Even as large agribusinesses continue to tighten their grip on the American system of food production, some small American farms are finding new markets and new ways to make a living from the earth.

But it’s more than just free-market forces driving so many small farms out of business, says Kathy Lawrence, executive director of the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture. Agribusiness has hijacked farm legislation and the major channels of processing and distribution, she says.

The newest threat to the family farm is a new farm bill that’s only had 15 minutes of debate in the House of Representatives, Lawrence says, adding that the bill, which could be passed by the House as early as this week, neglects small farmers, increases subsidy payments to large agribusinesses, and maintains policies that keep prices for commodities low. “It’s a continuation of our national farm policy of ‘get big or get out,'” Lawrence says. “I would hope that, at worst, government would do no harm, but small- or medium-sized diversified family farms that are not focused on maximum use of land, maximum output per acre, and large monocultures are getting run out of business.”

Tinker Talley knows this only too well. Standing over a table of two-tone squash, exotic greens, and vine-grown spinach in the parking lot of the Midtown Food Cooperative (where this reporter is a board member), he speaks about the difficulties facing the American farmer.

A lifelong farmer, Talley started growing unusual, pesticide-free produce for farmers’ markets and restaurants because he couldn’t make a living from the cotton and beans he used to grow.

“From 1972 to 1997 I got over $6 a bushel for beans,” Talley says. “But since 1998 I haven’t gotten over $5.50, and mostly $4. How would you like to make the $1.40 per hour minimum wage people made in 1972?”

Bean and other commodity prices have stayed low since the 1997 farm bill ended government regulation of the amount of crops produced. The markets were flooded, and Talley says cheaper imported goods have also added to the problems of America’s small farmers.

Talley says he has lost $100,000 per year since 1997 and will lose $80,000 this year. But he says he’s learned a lot this season about the kinds of produce consumers and chefs want. It’s taken him several seasons to change his tactics, but by direct-marketing he’s bypassing the low prices of distributors and commodity brokers, who are often controlled by large agribusinesses.

“I’m trying to find a niche market,” he says. “In this part of the country people know of two kinds of squash — crooked-neck yellow and zucchini. But these different varieties allow people to add new colors and flavors to their diet. They love them,” Talley says, motioning to his colorful squash.

Nobody seems to care about local farmers anymore, Talley says. He thinks most politicians are tied to the agribusinesses that contribute to their campaigns. But small- and medium-sized farm operators all over the country are having similar problems, Lawrence says. She thinks they deserve a farm bill that helps level the playing field. Only the largest farms get subsidy payments, she says, and smaller farmers are paid less at processing plants because they don’t offer the same volume as large producers.

As well as working for fair legislation for small farmers, Lawrence’s organization tries to help them find new ways to market their goods. Farmers’ markets, cooperatives, and pick-your-own arrangements help farmers increase their margin. And instead of growing peanuts, for example, farmers can make and sell peanut butter.

“Every day consumers open up their wallets to buy food, and we are trying to find ways for farmers to capture more of that food dollar,” Lawrence says. One way is teaching farmers how to do more direct-marketing. “It’s extremely important but extremely difficult because we are rebuilding an infrastructure that has been destroyed,” she adds.

In several small towns in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, small farms are feeding their communities and preserving a suburban greenbelt through farmers’ markets, says Marcie Brewster. Brewster and a partner work the Wildfire Farm outside of Berryville, Arkansas.

“We are still losing farms,” she says, “but small farms and little-market farms are growing because farmers’ markets are growing.” Wildfire has had success with community-supported agriculture, which allows consumers to pay a flat seasonal fee for a weekly supply of fresh vegetables. This method gives Wildfire startup money for the season and guarantees a dedicated market for its goods.

Organic, or chemical-free, produce is a fast-growing segment of agriculture and is favored by some small farmers because it requires less equipment and fewer chemicals and commands good prices. Brewster says growing without chemicals is important, but certification (as chemical-free) is expensive and unnecessary when selling directly to the consumer.

