Just when it’s hard to imagine the Shelby County Democratic Party being more out-of-touch, it manages to do something else to top itself.

It’s hard not to conclude that the Republican sweep of Shelby County elected offices in the recent election is a reflection of the general disarray and ineffectiveness of our local Democratic Party.  Without being too unkind, if it spent as much time working on how to win elections as it does working on internecine personality conflicts and fights over turf, it just might be the dominant political force that it should be in a county that is majority Democratic.

Instead, in the wake of the election day debacle, it shifted its focus at the recent steering committee meeting from what it did wrong to what else it can do wrong.  At the meeting, the steering committee took the time to vote to oppose the proposal for a new government for Memphis and Shelby County, and to make matters worse, they based their decision on talking points rather than the impulse for better government.

Their conversation was brief, because like the man yelling into the cave, they tend to hear their own voices and think everyone agrees with them.  Even veteran Memphis Flyer political reporter Jackson Baker was lulled to sleep, writing that “even the most naïve advocates of city/county consolidation are aware that sentiment for changeover in the part of Shelby County outside Memphis is minimal to non-existent.  What is not so well known is that the outlook for a favorable vote in Memphis itself is is also dimming.”  That this observation included not an iota of data or polling was striking.

Time Warp

On its best day, there is little argument that it is hard to win a campaign for a new government, because of the fear of change and fear by some people about losing a power base.  That said, Memphians proved as recently as last year that they are not adverse to changing its charter in substantive ways and roughly 20 years ago, county voters changed county government to a new home rule government.  And some of us are old enough to remember when county government was completely restructured in 1976 and city government in 1968.

More to the point, that we’re still not living in 1985 seems to escape pundits and politicos alike.  Today, there are roughly 75,000 Democrats living outside Memphis, with many of them living in the path of Memphis annexation, which will inevitably take place unless we change the form of our government.  The number of people living in the unincorporated area of the county essentially balances out the population inside the smaller towns where the mayors work daily to gin up emotions and fear.  It also seems lost on many observers and politicians that Shelby County became a majority African-American county in the past few years.  It’s a common error for people to listen to the most vociferous voices and assume that everyone outside Memphis is adamantly opposed to change and that support in Memphis is withering.

It also was not what was shown on polling done by a couple of candidates for county offices.  As one said:  “Memphians are significantly for changing government.  They know it’s not working.  Outside Memphis, there is a hard percentage against it and a hard percentage for it and they are the ones whose voices are the loudest.  The two extremes drown out everyone else, but the overwhelming majority of people want to know more and are serious about considering the options.”

The news media report frequently – as if it’s somehow relevant – that consolidation was voted down the last time it was put up for a vote.  That was almost 40 years ago, or as a young professional we know said: “They say it like it was yesterday.  I wasn’t even alive the last time this was put on a ballot.”

It’s easy to get an impression to the contrary if you listen only to the town mayors and other opposition that the sky is falling and everyone they know agrees with them.  Of course, these mayors and the knee-jerk opponents (many of whom still proudly point out that they haven’t read the new charter) are stuck in their default position, and the chances of the Charter Commission ever producing a document they would approve was as likely as Sarah Palin praising Barack Obama.

The Derby Mentality

And lost in the horse race mentality of the media and the personality politics of the politicos is the fact that the Charter Commission exceeded all expectations in producing a new charter that is clear and accessible, that has safeguards and ethics rules found in no existing charter here and that it produced a document that includes many things that the opponents said would never get done.

The Charter Commission set up safeguards to prevent costs from rising by passing a three-year tax freeze that would prevent the increases seen in other communities during the transition period (it was a strong message against business as usual, considering that the tax blip in other communities inevitably settled at a spot much lower than our tax rate).  In addition, taxes cannot be raised more than 5% without approval of three-fourths of the new Council’s members.

There is countywide law enforcement so the only person stopping at the city limits is no longer the police as criminals go wherever they like, and prospects of a countywide Real Time Crime Center would be a real boon to crime-fighting in Shelby County.  There will be a centralized 9-1-1 Center for Memphis and Shelby County, and we can only hope that the smaller towns will see the risks to life that are inherent in the present system and join in.

