toyota plant – Memphis Flyer

The MLGW story has legs, but the county public school realignment has even longer legs. MLGW is good water-cooler fodder. School zones determine where people live and how the county grows. If I were a decision maker, I’d be picking the brains of two people: Willie Herenton and developer Jackie Welch. Herenton knows this story cold and could predict the ramifications better than anyone because of his experience in the city school system when it still looked a little bit like the county system. Welch made a great living selling new school sites to the county for 20 years. The two men are anything but friends, but they agree on a surprising number of things on this issue, and anyone who ignores or demonizes either of them will get it wrong.

• Regionalism does matter. That’s one of the conclusions that can be drawn in the post-mortem of Marion, Arkansas’ failure to land the new Toyota manufacturing plant. Not only did Mississippi governor Haley Barbour out-hustle the competition, he lined up support for Tupelo from the governor of Alabama. Last time I looked, Alabama also borders Tennessee. The Memphis Regional Chamber of Commerce took a my-governor-right-or-wrong approach, and Marion/Memphis once again came up empty-handed. It’s time for the chamber’s board and local business leaders to do some soul searching.

• Speaking of the chamber of commerce, the front-page news in last weekend’s Nashville Tennessean was the latest news of the weird in the continuing saga of football player Adam “Pacman” Jones of the Tennessee Titans. The front-page story in last weekend’s Commercial Appeal was the latest news of the weird in the continuing saga of Mayor Willie Herenton. In which city would you rather be running the chamber or building a career or a business?

• Everyone’s an editor these days, and the problem of sourcing a story has never been clearer than it is in the MLGW saga. MLGW spokeswoman Gale Jones Carson was Willie Herenton’s spokeswoman until this year. Former MLGW president Herman Morris is running against Herenton for mayor. A story that suggests the Morris years were golden years is most likely pro-Morris spin. A story from Carson must be treated as pro-Herenton spin. Board members were appointed by Herenton but are supposed to show independence and represent citizens. One of them, Nick Clark, wrote an opinion column for The Commercial Appeal Tuesday saying Joe Lee should quit.

• The Morris style is a mystery. He announced his candidacy at The Peabody in front of a mostly geriatric crowd that buffered him from the news media. A picture was worth a thousand words. A couple days later, knowing full well that political storms were brewing in Memphis, he headed for California for an NAACP function. Odd timing.

• The story about the $12.5 million settlement between the Federal Communications Commission and four radio networks (including Clear Channel) representing more than 1,500 stations got buried beneath other news. But opening the airways was a big deal at the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis in January. In theory, the settlement will mean a greater variety of music and programming. We’ll see.

• There are a couple of pieces of good news for downtown Memphis. First, notice the bulldozers and tree-clearing on Mud Island north of the Interstate 40 bridge. It’s preparation for more houses and apartments on the last large piece of undeveloped property on the island. Second, the University of Memphis law school is proceeding with plans to move to the old Front Street post office and customs house. James Smoot, dean of the law school, said last week the move-in is scheduled for 2009.

• A confusing and little-noticed change in the Memphis City Charter could make it possible for newcomers to run for council and even mayor this year. The original charter says mayoral candidates have to be residents of Memphis for five years. But at this writing, city attorney Sara Hall was researching the question. I’m not the only one confused. When I called the Memphis City Council and Shelby County Election Commission last week, both chief administrators thought that the five-year requirement was still in place. If we’re wrong, watch for a fresh face with big-name support to jump in.

Not long ago, Shelby County mayor A C Wharton sat down at the newspaper offices of The Marion Salute just across the river in Arkansas and delivered himself of some explicit remarks in favor of that community’s prospects for becoming the site of a new Toyota plant. Good. One way or another we’ve made clear our own hopes for that outcome — a highly salutary one for the economy of the greater Memphis area.

But — and there is a “but” clause: Why was it that Wharton, speaking last week to the downtown Rotary Club of Memphis, could not bring himself to be equally forthright about the desirability of the nearby Arkansas location? For the record, here are portions of what the mayor said to our Rotarians about Marion: “So anything that goes there would be good. Obviously, if we could get it into the Tennessee tax base, it would be even better.”

Huh? Did he mean that if Chattanooga, a major rival to Marion for the plant, got the nod from Toyota instead, the indirect benefits to Memphis from the sales tax and other state revenues would be “even better” for us than the direct provision of jobs and dollars in our very midst?

After another rhetorical nod or two toward Marion, Wharton followed that up with his own “but” clause: “But I will not be in the position of saying it ought to be there [Marion], as opposed to Alamo, Tennessee, which I heard yesterday is also still in the running, or Chattanooga.” If some in his audience thought they had misheard, the county mayor repeated himself: “[A]nything that brings jobs and development to this area, I support it, but I will not get into a position … and make this clear: I will not say it ought to be in Marion [or] Chattanooga.”

With all due respect to the mayor’s open-mindedness, what gives here? What’s the source of all this noble neutrality, when — as Wharton, his County Commission, and all who keep up at all with current events know — one of the most agonizing reappraisals going on in these parts concerns the serious and growing doubts as to the wisdom of PILOT (payment-in-lieu-of taxes) programs extended as bait for new industry by local government. The term in vogue for such programs these days is “giveaways” — measured as a correlate to the widening gap between governmental revenues and needed government services.

So are we to turn up our nose at the idea of new industry coming to our area free of charge? Is that beneath our dignity? Counter to some secret vow of masochism?

Are Mayor Wharton and his fellow chief executive, Memphis mayor Willie Herenton (who has kept a strict silence on the matter), beholden in some hitherto unrevealed way to Tennessee governor Phil Bredesen — who for obvious reasons would prefer that Toyota locate in Chattanooga or Alamo?

Has some deal been made that we don’t know about which would enrich us here in Shelby County by some governmental happenstance? In which case, we would merely request that our local chief executives stop being so inscrutable and Buddha-like and start talking turkey. Otherwise, it would appear that they’re playing a game of mumblety-peg — at our expense.