Tag: Shea Flinn

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Opinion

Super Tuesday Coming Up on City Budget

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Stock up on the energy drinks. The upcoming City Council session on the budget next week looks like a marathon, with scary numbers like a 50 percent increase in property taxes and/or 3,250 layoffs of city employees being tossed out.

The City Council’s Budget Committee met with Mayor A C Wharton Thursday in a dress rehearsal for Super Tuesday. Wharton and CAO George Little presented four for-illustration-purposes-only scenarios ranging from a property tax rate of the current $3.11 per $100 of assessed value with 3,250 layoffs to a scare-the-pants-off-you $4.83 with no layoffs and hefty payments for future debt service and pension obligations. In between were the mayor’s favored $3.36 rate with no layoffs and $3.11 with 1,420 layoffs.

The final rate is likely to be something north of $3.36 and south of $4 when the council gets through hacking away at it. The council and administration have been engaging in a dance of “who will make the tough cuts.” Councilman Kemp Conrad, a budget hawk from way back who has said for years that the council and administration are “kicking the can down the road” to ruin, called the $4.83 rate — which he does not support — an “honest budget” because it owns up to long-term obligations as well as wish-list budgets from various city divisions. From the administration side, Little presented, in the finest of fine print, a list of 21 possible cuts and savings.

“This is the package,” he said when pressed by members about whether the administration is willing to take ownership of them.

The items in the package include such goodies as elimination of medical benefits for the dependents of retirees, a defined contribution retirement plan instead of a defined benefit plan for city employees, reductions in paid leave, elimination of the proposed 4.6 pay increase for city employees, and a freeze on cost-of-living adjustments in employee benefits.

Cutting 3,250 jobs would eliminate nearly half of the city’s workforce, impose extreme cuts in every type of city services,, restore the 4.6 percent pay cut for employees who don’t lose their jobs, and cut the property tax rate from Wharton’s recommended $3.36 to $3.11. At least some of the increase is due to a decline in the aggregate property valuation in Memphis. When that goes down, the tax rate has to go up to compensate.

Boosting the property tax rate to $4.83 (on top of the Shelby County rate of a proposed $4.32) would give Memphis a sky-high combined rate that would make the most dedicated Memphians think seriously about leaving town. The “upside” would be no layoffs of employees, no cuts in services, restoration of the 4.6 percent pay cut, and payment of about $170 million to future debt service and reserves, pensions, and post-employment benefits.

The bargaining begins , or ends, Tuesday. The state comptroller has served notice that Memphis may not balance its budget via smoke and mirrors, also known as pushing around debt.

“I don’t think we will have a budget on Tuesday,” said Councilman Shea Flinn.

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Opinion

Memphis is a Patch of Blue in a Red Sea

CREDIT: Getty

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Memphis is squeezed, or maybe screwed is a better word.

The sales tax referendum got slaughtered 69-31, the gas tax one-penny-a-gallon hike fell by a similar margin, and Memphis as a sort of 51st blue state was further marginalized in the Republican-dominated legislature. To use a popular term from Election Day, Republicans have a firewall in Nashville, and with super majorities in both chambers just think of the fun they can have with Memphis. In the state and national picture, Memphis may never matter again like it did before 2000 when it could deliver the state for Bill Clinton and Al Gore and other Democratic hopefuls. We’re a patch of blue in a sea of red and, Steve Cohen excepted, the white Democrat is a vanishing breed.

I thought the sales tax would get at least 40-percent support because it would equalize sales taxes across Shelby County. And the gas tax works out to $5 or so a year, but I guess “MATA” and “new tax” are poison, whether apart or in combo. There’s no blaming the suburbs for this one. Most of them could not vote on the sales tax referendum, and the measure was soundly defeated in Memphis precincts.

City Councilman Shea Flinn, a proponent of a Memphis sales tax bump before the Shelby County Commission preempted that gambit, says “it’s going to be a fairly big hurdle to overcome but I would not rule out bringing it up again” as a Memphis referendum in a special election in 2013. He thinks it would raise $47 million, the uses would be easier to pinpoint, and the turnout would be lower.

“If you put raising taxes on the ballot you are already way behind when you start,” he said. And unlikely to catch up, I would add after yesterday’s wipe-out.

Here’s what’s off the table: consolidation, payroll tax, city employees required to live in city limits, “taxing” nonprofits, reining in PILOTs and tax incentives, and now increasing the sales tax and gas tax. That leaves the property tax, which is likely to go up anyway next year to equalize falling valuations, and when that happens the differential between Memphis and the suburbs will drive more people away. So cut services and employees, you say? Check out a City Council meeting when cuts are on the agenda or a school board meeting when cuts or school closings are on the agenda.

Related Story: On Vanishing White Southern Democrats

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Opinion

Good Debaters? Names Might Surprise You

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What America needs is one more commentary on the debate. Eleven million Tweets is not enough.

And my earthshaking thought is . . . debating is hard. Few people are good at it, and Barack Obama is not one of them. He’s lucky Sarah Palin was on the GOP ticket in 2008. And Mitt Romney, celebrated by Republicans today who scorned him a month ago, is more actor than debater, and, gets the benefit of looking presidential.

It’s been widely reported that Obama was a real tiger on the campaign trail the day after the debate, which only highlighted his shortcomings the night before. Debating is not the same as making a speech, with or without a teleprompter, before a friendly audience or even a hostile one. It is not making a witty comment in a roundtable discussion on a television talk show. It certainly isn’t like writing commentaries or blogging to a computer screen.

