2010 March 01

Main Street Journal: On the River: Questions Concerning Consolidation

The Main Street Journal Website

The following article is taken from the (month, year) issue of the Main Street Journal. Click “Subscribe Online” above to start your subscription.

Questions Concerning Consolidation
By: Joe Saino

The subject of consolidation has been an on and off subject for many years here in Shelby County. Former Mayor Herenton would bring it up as diversion when he would come under criticism for his cronyism and free spending ways. On my own, I started investigating Metro governments like Nashville (Metro Davidson) and Louisville (Metro Jefferson).

Now with the resignation of Herenton and the election of Mayor Wharton, there suddenly comes the push to consolidate government in Shelby County with the formation of Memphis and Shelby County Metropolitan Government Charter Commission. Also along with this is a parallel group called rebuildgovernment.org. This group has the job of selling this idea and is financed by leading local business people.

In order to know what is going on I have studied the available Charter Commission and task force documents. There are 12 task forces manned by a large and diverse group of citizens and politicians. The task forces have the assignment to come up with the framework of this new charter which would be voted on in November 2010. As I understand the proposed new charter approval rules for this to pass, the majority of the voters inside Memphis plus and separately, the majority of the voters outside of Memphis (but in Shelby County) would have to approve it in order for this to take effect. The incorporated cities in Shelby County, other than Memphis, would not be affected and would continue to exist.

I attended a Charter Commission meeting and my reaction was that they have taken on a huge task and I wonder if they have the time and the talent to get the job done. Moreover I wonder if they are approaching this in the right way.

Now I have nothing against Consolidation (a toxic word that the Rebuild Government group is purposely not using). However the first question that I asked myself was “Is consolidation going to reduce my taxes by lowering the cost of government?” This is the first question that all taxpayers will be asking. However the Charter Commission and the representatives of Rebuild Government have no answer to this all important question that will be on the mines of the voters. They speak in generalities and say that it will certainly be more efficient and less confusing. However they have no hard facts and have not done their homework. The first thing that needs to be done is to have an independent group study Metro Davidson, Metro Jefferson and proposed Metro Shelby and compare each of the government functions in terms of numbers of employees and costs of employment. The study should come up with a spreadsheet that shows some possible savings. What is needed is the willingness to make reforms of the high cost items. These include the number of employees required for the particular service. In the City of Memphis and particularly the Memphis School System the problem has been that the politicians have been more interested in creating and protecting crony jobs than in running an efficient government service.

Pension benefits have been more generous than the private sector and this has been exposed during the last two years because of the recession and smaller tax revenues. OPEB is a particularly looming threat due to political promises that have been underfunded to the tune of over $3.5 billion dollars. Concerning job benefits, these allow employees to be off the job over ¼ of the year, a perk not available to the average private sector employee.

Until we address these key high cost items, no consolidation plan will substitute for the hard choices. Unless these groups can come up with some hard believable cost reduction numbers, I predict that voters will not be convinced to change.

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