The Memphis Police Department (MPD) identified the two rappers targeted in Saturday’s shooting Downtown.
MPD said Monday that Letorian Hunt, 27, was killed in the incident, which occurred at the Westin Hotel, one block west of FedExForum. Albert Mondane, 34, was transported to the hospital with non-critical injuries.
Hunt was a rapper performing under the stage name Sayso P. He was arrested in 2020 by Las Vegas police for pimping and pandering. Police there became suspicious of Hunt after numerous Instagram posts and seeing lyrics to one of his songs, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Mondane performs under the stage name Sauce Walka. His father has told media outlets that the Houston-based rapper was shot in the thigh and is expected to make a full recovery.
“We want to assure our community and visitors that Downtown Memphis is a safe place,” MPD tweeted when news of the shooting surfaced this weekend. “This was not a random act of violence. We understand the concern and reiterate that this was not random. MPD is committed to bringing those responsible to justice.”
MPD is still investigating the shooting and say they will provide updates on the investigation as they come in. Anyone with information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers at 901-528-CASH.
The Tennessee Equality Project (TEP) and the Human Rights Campaign(HRC) have found that Pride flag censorship sends a negative message about LGBTQ+ visibility – despite lawmakers’ continuous efforts to enforce it.
HB0304 by Rep. Gino Bulso (R-Brentwood) has been introduced in the current legislative session. It prohibits government entities from “displaying or allowing display of flags other than Tennessee and U.S. flags on courthouses and public roads and sidewalks.”
The brief states that the flag is not inherently “political” yet proposed legislation seeks to label them as such. Failed bills categorized them as “unapproved, political flags,” and sought to ban them from flying in “government buildings and public schools.”
“It does not address personal displays inside courthouses and government buildings,” the brief said. “ Its arbitrary enforcement-by-grievance is based on an individual’s beliefs and visual interpretations of abstract or imagined forms of ‘political flags,’ including in constitutionally recognized free speech zones. Individuals can file lawsuits against any Tennessee government entity.”
The agencies published a policy brief regarding flag censorship in Tennessee government and schools. While the state has passed “over 20 anti-LGBTQ+ laws,” since 2019, lawmakers have been unsuccessful in banning the flag, with two bills failing in 2024 (HB304/SB266.)
TEP and HRC said that the government can regulate “its own speech and those speaking on its behalf;” this form of censorship can be deemed by non-governmental bodies as unconstitutional.
The brief emphasizes the historical significance of Pride flags as they represent “identity, unity or division, and pride.” They said it is not affiliated with any political party or religion, and that Tennesseans have celebrated its meaning at different businesses, parks, parades and more.
“For 47 years, rainbows and Pride flags have been displayed to celebrate LGBTQ+ history, figures, and the pursuit of equality around the world,” the brief said. “Pride flags are prominently displayed at Stonewall National Monument in honor of LGBTQ+ trailblazers.”
Another central argument the brief makes is that the flag positively impacts LGBTQ+ representation — specifically in schools. It states that regulating public display of the flag “perpetuates stigma about the LGBTQ+ community.” The HRC found that 46.1 percent of LGBTQ+ youth reported feeling unsafe in schools. The brief states that the Pride flag can symbolize safer and inclusive environments.
If passed, the bill would also open the door for a number of legal battles challenging the constitutionality from schools, as well as from community groups and citizens.
“Tennessee courts have recently sided with groups when local governments refused permitting public Pride events, the brief said. “ Governments across Tennessee will face similar and costly legal challenges if they censor certain speech, or appear to.”
Two legislative measures are considered discriminatory against LGBTQ+ Tennesseans, including one that would make it state policy that there are only two genders. (Photo: John Partipilo | Tennessee Lookout)
Tennessee lawmakers are pushing numerous bills the LGBTQ+ community considers discriminatory, including one that would force state and local governments to ensure all laws and policies referring to a person’s sex or gender are based on “anatomy and genetics” at birth.
