Tag: Shelby County government

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“Pork Report” Judges Bluff City Law, Megasite, and More

CREDIT: Jake Giles Netter/NBC

Beacon Center

Corporate welfare, Bluff City Law, and lax government spending topped the Beacon Center’s 2020 Pork Report for Memphis and Shelby County this year.

The center is a non-partisan, free-market think tank in Nashville. Its new Pork Report marks the 15th year the agency has taken aim at wasteful government spending in Tennessee. This year, the report featured 12 examples of “pork” from this year and three of the group’s “favorite” examples of government waste from the last 15 years.

“Beacon has long fought corporate welfare, where governments lavish some big businesses with massive handouts that other small businesses aren’t fortunate enough to receive, all at the expense of taxpayers,” reads the report. “And we’ll continue that quest until the government stops picking winners and losers.”

FastTrack

AutoZone HQ in Memphis

The report reviewed the state’s FastTrack program. It’s similar to the Memphis and Shelby County Economic Development Growth Engine (EDGE) program as it also gives grants and tax breaks to companies to locate, expand, or stay in Tennessee.

The Beacon report said, “Tennessee taxpayers are asked to give up millions of dollars to private companies through the state’s main corporate welfare program: FastTrack.”

In the last year, the program has given $39.6 million to big companies like Pringles and Accenture. Last year, AutoZone got $2.3 million in a grant from the program for an expansion and new location project here worth $191.3 million and 130 new jobs.

”The overwhelming evidence shows that these types of programs make little difference in company relocation and expansion decisions,” reads the report. “Estimates indicate these handouts sway companies as little as 2 percent of the time. Do we really think when Pringles is investing over $200 million to expand its factory that giving it $400,000 is really necessary?”

Bluff City Law
Jake Giles Netter/NBC

Going straight — Caitlin McGee (left) and Jimmy Smits play father-daughter attorney duo at the Strait Law Firm.

Beacon said Shelby County taxpayers are still on the hook in 2020 for a courtroom drama that was canceled in 2019.  Beacon Center

EDGE delivered Bluff City Law $1.4 million in tax breaks back in August 2019. That was part of a larger incentive package worth $4.2 million.

After the show was canceled, Shelby County Assessor Melvin Burgess took aim at the incentive here, according to The Commercial Appeal.

“My team and I strongly believe that there is absolutely no public benefit that would justify Comcast and NBC receiving $1 million per year of taxpayers’ money that I can recognize,” Burgess said at the time. “Accordingly, I believe that Shelby County government should challenge the approval of the PILOT and the loss of tax revenue.”

They didn’t.

“Because of the incompetence of the Memphis EDGE board, Memphis taxpayers are left holding the bag while politicians try to explain away the bad decision and talk about all the ‘unseen benefits’ that the short-lived show created for the city,” Beacon said in the report. “Film incentives are always problematic and should be eliminated entirely.”

However, Charles Vance, director of marketing and communications for EDGE, said the future years of the PILOT ended when the show cancelled. The show did positive things for the city’s image and economy, he said.

“As the show was canceled, future years of the PILOT are now canceled, and Comcast will only see benefits from the first year,” Vance said in a statement. “That provision was always built into the PILOT agreement.

“The PILOT benefit started on December 31st, 2019 and expires December 31st, 2020. The show’s promotional value was significant. On top of the great [public relations] exposure for our city, the show created jobs, and spent more than $31 million here.”  

Shelby County hiring freeze

After a warning about the county’s dire financial situation by Mayor Lee Harris, the Shelby County Commissioner agreed to a freeze on hiring and promotions earlier this year. The freeze lasted about a month.

“This is the problem with government finances,” reads the report. “When times are tough, families have to dig deep and make tough decisions.  Beacon Center

“But for governments, tough times are merely an inconvenience. Governments at all levels are able to kick the can down the road (like the federal government) or ask struggling taxpayers to bail them out (like Nashville). Our leaders need to remember that they are charged to be stewards of taxpayer money, not treat it like monopoly money.”

For this, Beacon suggested that Shelby County government should cut unessential services and enact a spending cap tied to economic growth to curb excessive government growth.

Memphis Regional Megasite

TNECD

A view of the megasite looking north from I-40.

The Memphis Regional Megasite won a spot in Beacon’s top three worst “porks” of the last 15 years.

No company is showing interest in the 4,100-acre piece of land east of Memphis that Beacon calls “the field of empty promises.” This is after more than a decade and $200 million in state investment.

”Yet, after numerous major companies have begged off, all they can do now is watch the grass grow,” reads the report. “It’s high time to flush this boondoggle down the drain once and for all.”

See the full report here:

[pdf-1]

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News News Blog

New Fund Helps Nonprofits Help Those Impacted by Coronavirus

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Justin Fox Burks

Community Foundation of Greater Memphis CEO Bob Fockler and Executive Vice President Sutton Mora Hayes

A new fund launched Wednesday to help respond to the coronavirus outbreak in Shelby County.

The Mid-South COVID-19 Regional Response fund was seeded with a $250,000 donation from the Nike Foundation. The fund is a joint effort by the Community Foundation of Greater Memphis, city of Memphis, Shelby County government, United Way of the Mid-South, and Momentum Nonprofit Partners/Mid-South Philanthropy Network.

The response fund will provide flexible funding to nonprofit organizations working with impacted community members dealing with the economic consequences of the outbreak in West Tennessee, Eastern Arkansas, and Northern Mississippi.