“The extension service has always said chemicals are the best way to farm,” she says, “but all it has done is made the chemical companies rich and put people out of business. It’s part of the government’s policy because it’s more efficient.” Chemicals make it possible to farm with less manpower and more machines, she says.

A former Memphian, Brewster isn’t the only one to give up urban life and steady paychecks to make a living off the land. Several other small farms have sprung up around Wildfire, proving that even when up against big business and misguided government policies, the American small farmer will find a way to survive.

You can e-mail Andrew Wilkins at letters@memphisflyer.com.

As any halfway-attentive motorist driving through our part of the country must have noticed, several billboards these days advertise, in one form or another, a smaller telephone company’s determination to vie with “the big telephone company” for a share of the public’s business. It is all part of the competition that has gone on in telecommunications since Congress deregulated the industry in the 1980s.

But the fact is (as some of those billboards go on to imply or state outright), the competition is, by its nature, unequal. There are numerous natural advantages which the established network of Bell companies possess, based largely on their name recognition, long-developed infrastructures, and superior prowess in what President Bush likes to call “capital formation.”

Still, fair is fair, and the rules of a free-market society permit such advantages. What isn’t so fair is the way, documented in this issue of the Flyer, that a large company can frustrate the incentives created by Congress that both enable smaller companies or those with specialized focus to compete and provide a means for impoverished customers to afford basic telephone service.

That’s exactly what has happened, however, with the way that BellSouth, the monolith of the telecommunications industry in these parts, has handled subsidy programs for such customers that have been authorized by the state and federal governments. In the former case, the state has directed BellSouth, under its state license, to collect a small surcharge from its regular customers to help defray the monthly service costs of disadvantaged subscribers. In the latter case, the federal government provides an outright subsidy to defray the costs of installation.

As the article by Rebekah Gleaves in this issue indicates, a small company — compelled like most such to contract with BellSouth for the services it provides its low-income customers — was unable to get the larger company to pass on the collected subsidy amounts. Both the state attorney general, Paul Summers, and one of the three members of the Tennessee Regulatory Authority, Memphis’ Sara Kyle, found BellSouth at fault, but two members of the TRA decided otherwise and the smaller company, without the infrastructure to process the subsidies on its own, was forced to discontinue its hard-wired telephone service.

This is an object lesson in how competition, though technically in force, can be rendered, in effect, null and void by a dominant company that knows how to play the seams of its relationship with government agencies.

As the telephone case makes clear, those in government charged with regulating utilities and other public-service industries have only a limited wherewithal. There’s a clear moral to the story at a time when the president is suggesting that the new airport security forces to be created in the aftermath of the September 11th atrocities should not be federal, as such, but privately run under government regulation.

Understandably, the horrific events of September 11th have produced demands for giving law-enforcement authorities additional power and responsibilities. Among the proposals made by Attorney General John Ashcroft, several — like a call for stricter supervisory authority over money-laundering activities — are relatively uncontroversial. Others, that would give the Justice Department more access to private e-mail records and allow unlimited detention of suspects in security cases, are more problematic.

We yield to no one in our belief that the public safety requires stricter restraints. One clear example is the call for federal air marshals and stouter buffers in domestic aircraft between the pilots’ cabin and passengers. We are open-minded as well about a proposal to arm the pilots themselves.

But in the aforementioned cases in which long-established civil liberties are at stake, we advocate caution and at least a modicum of legislative debate, to be followed, in case the changes are instituted, by prompt judicial review. Better an ounce of careful consideration now than a pound of cure later on.

Also troubling, and somewhat overshadowed by other events this week, was the administration’s lifting of sanctions against Pakistan and India, sanctions that had been put in place to deter those countries from developing nuclear weapons. The easing of sanctions was done in order to facilitate cooperation from India and Pakistan in our efforts to build a coalition to fight terrorism. Recent history, however, shows us that often those countries and individuals to whom we have supplied arms and training later may turn those very tools against us.

Let’s hope that such tacit encouragement of the production of nuclear weapons doesn’t turn out to be another such instance. The consequences could be staggering.