Another bill passed by the House Monday — without debate — would require private schools and churches that allow children to stay in residential facilities such as summer camps to segregate restrooms and changing areas based on “immutable biological sex.”
Those are among a spate of bills opposed by the LGBTQ+ community during the legislative session.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is set to take up Senate Bill 936 Tuesday, a measure declaring it is state policy that only biological males and females exist in Tennessee, despite the presence of multiple transgender residents at legislative meetings.
We have a real issue in our nation, folks don’t understand that when God created us, Genesis 1:27, he created male and female, end of sentence. There is no such thing as gender.
– Sen. Paul Rose, R-Covington
Sponsored by Sen. Paul Rose (R-Covington), the bill contains a broad amendment requiring local governments and the state to revise all ordinances, resolutions, rules, policies, and procedures to reflect that references to a person’s sex or gender are based on their genetics at birth. Complaints could be filed in chancery court to force compliance, ultimately allowing the state government to withhold Department of Economic and Community Development grants from local governments.
“We have a real issue in our nation, folks don’t understand that when God created us, Genesis 1:27, he created male and female, end of sentence. There is no such thing as gender,” Rose said. “That is something that’s made up by mankind.”
Rose added later, “We’re just not going to recognize transgender.” He also downplayed the significance of the proposed amendment’s impact on governments.
The lawmaker postponed consideration of the bill until Tuesday after the amendment was added earlier in the day, giving people little time to read it.
Rep. Gino Bulso (R-Brentwood), sponsor of a bill requiring private and public facilities to segregate bathrooms by male and female (Photo: John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)
Chris Sanders, director of the Tennessee Equality Project, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group, said the amendment makes the bill more sweeping than it was originally because city and county governments and school districts approach the matter in different ways.
“It’s a big bill now,” Sanders said, because it forces local and state governments to correct anything that is “at odds” with the legislation.
State government entities, including Tennessee universities, would be required to take the same steps as local governments, and failure to comply could lead to reductions in a department or agency budget following an investigation by the Comptroller’s Office. Those departments and universities also would be ineligible to receive grants from the Department of Economic and Community Development.
“Bathroom bill” passes House
House Speaker Cameron Sexton ordered troopers to remove at least one protester from the gallery after House Majority Leader William Lamberth used a technical maneuver to cut off debate and kill an amendment to the bill requiring segregated bathrooms.
The House voted 74-18 in favor of House Bill 64 by Rep. Gino Bulso of Brentwood. Bulso declined to comment afterward, but he told lawmakers in a subcommittee meeting earlier this year that he received a complaint from a parent about a transgender child sharing a changing facility at a summer camp.
Sanders said afterward he was “disgusted” that no debate was allowed on what he considers a “consequential, disgusting, far-reaching bill.”
“We all know it attacks transgender students, but it reaches into the private sector in a way that state bills usually don’t,” Sanders said. “It’s wild that the party of ‘small government’ wants to micromanage private institutions of their ability to set their own policies,” said Rep. Aftyn Behn, a Nashville Democrat. Behn was incensed after Republicans sidestepped her amendment.
“It’s wild that the party of ‘small government’ wants to micromanage private institutions of their ability to set their own policies,” said Rep. Aftyn Behn, a Nashville Democrat. (Photo: John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)
Behn said in a statement she introduced an amendment to “neuter their latest Big Brother bathroom bill” but was blocked from speaking.
“It’s wild that the party of ‘small government’ wants to micromanage private institutions of their ability to set their own policies,” Behn said. “Regarding the procedural retaliation, this is a pattern of weaponizing their supermajority status to either punish a disparate worldview or block minority voices from the conversation.”
Some Republican lawmakers said they wanted to hear debate on the matter, but they didn’t feel enough urgency to vote for discussion.
House Republican Caucus Chairman Jeremy Faison said he typically favors debate but claimed Behn’s amendment would have “completely destroyed” the bill.
