Public/Private partnership

Several times in the past week or so, I’ve been called upon to explain why I support the continuation of the Memphis Music Commission, so I have decided to explain and to do so in a thorough manner.

First, I am concerned about a pattern of loss of our cultural icons, institutions, and events in the city of Memphis. The effort to abolish the Music Commission comes at a time when we as a community have lost (or are threatened with the loss of) Carnival Memphis (or at least the public aspects of it, such as the parade and midway), the Memphis Christmas Parade, the Sunset Symphony, the Mid-South Coliseum, the Soulsville Street Festival, Memphis City Schools, and any number of neighborhood schools.

Over the past 15 to 20 years, the trend has been to take away and take away and take away. Several times we have been promised “something better” in place of what was taken away, but usually what we have gotten was nothing at all.

Not so very long ago, we were told that the Memphis City Schools were not doing a good job. The politicians told us that we should give up our school system and let someone else take it over. It would save money, and Memphis children would get the same quality education that county children received. How has that worked out for Memphis? Hundreds of people lost their jobs. Bus service for many children was eliminated and/or privatized, and since that time, the safety of children has been compromised.

The county school system has closed schools over the objections of parents, turned schools over to for-profit charters, and made unilateral decisions without any regard for neighborhoods, the city of Memphis, or the taxpayers. And Memphis no longer has any say in what happens.

Not so long ago, the politicians said that at least some newly annexed areas of Memphis should not be serviced by the Sanitation Department, but by private contractors. This squared well with the conservative view that private entities can always do better than public government. How well has it worked? People in Cordova are constantly complaining about garbage not being picked up, sometimes for more than two weeks at a time, and the city is finally threatening to fire the contractor.

Against this backdrop, we are now being fed more of the same garbage from politicians and others. They are telling us that private organizations can do a better job of rebuilding the Memphis music industry than government. A better job? Like Shelby County schools? A better job? Like Durham bus services? A better job? Like the private waste management contractors in Cordova? Forgive me if I just don’t believe them. I have historic reasons not to do so.

Furthermore, I have yet to see a coherent plan from the private entities that could be reasonably expected to rejuvenate Memphis’ music industry or live-music scene. I certainly have not seen any private entity address the importance of persuading musicians and artists not to move away from Memphis or trying to convince those who have moved away to move back. Frankly, any plan that does not address those issues will fail.

Finally, I want to state that my position is based on the idea of keeping local government committed to the rebirth of the Memphis music economy through maintaining an entity called the Memphis Music Commission. It is not toward keeping any particular director or commissioners, and it certainly is not toward maintaining the status quo.

The critics are right when they state that the commission has in the past been largely ineffective. But just as our city foolishly gave up the city schools instead of fixing them, we are being advised to give up the Memphis Music Commission instead of fixing it. As with the schools, if we do so, we will regret it, and sooner rather than later.

John M. Shaw is director of marketing and promotions for Select-O-Hits, former Memphis chapter adviser for the Recording Academy, and a board member of the On Location Memphis Film & Music Festival.

It is probably inevitable that in an age of lowered expectations and diminished revenues, the concept and scope of government services should both undergo some attrition. We see this happening at all levels of government, from local to federal — from the call to outsource sanitation services and prisons to the ongoing curtailment of postal deliveries and the demand in some quarters that private enterprise take over entirely the job of delivering letters and packages. FedEx, our own home-bred success story, is often touted as the likely agent for this conversion, though we imagine the folks who run UPS down in Atlanta might put up something of an argument about that.

Well, maybe so, maybe no. We seem to recall that FedEx some years ago opted to join forces with the United States Postal Service rather than attempt to replace it altogether. And even in the days when there was some verbal sniping back and forth of the we-can-do-it-better variety between the two huge delivery services, we recall that FedEx targeted its deliveries not according to any homegrown mathematical coding but via the zip codes already established by the Postal Service.

In other words, to take this example singularly, what seems to work out best is some version of what goes by the unsexy but accurate name of “public-private partnership.” As we understand the agreement being hammered out, even as we write, between the Memphis city administration, the city council, and the AFSCME on a long-overdue benefits package for the city’s sanitation workers, the give-and-take between public and private considerations seems to be front and center. And, perhaps not coincidentally, the once-maligned concept of “managed competition” seems to have gained a real foothold.

George Little, chief of staff for the Wharton administration, certainly generated some attention and raised eyebrows last week when he first announced to the Memphis Kiwanis Club, rather than to the council, what the administration’s plans were regarding the imminent overhaul of the city pension system. Perhaps his (or Mayor A C Wharton’s) choice of audience was dictated by a perceived need to vet the administration proposals — to convert from “defined benefits” to “defined contributions”— before a private group rather than a public body. In reality, of course, the Kiwanis Club, like the Rotary Club, a friendly rival, or like any service club, for that matter, is a compendium of the public and private spheres.

The unspoken motto of the times is “We’re all in this together.” And the very plan Little presented — and which is now due for months of argument and examination by the council — attempts, by leaning to the 401(k) concept, to privatize to some degree, at least, what has up until now been a wholly public obligation.

It is what it is. Financial exigencies as much as philosphical shifts have brought us to where we are today. We can practice denial, or we can face facts and do our best to bring about some hybrid that does the job for everybody.