“This is an unprecedented event in our community, and we don’t know how the next weeks and months will play out,” said Robert Fockler, president of the Community Foundation. “This fund allows people and institutions to support a safety net for vulnerable populations and those most affected by the threat to their health, wellbeing, and economic sustainability.”
[pullquote-1] The first phase of these rapid-response grants will address the following:

• The economic impact of reduced and lost work because of the novel coronavirus outbreak

• Immediate needs of economically vulnerable populations caused by closures and cancellations related to COVID-19

• Increased demand for medical information and support

• Fear and confusion about the outbreak among the region’s most vulnerable residents.

Representatives from the partnership agencies will award grants based on the amount of funds received. They anticipate the first round of grants being allocated in the next few weeks.

To donate online and learn more about the grant, visit cfgm.org/COVID.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Lee Harris Endorses Council Candidate Davin Clemons

Endorsee Davin Clemons and Mayor Harris

In a move that had been rumored for weeks, Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris has intervened directly in the Memphis city election, announcing on Sunday his endorsement of Davin Clemons, Memphis City Council candidate in District 6.

The move can be — and no doubt will be — interpreted as an escalation of the already festering feud between Harris and Commissioner Edmund Ford Jr., whose father, Edmond Ford Sr., is making an election bid to recover the District 6 seat he once possessed.

Harris and the younger Ford have had heated exchanges of late, with Ford assailing the mayor publicly during commission meetings and with Harris apparently appearing to Ford to have taunted the extended Ford family during a recent appearance on local television.

In an interview with Richard Ransom of WATN, Channel 24, Harris jokingly blamed his troubles with Commissioner Ford on his previous electoral wins over two Ford family members

Ford took Harris to task for the TV remarks, telling the mayor at the June 24 commission meeting: “Don’t use any member of my family as backup when you don’t have answers. I can’t respect you.” At an earlier meeting, Ford had done the taunting, accusing Harris of looking beyond his mayoral duties to a projected future congressional race.

In his endorsement of Clemons, Harris may also be engaging in some political outreach. Clemons, a police officer who doubles as a minister, is openly gay and has served as the MPD’s official liaison with the LGBTQ community, encountering controversy here and there.

Clemons once filed a suit against the city for what he said was the department’s discrimination against him on the job, based on his sexual orientation and religion. The suit was resolved via a settlement between the parties.

Technically, the endorsement was not by Harris per se but by the Tennessee Voter Project, which Harris founded. The endorsement statement reads as follows:

Dear Friend,
The Tennessee Voter Project (TVP) invests in candidates who directly engage voters and who promise to expand voter access if elected.
Today, we are proud to endorse Davin Clemmons for Memphis City Council District 6.
It feels like Davin has been in service to this community his entire life. He is a minister, a police officer, a community organizer, and he is homegrown. Davin is a graduate of LeMoyne Owen College and his roots run deep in South Memphis. He is running an aggressive campaign in the same City Council district where he grew up. Because of his stances and proven record of accomplishment, supporting Davin is an easy call. That is why we are endorsing him in this campaign and that is why TVP has already contributed $500.

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Editorial Opinion

Grading Government on the Curve

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

It is probably too early to give out report cards on our various branches of government, but before we move deeper into what could turn out to be a crucial year, a little preliminary judgmentalism might serve a constructive purpose.

Justin Fox Burks

Lee Harris

To start with the national government: Now, that is an unruly classroom. As a collective institution, it gets an Incomplete, and that’s grading charitably. The president, Donald Trump, gets an F, and that, too, is almost an act of charity. It almost implies that Trump is trying to succeed at something. There’s no question that the president has failed singly — to articulate and carry out a coherent, productive theme of government, as well as to accomplish any of his sundry private goals, notorious among which is his insistence on building a wall on our southern border. One of the first things most of us learned in school was the folly of the Great Wall of China. At enormous expense, an impenetrable barrier was erected across that Asian nation’s northern frontier, preventing potentially troublesome access from without but also dooming a once thriving kingdom to hundreds of years of isolation and stagnation from which it is only now recovering. Trump would have us repeat that doomed experiment. Meanwhile, he is failing at various other assignments and seems not to know the meaning of homework.

On the score of conduct, he also fails at working and playing with others — having made a mess of our relations with long and trusted allies and simultaneously permitting — or inviting — outside bullies of his acquaintance to nose into our classroom and creating enough mayhem of his own to shut things down altogether. All in all, some form of expulsion may be the only option here.

At the level of state government, we’ve just begun what amounts to a new semester, and from the looks of things [see cover story], the various students involved in the  process seem entitled, at the very least, to an A for effort.

We have a city council that is just getting reorganized after several of its members transferred to other institutions. The reconstituted group is about to undergo crucial exams in the form of an election year, as is Mayor Strickland, whose authority to lead the body is about to be tested as well. The final grades here will come decisively this fall.

County government is off in a brand new direction under the tutelage of a new mayor, Lee Harris, who is proposing what amounts to a new curriculum based on re-evaluating the nature of justice. So far the body of commissioners he’s working with seem inclined to follow his example and are working in harness, keenly exploring the new group project. This effort, too, needs some additional time for evaluation, but we are impressed so far.

Government is an inexact science, and opinions about it are famously subjective. All grading is, more or less, on the curve of our relatively modest expectations. We will periodically  look in on the various branches of government in this space and let you know what progress, if any, is being made.