And it isn’t reciting deficit numbers or Simpson-Bowles and Dodd-Frank Act to a nation coping with unemployment, pissed off at banks, Wall Street, and each other, and partisans hungry for blood and red meat. In journalism we call that inside baseball, or casting your remarks for insiders and advisers instead of viewers and readers at large. Both Obama and Romney played inside baseball.

My nominations for best Memphis debaters are school board members David Pickler and Martavius Jones. They squared off dozens of times before and after the consolidation vote, sometimes in the suburbs, sometimes in the inner city, and many times in public meetings when the television cameras were on, the stakes were high, and the comments of their fellow school board members competed for attention.

Pickler and Jones stayed on point, knew their stuff, stuck to their guns, did not personally insult each other, and kept coming back for more. Repeated practice made them better, which is something that hurt Obama, as Dana Milbank of the Washington Post noted.

Tomeka Hart is a good debater too, but she didn’t make her case well when she ran against Steve Cohen for Congress. Cohen is a bulldog of a debater, loves a scrap, has encyclopedic political knowledge, and swamped her.

On the Memphis City Council, Shea Flinn and Myron Lowery get my top marks. Lowery has gotten better with age and benefits from his television journalism background. Flinn is a natural with a background in acting. Both use their skills with the knowledge that seven votes carries the day on the council, and, while they’re capable of it, pandering to the crowd is done better by others on the council.

On the Shelby County Commission I like Walter Bailey’s elder statesman appearance and the way he picks his spots. Nobody says more in fewer words or uses the long pause better. Often a maverick, Bailey was on the commission, off the commission, and on again. He has heard and seen it all. Steve Mulroy, also an attorney, is an eager and articulate combatant but spreads himself thin. Terry Roland has aw-shucks appeal when not tossing insults. Good debaters are often not likable but they keep some decorum.

Courtroom lawyers can be good debaters but rarely venture into politics. They play to the jury, and their foes are hostile witnesses and opposing counsel, but that is different than a debate format where each person has two minutes at a time. Former federal prosecutor Tim DiScenza, who did the Tennessee Waltz cases, would have made a terrific debater — plain-spoken, go-for-the-jugular, versed in the facts, and about half mean.

One of the disappointments of the ongoing schools case is the likely lack of a full-blown debate by top lawyers of the underlying issues in school consolidation and resegregation.

That would be worth a ticket.

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Opinion

Tax and End: Wharton For One-Time Assessment

City Councilman Shea Flinn’s proposal for a one-time 39-cent property tax assessment gained the support of Mayor A C Wharton Tuesday, and Wharton said that if the council goes along with it then a long-running dispute with Memphis City Schools could be settled.

The assessment on property owners in Memphis would raise about $40 million, which Wharton said MCS officials agreed to accept as full and final payment of a $57 million debt going back to 2008. The council will take up the proposal in two weeks. The city would still have to pay MCS $80 million or about 9 percent of the school system’s operating budget every year until the city and county systems are merged.

The assessment would cost the owner of a $200,000 home about $180. It is likely to provoke charges that it will become permanent, like the “temporary” county wheel tax.

Wharton made the announcement during his budget speech to the council. He said one reason he accepts it as the best of some bad options is that, as an attorney, he is uncomfortable defying the ruling by three courts that Memphis must pay up.

Although Flinn has publicly said his proposal has no chance, that now seems to be a misstatement. Iin a committee meeting, Council members Joe Brown, Wanda Halbert, and Janis Fullilove said they would oppose it. Council members Kemp Conrad, Harold Collins, and Reid Hedgepeth said major fixes are needed in the budget, not one-year measures. Collins described the approach as “shoestrings, paper clips. and bubblegum.” Whether that means cuts, taxes, or some combination will be revealed in the coming weeks. The committee kept Flinn’s proposal alive without recommending it.

Jackson Baker

Wharton and Flinn compare notes before the Council meeting.

What gives the proposal a chance is the acceptance of the offer by the MCS officials, the promise that it will be a one-time assessment and not an annual tax increase, the support of the mayor, and the scarcity of other options.

Brown said he would oppose privatizing the sanitation department or additional layoffs beyond the 125 proposed by Wharton. Fullilove said she is against layoffs and holiday reductions for city employees and would like to hear discussion of a payroll tax on people who work in Memphis but live outside the city. Halbert also floated the idea of a payroll or privilege tax.

Wharton proposed that city employees not be paid for 12 of their 14 holidays, which amounts to a 4.6 percent pay cut. He also proposed $23 million in combined cuts from every division except police and fire.

“Nothing we do will generate universal praise or support,” said Wharton.

The final 2012 budget must be ready by June 6th.

Memphians can look forward to some other fees in the new economy. Wharton said charging for car inspections is one possibility. And as a counter proposal to Wharton’s suggestion that the city privatize downtown parking meters, the Center City Commission wants to “modernize” them rather than “monetize” them. “Diligent enforcement” of parking violations by an outside firm would put a little extra cash in city coffers, especially if ticket scofflaws were unable to renew their car registration, as some council members have suggested. And police, who are spared from the layoffs, can be counted on to diligently enforce speed limits and traffic violations.

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News

New Officers: Geography v. Competency?

Sure, the mayor’s Clash-like dilemma, and the resulting on-again, off-again mayor’s race, has dominated the news, but other things are still happening.

For instance … the City Council continued its more than year-long struggle Tuesday to employ a full complement of police officers.

Earlier this year, the job of hiring police officers was transferred from the Memphis Police Department to the city’s Human Resources division. The City Council also voted in a resolution that would allow officers to live 20 miles outside the Shelby County line but those officers would have to pay a $1,400 fee.

The Council then said that officers who live inside the city limits should get preference for the positions, which brings it to its current dilemma.