Under Fire

Significant recent events at both the state and national levels have obscured the fact that Tennessee, already strapped for operating money, finds itself under an imminent deadline of losing federal funds. And the proximate cause of that is right here in Memphis, where — in a little-noticed situation two weeks ago — a man with mental disabilities died while in protective police custody.

This was the second time in the last three months thata mentally disabled resident of a Memphis group home died while supposedly under medical supervision. As a result federal health officials are now looking askance at the state’s current practice of moving mental-health patients from state care into private treatment centers under TennCare auspices. There is already a moratorium in effect on the use of federal funds to move patients from developmental centers to the community after a formal finding that the state had failed to adequately protect their “health and welfare.” The state has until October 15th to produce a plan for doing just that. If it fails, it is in danger of forfeiting roughly $160 million in federal funding — some two-thirds of its community services budget.

“Outsourcing” has become something of a watchword for governments having to operate under more straitened fiscal conditions. But the bottom line is that state-run development centers have a far better record of providing safe and effective care for mental-health patients. Community-based services may constitute an idea whose time has come, but that idea will have to go unless the state, in conjunction with the private providers, comes up with appropriate safeguards.

When New York took that dreadful hit last week, we all felt the blow. This
is true not only in the sense of emotional solidarity or of human empathy or
even of the feelings of unity or patriotism which are unquestionably resurgent
everywhere in America.

It is true because the consequences for New York will be replicated
elsewhere to some degree. One example: At a time when, in Memphis and other
urban communities, there has been a shift of both recreational and residential
venues away from the suburbs and back toward city centers, the fear of being
in high-profile zones could cause a partial or complete reversal of this
flow.

It is true because some of the conveniences that we have previously taken
for granted — relatively cheap and trouble-free airplane travel, for instance
— will henceforth be encumbered with more complication and expense.

For Memphis, which has begun to enjoy a downtown revival and plans to
begin building a new arena for the National Basketball Association’s
Grizzlies, these circumstances could not come at a worse time. If airline
travel ends up being substantially reduced for the aforementioned reasons and
because of a general diminishment of comfort and confidence factors, what will
be the effect on the tourist trade on which so much of our downtown economy
depends? Can we really pay for an arena which is leveraged so heavily on
anticipated revenues from hotel and motel lodging and car rentals?

The answers to these and similar questions will be worked out in time.
Meanwhile, it behooves us to consider the statement of Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld at a press conference this week. As we confront the new breed
of international terrorists, Rumsfeld said we have two choices: “to change the
way we live, which is unacceptable, or to change the way they live.”

Whatever the full implications of that sentence turn out to be, Rumsfeld
is right. We must respond so that our enemies are ultimately the ones to pay
for the horrors of last week and for the state of war which will ensue. It is
as unacceptable to hunker down in physical and emotional bunkers as it would
be to abrogate our traditional freedoms or our tolerance for human
diversity.

No one knows yet what is in store for us, but it is clear that our way
out of the morass of gloom and uncertainty depends on our staying close to the
guiding light of our traditions. And among those traditions is the one
described by the Forefathers as “the pursuit of happiness.” We must continue
that pursuit, even as we track down our enemies and abort their cruel mission.
They may choose to wrap themselves in the language and practice of repression;
we cannot.

Mr. Falwell’s Apology

So it was all the fault of the A.C.L.U., the federal courts, the
“abortionists,” the feminists, and the gays and lesbians, was it? That was
what Jerry Falwell, the apostle of soulless religiosity, said in the aftermath
of last week’s terrorist attacks. (We will spare you his reasoning.) As he
felt the mantle of shame being draped around him, Mr. Falwell was at length
prompted to apologize. He need not have bothered.

We always reckoned him as being sorry.

On Wednesday of this week — a day after the unspeakable horrors

that maimed the landscapes and lives of New York, Washington, and, for

that matter, the other places on Planet Earth where decency and human

hope still reside — a local attorney was making his way through the mass

of humanity that is the Criminal Justice Center in downtown Memphis

on a normal weekday.

As no one needs to be reminded, however, this was no normal

weekday, and the bottom courtroom floor, which usually has all the raucousness

and hustle of a Middle Eastern marketplace, seemed remarkably subdued.