“Regardless of how we feel individually, collectively our (GOP caucus) members don’t want to hear it. If you’re going to do something like that, we’re not going to talk about it,” said Faison (R-Cosby).
Faison added that “it’s incumbent on the legislature to protect children,” but he said transgender kids don’t deserve to be a “protected class” of people.
Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com.
Shelby County Jail (Photo: Shelby County Sheriff's Department)
The criminal justice system in Shelby County is murky, a new report says.
How many days does it take for a case to be taken care of? How many days are people incarcerated (if they can’t make bail) before their cases are taken care of? How often do people stay clean while they’re out on bail? How often are they re-arrested while out on bail? How often are people booked? How often do they ask for a trial?
Some answers came to these questions in a report issued Wednesday by a division of the Tennessee State Comptroller’s Office. That report was requested in February 2024 by Lt. Gov. Randy McNally (R-Oak Ridge) who wanted those answers (and more) about “issues in Shelby County,” specifically.
For the request, the comptroller’s Office of Research and Education Accountability (OREA) sent agents to Memphis. Over the past year, those agents interviewed about 70 people and spent about 100 hours at the Shelby County Criminal Justice Center. They conducted research, watched court proceedings, and analyzed datasets from at least 22 state and local entities.
From August to September, the agents gathered data on about 1,033 cases as they made their ways through the criminal justice process here. They watched 417 cases in General Sessions Court and 616 cases in Criminal Court. For the sake of equal comparison, they included 145 sample cases for the report that had similar data.
“The more than 1,030 cases observed represent a fraction of the cases heard in these courtrooms on any given day,” reads the report. “Across all eight General Sessions courtrooms that hear felony cases, more than 480 cases are heard daily. In the nine Criminal Court courtrooms, this number rises to over 500 cases heard daily.”
Here’s some of what they found in Criminal Court:
• Half of cases were completely through court (or disposed) in two months.
• A quarter of cases were disposed in 37 days or fewer.
• Nearly all the cases were disposed within 266 days, or nine months.
• Shelby County had the highest number of open felony charges (2,335) at the time, double the Nashville count of 1,024.
• Of the 95 defendants OREA watched, only seven re-offended while on pretrial release (bail or free release).
• A majority (60 percent) of felony charges did not change at the end of a case from 2018 to 2023. The remaining charges either decreased (about 20 percent) or increased (about 21 percent).
Here’s some of what they found in General Sessions Court:
• Over half of the cases were dismissed.
• A quarter of cases were disposed with a guilty plea.
• About 10 percent of cases were bound over to a grand jury.
However, no one in Shelby County is collecting this information. These observations are from a small sample size from a small group of OREA agents.
Without aggregate data, it’s impossible to judge the efficiency, throughput capacity, or overall health of the Shelby County Justice system. The OREA group thinks someone here should be responsible for gathering that data and sharing it with the public.
“The result is that the public cannot assess overall, aggregate trends and patterns; the public cannot see the big picture,” reads the report.
The group offered a list of detailed recommendations to improve the situation here, but it is unknown what next step may come in the situation.
Death row prisoners in Tennessee challenged the state’s new execution protocols in a legal complaint that claims the use of pentobarbital is unconstitutional as it can lead to a “tortuous death.”
Nine prisoners signed on to the complaint filed late last week by Amy Harwell in Davidson County Chancery Court. Harwell is the Assistant Chief of the Capital Habeus Unit at the Office of the Federal Public Defender for the Middle District of Tennessee.
The complaint argues those executed here “will experience extreme pain and suffering if they are poisoned to death with pentobarbital.” The plaintiffs also cite “Tennessee’s shameful history of mishandling its execution processes” as a reason to challenge the new lethal injection protocol.
Executions here have been halted since May 2022. Gov. Bill Lee ordered a full review of the state’s lethal injection protocols. In a scathing report issued in December 2022, Ed Stanton, former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee, found that state officials didn’t follow their own rules in carrying out executions. That review also criticized the three-drug injection protocols used for executions at the time.
