Online Exclusive: Rebuild Government: Doing Nothing is Not an Option

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Doing Nothing is Not an Option
By: Rebuild Government

If there was ever a time when doing nothing is not an option, it is now. Memphis and Shelby County are headed in the wrong direction, losing jobs, income and young talent to competing cities with governments that get the basics right, with lower tax rates and powering economic growth.

The numbers are a wake-up call for our community: 17,000 jobs lost in the last year and an average of ten jobs a day for the past decade. In that same decade, our county lost 48,000 people and $1.9 billion in income. Our cumulative city/county tax rate is $7.22, almost double the rate of Nashville/Davidson County.

At the time that Nashville/Davidson County modernized its government, Memphis/Shelby County voted it down. Back then, our community had lower taxes and had a larger population. Today, the Nashville region is 25% larger and the highest taxes in Nashville/Davidson County are 75% less than here, and former mayors and business leaders identify streamlined government as the trigger for their progress.

We must do something to reverse the grim realities that grip Shelby County. We must get a handle on our ever-climbing tax rate, find new and innovative ways to compete for business and create jobs that will encourage our children and young professionals to plant roots and seek their fortunes here, instead of searching for greener pastures outside of Memphis and Shelby County.

The vote for a new charter marks a historic opportunity for our citizens to do more than improve our government. We get to start over and build a new one from the ground up, one that speaks with a unified voice to attract new business and industry, cuts the bureaucratic red tape that strangles progress and ends duplication that wastes taxpayer dollars.

The Charter Commission - 15 citizens from all over Shelby County - have worked for nine months to build a new government, and they have defied all expectations. The new charter is full of safeguards, standards and accountability, and there are so many reasons to support it, particularly if like us, you find the existing governments wanting and wasteful.

The new charter has the toughest ethics laws in Tennessee, it has a three-year tax cap to prevent taxes from going up during the transition period, and it requires a super-majority of three-fourths of the new council members to raise taxes more than 5%. It requires voter approval for annexation; it removes Memphis’ control of zoning, land use and building in the towns? annexation reserve areas, and it creates a countywide Real Time Crime Center and 911 center that protects lives and property. Council districts are more neighborhood-centered and will allow more faces in the electoral process, interim appointees for mayor and Council cannot run for election, resignations are final and irrevocable, and MLG&W cannot be sold without voter approval.

Elections are nonpartisan, saving $1 million in costs in each county election cycle; the mayor must give citizens a five-year strategic plan and professional standards are set for key management jobs; public agencies cannot sue each other because the general counsel will issue opinions that bind everyone and an inspector general will constantly look to cut costs and eliminate abuses. The current structure of schools can only be changed by the school boards elected to operate the systems.

Just a few of these would be reason enough to support the new charter, but taken together, they do nothing less than give our community the historic opportunity to press the reset button. All of us at Rebuild Government are convinced that the new charter is a powerful and effective vehicle for dramatically transforming our government and the trajectory of our community.

It couldn’t come at a better time. Our people know we are not headed in the right direction and they know that government is a big part of the problem. This charter is our opportunity to get it right, because doing nothing is not an option.

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