The attorney shook his head. “I wonder why they don’t close this

place,” he said.

There are various answers to this question. There are still agreements to

be reached and verdicts to be rendered and justice to be pursued in the

sticky business of the law. And we all know that, however low our hearts may

have sunk after Tuesday, the social contract depends on our getting on with it.

The lawyer followed up his first observation with another: “Just

wait until we get home tonight and see a thousand body bags laid out

end-to-end on television.”

Unfortunately, what we have learned from those unbelievably

traumatic news reports at the disaster scenes is that not only flesh and bone but

steel and glass and mortar all seem to vaporize into random soot when

collisions and gravity-induced demolitions occur at the rate and force and

temperature present in Tuesday’s monstrous circumstances.

The most ominous lesson of this latest Day of Infamy is that people

and things can be made to simply disappear, as if they never existed.

Add to this the difficulty of determining just who accomplished this act

of mass assassination and the hows and whys of it. Not only the human

condition but the universe itself begin to seem insubstantial. The abyss truly

has opened up in a way it never has before. Our common consciousness is

stunned to the point that even the root premise of the Enlightenment — “I

think; therefore, I am” — cannot be realized.

The only solace to be taken from the day of destruction was that,

unless one’s own house was going up in flames or we ourselves or those close to

us were on our very deathbeds, nothing else seemed to matter. Tuesday was

a great inducer of Stoicism.

Yet it is still both possible and necessary to avoid a further decline

into nihilism. Life still matters, and because it does it behooves us to close

with the murderers and have done with it — and them. It is not a matter of

vengeance; it is a question of insisting that concepts like reality and justice

actually do exist — and have a value that must now be compensated.

We are down to the root cause now, and we dare not fail.

A new urgency was added to the deliberations of the Shelby County

Commission as it met Monday to consider the overdue matter of funding the
county

schools during the current fiscal and academic year. But that’s not all. A new
audience

was on hand as well.

The crowd that turned up for the meeting — composed in large part of

newcomers to commission proceedings — was loud, disruptive, and insulting. At
one point,

Commissioner Walter Bailey — a stouter-than-average man, to say the least —
was called

a “little potentate” by a man who stood up in the middle of
proceedings and shouted

out the epithet at the top of his voice. Other commissioners, and the
commission as

a body, came in for equal — and equally inappropriate — abuse.

Bailey and Chairman James Ford made several attempts to assure the

audience — clearly as determined to cut the commissioners down to size as to
pursue

their stated aim, that of resisting a tax increase — that their concerns
would be

dealt with. And, until the crowd’s more vocal members committed the strategic
error

of overkill, it was clear that several commissioners were responsive to the

anti-tax complaints and even to an organized stunt whereby several audience

members symbolically brandished empty wallets.

Inevitably, however, the demonstrators — for such, in effect, they
were —

pushed their luck to the point of using up both it and the patience of the

commissioners. Finally, it was one of the council’s known conservatives, Buck
Wellford, who

had enough. Pointedly saying, “We’re not going to have anything like
Nashville

here” (a reference to disturbances last month which erupted in occasional
violence

and which many think prevented the state legislature from properly finishing
its

work on a budget), Wellford called for a recess and for the additional
presence of

several uniformed county police and sheriff’s deputies.

“What I found interesting,” Wellford said later after the
commission’s

deliberations had resumed in a more sedate atmosphere, “was how many of
those

folks took off once they realized they weren’t going to be able to disrupt the

meeting. They didn’t want their reasons to be heard. All they wanted was to
put on a

show.” The East Memphis Republican member, who has placed much emphasis
on

curbing increases in the county property tax, said he thought the crowd had

been artificially “whipped up” by a local radio talk-show host, who
apparently,

said Wellford, was emulating two Nashville broadcasters who used their
broadcasts

to generate the mass turnout at Capitol Hill in Nashville last month.

In all fairness, the local broadcaster in question, Mike Fleming, may
not

have condoned the tactics which led Chairman Ford to say, “I have never

experienced that level of contempt for a public body in all my years of
service.” But the

behavior of the ad hoc throng summoned by Fleming was clearly beyond the pale.