Lee hired a new Commissioner for the Tennessee Department of Corrections (TDOC), Frank Strada, with a major goal to get executions back on line in Tennessee. That work began in January 2023.
In late December 2024, TDOC issued a brief news release announcing that the new review had been completed and the agency had selected pentobarbital for its lethal injection executions.
“I am confident the lethal injection process can proceed in compliance with departmental policy and state laws,” Strada said at the time.
Earlier this month, the Tennessee Supreme Court scheduled executions for four prisoners to be carried out this year.
• Oscar Smith on May 22nd
• Byron Black on August 5th
• Donald Middlebrooks on September 24th
• Harold Nichols on December 11th
Smith was set for execution in May 2022. It has been reported he was taking his final communion on death watch before walking to the execution chamber when Lee called off the execution and called for the review.
Smith and Black, both scheduled to be executed this year, signed on to the new complaint that challenges the method of which they are to be killed by the state.
“The evidence keeps piling up to show that pentobarbital poisoning is excruciatingly painful,” said Harwell, an attorney for the plaintiffs. “Tennessee appears to have picked this method only because they were able to get their hands on pentobarbital, not because its use for executions complies with the Constitution or state law.”
States like Tennessee had a hard time getting drugs for the proviso three-drug cocktail. Many said that was the because drug companies that made them refused to sell them for execution purposes.
The complaint argues that killing by pentobarbital “can create a sensation of suffocating or drowning that has been likened by experts to the sensation intentionally induced by the practice of waterboarding — an unambiguous form of outright torture.” The drug can also leave prisoners aware as their bodies begin to experience physical damage “resulting in extreme suffering.”
In January, the U.S. Department of Justice quit using pentobarbital in executions on “significant uncertainty” on whether or not the drug causes pain and suffering.
“In the face of such uncertainty, the department should err on the side of humane treatment and avoidance of unnecessary pain and suffering, and therefore halt the use of pentobarbital unless and until that uncertainty is resolved,” then-Attorney General Merrick Garland said at the time.
Even if the drug was not a concern, the complaint doubts TDOC’s ability to carry out executions, given its track record. It says that over the past 25 years, the agency “has consistently struggled, and often failed, to fulfill [its] responsibility [to administer executions] in a consistent, reliable, and lawful way.”
“TDOC has burned through at least five now-discarded ‘protocols’ for performing executions by lethal injection … each of which collapsed under the weight of its own flaws and mismanagement after no more than, at most, a few executions,” the report says.
A Memphis domestic violence agency has abruptly closed its doors amidst an urgent fight for state funding by victim-serving organizations in Tennessee.
The Family Safety Center of Memphis and Shelby County shut down without warning or public explanation last week.
The agency served as a “one-stop shop” for victims of domestic violence, aiding victims in obtaining orders of protection in coordination with police and the District Attorney’s office, and connecting families to housing, food and other resources.
Its sudden closure has left the web of agencies that worked together to address domestic violence scrambling, said Marqulepta Odom, executive director of the YWCA Greater Memphis.
“We were all caught off guard by its closing in the middle of the week like that,” said Odom, whose agency operates a 78-bed domestic violence shelter, the largest in the state.
Odom said the closure will have a “great impact and a loss for our community for sure. It was that central place that survivors and victims knew where to go.”
But Odom’s agency — like victim-serving agencies across Tennessee this year — also faces an uncertain funding future: federal funding for victims of crime in Tennessee has dwindled in recent years from a peak of $68 million in 2018 to $16 million last year.
The YWCA Greater Memphis experienced a 17 percent cut last year as a result and faces the prospect of crippling budget cuts this year if it cannot find a way to replace the lost federal dollars.
Agencies that operate crisis hotlines, provide counseling to child abuse victims, conduct sexual assault exams and operate shelters are facing additional cuts in federal funding up to 40 percent more come July.
Those ongoing cuts in federal dollars had already hit the Family Safety Center hard before it closed its doors.
