately, a federal lawsuit is premature.

“My sole objection to the federal lawsuit is the timing,” says Dan Michael, executive director of CASA for Shelby County. “I have no problem with CRI and I don’t argue that there is a huge problem with foster care here in Tennessee, but I do not think that the lawsuit is ripe. CRI seems to be coming in on the heels of a genuine effort by the state to fix the problem.”

Michael says that CRI’s suit was filed soon after the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) reported its findings to the state and that DCS had already been seeking funding and begun implementing some of the CWLA’s recommendations when the suit was filed.

“If two years after receiving the CWLA’s recommendations DCS had done nothing, then I would probably be one of the first parties joining in on the lawsuit,” says Michael. “Now DCS’s legal resources are being tied up trying to settle this federal lawsuit instead of focusing on addressing the issues in Tennessee.”

Lustbader and the attorneys he is working with, who include Richard Fields, John Pierotti, and Robert Hutton in Memphis, remain unfazed.

“If nothing else, we’ve managed to open up an otherwise closed system,” says Lustbader. “Before a federal judge ordered it, this information was not available, no one really knew how bad it was. The problems we’ve found are as great, if not worse, than the ones we identified in the complaint. They are all being borne out.”

Lustbader says that regardless of the outcome of the settlement discussions, CRI’s lawsuit will help make the daily lives of Tennessee’s approximately 11,300 foster children more tolerable. He contends that at least now the hellish situations they live in are known.

Terry

Terry is an 18-year-old girl who was recently discharged from the foster-care system, ill-prepared for life on her own.

While in substitute care, Terry was diagnosed as having bipolar disorder and was heavily medicated with several psychotropic drugs, which caused her to sleep most of the day.

Besides not having emotional stability or life skills, Terry’s medication often caused her to sleep through school hours. Being frequently moved from placement to placement caused Terry to fall even farther behind in school. She does not have a high school education and will most likely face difficulty in securing employment.

Sadly, Terry’s story fits easily into the statistics. Once in the system these children have a greater chance of becoming homeless, getting pregnant as teens, dropping out of school, or being incarcerated than they do of ever being adopted.

Nationally, 40 percent of foster children will enter either the welfare rolls or the prison system within two years of leaving the foster-care system. Only 17 percent will become completely self-sufficient two to four years after leaving substitute care. Similarly, only 49 percent will be gainfully employed as adults and almost 60 percent of the girls will give birth within two years of leaving the system. Former foster children are three times more likely to be homeless than parented children are, and most metropolitan areas report that 30 to 40 percent of their homeless population have passed through their foster-care system.

“What gets lost in the thought process is that it is ultimately less costly to provide resources at the front end,” says Lustbader. “Otherwise the children can become strains on other state systems, criminal justice, welfare, and they could have their own children that enter state custody. It’s a cycle.”

Whether or not CRI’s actions are appropriate, the fact remains that thousands of children are growing up in Tennessee without any support or guidance. Many of these forgotten kids will never see their names written on a birthday cake, never attend their prom, never graduate from high school. Many have only a garbage bag to carry their second-hand clothes in when DCS moves them time and again. For these children college is as real as the tooth fairy, love as distant as the moon.

Simply sleeping safe from sexual predators and physical abusers is as much as they can hope for, and even at that we fail them. These children — kids like Charles, Jack, Tracy, Denise, Brian, Amy, Charlette, and Terry — slip through the cracks while we look the other way. Often born into abuse and poverty, we “rescue” them only to make their lives worse, and then we imprison them years later when they act on what they’ve learned under our watch. They are orphans of the living and every day of their lives is worse than the day before. Each day they grow older, more callous, and less likely to ever have a place to call home.