All citizens have a right to be heard, and that includes their elected

representatives, whose rights were under assault on Monday afternoon. Indeed,
it is

our hope that the outburst in Nashville, which resulted in broken windows at
the

state capitol and physical intimidation of various legislators, will prove to
have been

a watershed event of sorts.

For some time in the late ’60s and early ’70s demonstrators of the
political

left pushed so recklessly against responsible constraints that they eventually

generated a backlash. Something like that is almost certainly in store for the

cureent demonstrators.

The Riverfront Development Corporation (RDC) has actually done what your usual public/private “study commission” either fails at or doesn’t even attempt– actually propose both a sweeping vision and a coherent strategy for implementing it.

The RDC’s vision, incorporated in a report which will soon be made fully public, is a distillation of several development ideas that have been bruited about in recent years — as well as some new and intriguing ones. Without passing judgment on them at this point, we nevertheless commend the organization for the explicitness of its vision. Public response will help refine that vision and adjustments will no doubt be made before the first shovelful of dirt gets moved.

Some of the RDC’s plans will disappoint those who have an attachment to the riverfront icons of the recent past — the Mud Island monorail, the swimming pool, and the amphitheater in which artists of every stripe have performed.

But the fact is the swimming pool is not exactly a recreational mecca, the amphitheater has gone largely unbooked in recent years, and the Mud Island monorail looked both more glamorous and more useful in the movie version of The Firm than it has ever been in reality. If the land bridge imagined by Lendermon, Jernigan, et al. gets built, it should serve not only everyday purposes but as an access point for events and attractions on the reconfigured island.

The bottom line for the RDC’s plans is the bottom line. “Make it pay” is the motto, say Lendermon and Jernigan, who imagine, among other things, a major corporation coming to roost on the newly reconstituted Mud Island.

The slogan may not be realistic to those among us who insist on maintaining things according to some idealized vision — those who, for example, reacted so strongly years ago to a private chain’s desire to build a convenience hotel that would front Main Street from the then-vacant grassy square adjoining the Morgan Keegan Building. In retrospect, that structure, though nothing to write home about, was one of the first signs that downtown could have an economically viable future — sans benefit of artificial or wholly theoretical designs.

We think the RDC has made an impressive first move. What happens next is a matter for public dialogue.

Lamar?

Though there was obvious annoyance on the part of 7th District congressman Ed Bryant, who has waited his turn for a chance to run for statewide office, many were intrigued by the news this week that Tennessee’s former governor might run for the U.S. Senate if incumbent Fred Thompson chooses to vacate it. Lamar Alexander came off as a bit of a loser in his futile second try for the presidency in 2000. Too bad, because he was something of a success as governor and as secretary of education. The fact is we rather cotton to the idea of an extended debate between the likes of Bryant and Alexander on the Republican side. Meanwhile, there’s Harold Ford Jr. and several of his Democratic congressional colleagues on the other side.

Hmm. Could be an interesting political season after all.

When was the last time you remember a governmental body rejecting a motion to adjourn, as the Shelby County Commission did Monday? Parallel question: When was the last time you remember a legislative body hitting an impasse but staying at its task long enough to overcome its members’ fears and prejudices in order to pass a piece of useful compromise legislation?

The answer to the first question may be “never.” The answer to the second most certainly is not any time during the last three sessions of the state General Assembly, all occasions when the legislature failed abominably in its charge to come up with a budget sound enough to pay for basic state services.

The commission has been wrestling for some months with a funding dilemma similar to that of the state. In the county’s case, the immediate issue was that of school funding, but the dimensions of the commission’s overall problem were the same as those confronting state government — how to find a fair and adequate revenue basis to deal with undeniable long-term needs.

The county commission’s superiority to the state legislature in this respect is amplified by the fact that the commission was forced to work toward a solution without visible leadership from the county administration of Mayor Jim Rout, while the General Assembly has been pointed in the right direction for three years running by the administration of Governor Don Sundquist (and, of late, by state House of Representatives Speaker Jimmy Naifeh). Led to the trough, the legislature shied away from drinking; the commissioners, meanwhile, found their own water.