The agency received $742,000 in federal crime victim funding in 2020, according to the Tennessee Office of Criminal Justice Programs (OCJP), which distributes the federal funding to Tennessee nonprofits. This year, that funding had dwindled to about $132,000.
The OCJP got notice March 6 that the Family Safety Center had shuttered the previous day. Ethel Hilliard, the center’s executive director, “stated that the closure was due to a board decision related to financial issues,” a spokesperson for the OCJP said.
The most recent available tax records show the agency operated at a deficit in 2021 and 2022, when it reported a $289,000 deficit. Like other agencies funded through the federal Victims of Crimes Act, it faced steep cuts again in July.
And while 35 other states have taken action to provide their own state funding in the face of federal crime victim budget cuts, Tennessee is not one of them.
Stephen Woerner, executive director of Tennessee Children’s Advocacy Centers, said the Memphis agency’s closure illustrates the vulnerability of agencies that aid victims of abuse.
“I do not know the details of why they closed, but it speaks to the fragility of the victim serving community, particularly those that have not truly invested in diversifying their funding,” Woerner said.
Woerner’s organization operates 46 centers across the state that employ specialized counselors who work with children who have been abused, neglected or sexually assaulted. The organization received $5.5 million annually from the federal crime victims fund at its peak; this year, it received $2.1 million, he said.
Woerner is among hundreds of advocates across the state who are pressing Gov. Bill Lee to include $25 million in recurring state funding to crime victim agencies in the state’s budget.
Thus far, Lee has not committed. Lee’s office did not respond to a question about the funding on Friday.
Leaders of the Family Safety Center in Memphis have made no public statements about the reasons behind the closure and Ethele Hilliard, executive director, did not respond to emailed questions from the Lookout.
Tennessee Lookoutis part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com.
Tennesseans may have a better chance at homeownership as a new bill seeks to limit how many homes big corporations can purchase.
Sen Charlane Oliver (D-Nashville) and Rep. Aftyn Behn (D-Nashville) have introduced the “Homes Not Hedge Funds Act” to tackle the influence of out-of-state investors and real estate corporations on the housing market.
Under the bill, corporate investors would not be able to purchase more than 100-single family homes in counties with more than 150,000 people for rental purposes. According to lawmakers, these areas are affected the most by “corporate real estate speculation.”
“When corporate landlords control too much of our housing stock, working-class families lose out,” Behn said in a statement. “This bill sets a clear boundary to keep communities stable and homeownership attainable.”
Oliver added that families are not able to attain homeownership because investors are “buying up entire neighborhoods and turning them into rental properties.” The bill acknowledges this and notes that these corporations lower home supply, thus driving up the costs for potential buyers.
“Owning a home is one of the most reliable ways to build wealth, and this bill ensures that more working families have a fair shot at the American Dream,” Oliver said.
According to the Tennessee Housing Development Agency, the state’s Housing Cost Index is at a 10 year high. Officials said this has resulted in the median purchase price doubling.
“Families now spend an average of 45.5 percent of their household income on stable housing,” they added.
A report from the United Way found that 44 percent of households in the state cannot afford basic necessities, with 13 percent earning below the Federal Poverty Level (FPL). Out of 362,643 households in Shelby County, 15 percent were below the FPL and 30 percent were deemed Asset Limited, Income Constrained Employed (ALICE.)
The United Way’s “United for ALICE” organization defines this group as people who “earn more than the FPL, but not enough to afford the basics where they live.”
The bill is scheduled to be heard in the Senate State and Local Government Committee on March 18.
Photo Credit: Save Mud Island & The Amphitheater via Facebook
A concert series scheduled at the Mud Island Amphitheater for April has been canceled as the city of Memphis cited “safety hazards” in the projected area.
The Downtown Neighborhood Association of Memphis announced that its concert series scheduled for next month is a “no-go” after receiving a statement from the city’s interim chief operating officer Antonio Adams.