They did so the old-fashioned way — by sacrificing personal prejudices and political protection and looking for a middle way to solve an apparently intractable problem. Specifically, Commissioners Buck Wellford, Tommy Hart, and Morris Fair deviated from the shibboleths of their conservative Republican base and embraced, albeit reluctantly, the concept of a higher property-tax increase, than they were originally prepared to settle for. Similarly, Democratic commissioners Walter Bailey, Bridget Chisholm, and Chairman James Ford jettisoned their absolutist opposition to a wheel-tax increase as a component of a funding formula. The commission then voted with near unanimity to back a Wellford proposal whereby the county’s municipalities would waive the use of an expanded local-option sales tax for any purpose except that of school funding. Not only that, the commission was able to enlist county school officials in the service of this radical departure from accepted political form.

By sad contrast, the General Assembly — cowed by mobs and radio talk-show hosts and mired in old habits of propitiating special interests — couldn’t do squat when the chips were down. During two special sessions and the unprecedentedly lengthy regular session of this year, more bucks were passed than at a counterfeiters’ convention and the General Assembly ended with the profligate gesture of using the state’s share of tobacco-settlement funds to pay for a year’s worth of recurrent needs. Next year, as a result, state government will face an estimated $225 million shortfall.

Our congratulations to the commission members for reminding us what self-government is capable of at its best; and shame upon the General Assembly for its abject flight from the very premise of governing.

It is hardly reassuring that state Senator Marsha Blackburn of Williamson County has now issued a formal statement of approval concerning the Sundquist administration’s proposed TennCare changes. This is the same Marsha Blackburn, after all, who wrote the infamous e-mails asking for “troops” which initiated the crowd disturbances at the capitol on the night of July 12th.

As a dedicated spokesperson for the poshest suburban communities adjoining Nashville, Blackburn has never wasted any tears on the less prosperous and fortunate. And what she finds so commendable in the suggested new TennCare regulations — offered by the governor as a concession on behalf of tax reform — is the very premise that we find so lamentable in them.

What Sundquist has done to accommodate his critics on the right is bow to their demands to “fix” TennCare by pruning away large numbers of those currently being cared for. In essence, the TennCare population would be divided into two groups, with not quite half — predominantly children and uninsurables whose prior medical history had prevented them from being served by private insurers — being relegated to limbo status.

Or, as Blackburn’s press release puts it: “Appropriately managing the group of insured and uninsurables and children that have been added to the program should lead to a reduction in the total program cost. “

That’s right-wingerese for “Cut ’em loose so we can save a few bucks.” Never mind that Governor Sundquist has argued in the past that these patients have attracted federal funds which more than offset their expense and that letting them go would constitute a burden on the state’s emergency rooms and thereby incite an increase in local jurisdictions’ property taxes.

The governor was right in the first place and is wrong now. Marsha Blackburn’s quick endorsement should have told him that.

Fields’ Opportunity

Richard Fields wasn’t about to let Duncan Ragsdale have all the fun and get all the headlines.

The veteran civil rights attorney says he’s going to court to prevent Shelby County from building a new high school in Arlington.

“I think I [can] stop construction,” Fields told the Flyer this week. “They cannot build a $40 million all-white high school. That is just not gonna happen.”

He could be right. Fields has some 30 years of experience with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in school desegregation cases in Memphis and other cities. It wouldn’t be the first time he has said, “No way” and made it stick.

Fields can shed light on two things. One is the relationship between schools and real estate developers and homebuilders. The county is in a funding crisis partly of its own making because it approved all those suburban subdivisions. If they want to repeat the process in distant Arlington, let them do it openly and publicly, and tell us who is selling all the land and building the new homes and in what price range.

The second thing Fields’ entry does is clarify the difference between funds for construction and funds for instruction. The formula that ties new schools in the county to new schools in the city means construction dollars, but city school buildings are in reasonably good shape. What is needed is more money for classroom teachers and classroom instruction in order to bring Memphis and Shelby County in line with peer cities.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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