In the statement, Adams said that it’s possible for the space to “once again be a great venue and event space,” but that it would be “irresponsible” for the city to ignore the venue’s dangerous conditions, citing a “financial risk to the city and taxpayers.”
After receiving the news, the group Save Mud Island and The Amphitheater posted a letter they received from a structural engineer that said the space was “structurally sound and safe.” The post said this was the second consultant they had had review the space.
“In my professional opinion, the overall structure appears to be in reasonably sound condition for its age and type of construction and does not pose an immediate threat to its structural capacity,” Jason Crum of Crum Engineering said in the letter.
While Crum said he believes there are no immediate threats, he did recommend a more “comprehensive analysis” be done by other engineers in various fields. He noted that his assessment did not “confirm code compliance for issues beyond the scope of structural engineering.”
The association noted that they consulted with an ADA professional hired by the city who cited “minor repairs.” Jerred Price, president of the Downtown Neighborhood Association and founder of the Save The Amphitheater movement, went on to say there are other insurance concerns they plan to look into.
“We will continue to work with the mayor’s office to ensure that we can have concerts there in the near future,” Price said in a statement. “We will be meeting with the mayor himself very soon to discuss this conflicting report by the city’s hired architect — after all, we have had not one, but TWO structural engineers walk the property and tell us that the venue would be perfectly safe to host the pop-up concert series.”
In February, the two groups announced “The Comeback Concert Series” slated for April 18th, 19th, and 20th. At the time, Price said their final step was to meet with Memphis River Parks Partnership about the logistics of the event.
Price followed up on these conversations in a livestream where he stated that MRPP’s insurance policy does not cover events held at the amphitheater, but did give insight as to what the organizations would need to host an event.
“We have some questions regarding that liability insurance that we’re going to have to take back to the mayor’s office and the city because it’s a city-owned park [and] structure,” Price said. “I believe that the city’s general liability policy would be covering that particular venue as it covers all city-owned land and property. That’s to my understanding.”
Price said this does not mean they won’t have concerts at the Amphitheater; rather, there are still some “kinks to work through.”
Lawmakers are continuing work to repeal the state’s grocery tax with bills introduced in the legislature.
Tennessee is one of 10 states, including Alabama and Mississippi, that are looking to take away the grocery tax. In 2024, the state was recognized by the Tax Foundation as having one of the highest grocery taxes in the nation at 4 percent. According to a fiscal review by the Tennessee General Assembly, the average local sales tax is estimated to be 2.5 percent. Memphis’ current sales tax is 2.75 percent, meaning local shoppers pay 6.75 percent.
State Democrats have criticized Republicans for enacting legislation that would help the upper class and big corporations, as opposed to “working families in Tennessee.” To rectify this, legislation has been introduced to repeal the grocery tax.
SB1164 introduced by Sen. Raumesh Akbari (D-Memphis) would remove fresh, frozen, and canned fruits and vegetables from being included in sales tax. Action has currently been deferred on this bill in the Senate Finance, Ways, and Means Revenue Committee.
Republicans have introduced HB0021 that would eliminate the state grocery tax of 4 percent and impose a tax of up to 2.75 percent. While Tennessee law allows funds from the tax to go towards education, the bill would remove this option.
HB0002 by Rep. Aftyn Behn (D-Nashville), also known as the “End the Grocery Tax by Closing Corporate Loopholes Act) would eliminate the sales tax from groceries as well. For purposes of the bill, groceries are defined as “food and food ingredients for human consumption.” Similar to HB0021, this would not include alcoholic beverages, tobacco, candy, dietary supplements, or prepared food.
The bill also proposes that bigger corporations pay more in taxes to make up for the funds lost by removing the tax. Sen. Charlane Oliver (D- Nashville) is the Senate sponsor for the bill and said that abolishing the grocery tax could lead to investment in universal pre-K. Oliver made these comments during a press conference hosted by the coalition Tennessee For All, who gathered for their “Communities Not Corporations: Day on the Hill.” In addition to rallying against the grocery tax and “end of corporate tax loopholes,” the group advocated for worker’s safety rights and funding for pre-K education.
“For too long, our state has sided with billionaires and big businesses,” Oliver said. “We need to stop giving a break to corporations and start investing in our communities.”
The Memphis Area Transit Authority’s leadership contributed to a majority of missed trips last year by removing routes from its published schedule. Interim CEO and TransPro consultant John Lewis called the move a “deliberate” decision by previous management to “mask service cuts from the public.”
This information was revealed during the Interim CEO report at the March 7th Board of Commissioners meeting. Officials said the schedule deletions had been going on “as far back as April of last year (2024).”
“We knew we weren’t delivering 20 percent of the published schedule,” an official said during the meeting.
With customer satisfaction being touted as a priority, officials are now working to improve their on-time performance (OTP). They reported 64 percent of buses arrived “between one minute early and 5 minutes late” in January 2025.
Those numbers exclude the 29 percent of missed trips — which the agency said are trips that were never completed. Leadership went on to say in order for the schedule to be “executed,” drivers are able to pick their routes, but MATA leadership took 20 percent of the rides off of the published schedule.
“Even in a universe where we have buses and spares and operators we know are ready and willing to drive, we could not have delivered that because those weren’t available routes to drive,” the official said. “We never had a chance to perform them.
Lewis added that any schedule changes are subject to board approval.
“I’m mad as hell after hearing this,” Commissioner Cynthia Bailey said. “So, all this time they was violating and had the customers acting [a] ass here, it was their fault, or it never came out? So they was giving false information to the customers? I’m mad as hell.”
Lewis said they are “pursuing consequences” to the individuals who had knowledge of the schedule changes, and they are further investigating the issue.
“I have long stated that MATA had a priority problem and MATA was [more] concerned about the administration than the ridership,” said Johnnie Mosley, founding chairman of Citizens for Better Service. “Memphis must demand that MATA do right by bus riders. Bus riders have suffered too long as a result of lack of leadership.”
One of the key points that officials have tried to improve is the city’s trust in MATA — specifically as stewards of public funds. Leadership pointed to a September 2024 survey of 388 Memphians in which only 26 percent of responders said they deemed the agency trustworthy of taxpayer’s dollars.
“Over time, and with proper financial governance and transparency, the team will strive to improve the community’s faith in MATA,” officials said during a presentation at the meeting.
Lewis said TransPro performed a “preliminary review of FY24 General Administrative expenses,” which showed that out of $9.9 million, $848,000 was spent in discretionary spending. This included $603,000 in sponsorship of the Memphis Grizzlies and $144,000 in “other AMEX purchases.”
Officials said this did not include charges for travel and meetings.
“We asked for detailed statements of that, had to do some digging with American Express — the agency at the time did not have itemized monthly bills, which was not a best practice to say the least,” Lewis said. “After we received itemized statements going back the last couple of years, we found within those purchases, seemingly non-business-related purchases.”
Lewis said these included $5,000 in payments via PayPal and Venmo, $7,000 in purchases at BestBuy, $10,000 in party equipment rental, $30,000 in customizable purchases, and $1,200 in Montblanc purchases to name a few.
“These don’t seem to be necessarily transit related,” Lewis said.
He went on to say they brought this to the attention of the city auditor, and as a result the state comptroller has been notified. Lewis and his team has been advised to seek outside counsel for a more thorough investigation.
The former leadership that had possession of the AMEX card has been placed on administrative leave, officials said.
The agency’s Board of Commissioners in conjunction with leadership have established that their main expectations are to enhance customer service, provide financial transparency, develop “public facing metrics,” and increase bus route coverage and frequency.
MATA hopes these outcomes will result in improved trust in the community and satisfied customers, and optimization of the city’s investment. In terms of financials, the agency hopes to provide a balanced budget with “operating expenses [being] less than or equal to available revenue.”