The Commission set up the strongest ethics laws in Tennessee and wrote them into the charter.  They aren’t even in the present Memphis and Shelby County charters, and as a result, they can be changed by the legislative bodies to which they are applicable.  The Commission set up neighborhood-centered legislative districts where a new Council member speaks for a contiguous area with lower numbers of constituents than now, people with similar needs and concerns.  Best of all, in other cities, the change in districts and governance produced excitement that brought new faces into the process.

Better Government

The Commission set up a strong economic development structure to eliminate the hurdles that prevent businesses from investing here and jobs from growing here.  The Commission set up a process to eliminate tens of millions of dollars in duplication and waste, notably in the hundreds of duplicated management jobs.  The Commission set up a centralized planning and neighborhood development function so that the new government is prepared to receive the larger amounts of federal and state formula-based funding to fight poverty and fund social and human services (the amount of formula-based funding will be based on 900,000 rather than 600,000 people).

The Commission set up a system that prevents someone appointed to fill an unexpired term by a legislative body from running for that office, making sure there is a level playing field for people running for mayor and Council.  The Commission requires the mayor to prepare a five-year strategic plan so citizens know what the vision is for their government and for the mayor to make an annual report to the people.

The Commission’s new charter will prevent the millions of dollars that have been wasted while one agency of government sues another agency.  There will be a General Counsel whose rulings would be binding on all agencies and officials of the new government.   The Commission sets up an inspector general who will identify ways to cut costs and to eliminate fraud.

The new charter calls for the setting up of a performance-based personnel system that protects current pensions (as required by law).  The Commission requires a public vote for any sale of MLG&W.

More Safeguards

Only the elected boards of the city and county systems can merge the schools, since they were elected by the public to manage the districts. More to the point, we’re stumped as to why some Memphis opponents of a new form of government are insistent that schools should be consolidated.  After all, it’s Memphis City Schools that is ground zero for school reform in our part of the country and there is more than $100 million in grant and federal funds to power it along.  We’re baffled as to why the city district should share this largesse with the county district, bu more to the point, we reject the unspoken stereotyping that lies behind the idea that the only way for a majority African-American school district to succeed is to combine with a majority Caucasian district (although contrary to conventional wisdom in Memphis, the county system is about 35% minority).

There’s more but you get the point.  None of these details were discussed at the Democratic Party steering committee meeting.  Instead, its conversation could only be described as obtuse, as they complained that the new government allows the other cities’ governments to remain intact.

It’s not that the new government allows the other governments to stay intact.  It’s that every government – including Memphis – has the right of self-determination, meaning each government has the option to join in the process to create a new government.  Memphis and Shelby County voted to be part of the process.  The other towns declined, which was their right.

Old School Politics

It seems simple to us, but apparently, it’s more than some people can wrap their brain around.  Here’s the best example we can come up with: We’d like landscaping in front of our office and so would our neighbor two doors down.  We decide we’re going to do it and we tell the company located between us that it has to do it too.  They say no, because we can’t make decisions for other independent operations who don’t want the landscaping.

Some of the Democratic Party’s most visible leaders can’t seem to understand this simple principle or they would rather whip up the same old “we versus they” rhetoric that brought them to defeat in the last election.  The truth is that Memphis and Shelby County can no more order Bartlett what to do than it can order Dyersburg.  More to the point, it’s the two billion-dollar behemoths – Memphis and Shelby County – that have the overlapping functions and duplicated operations where the savings are found, so this is all just so much old school politics from the Democratic Party.

It’s worth noting that at the time that the resolution creating the Charter Commission moved through city and county governments, both mayors and both chairs of the governments’ legislative bodies were African-American and Democrats.  All of them recognized the obvious: the business model for both governments is broken and political power means nothing if it’s power over bankrupt, dysfunctional and inefficient governments.

Deck Hands on the Titanic

Here’s the seminal questions: What’s the Democratic Party’s ideas?  If it doesn’t like this new charter and its potential to shake up things and change our community’s catastrophic current trajectory, what’s its idea for stopping the loss of three young professional a day and the loss of five middle class families a day, a trend that has continued for 10 years?

What’s its idea for stopping the average of $510,000 in income that moves out of Shelby County every day –and has done so for a decade?  What’s its idea for stopping the average of 10 jobs a day that we lose – and have been losing for a decade?

Nibbling around the edges isn’t good enough.  It is indeed the political equivalent of moving around the deck chairs on the Titanic.  Unfortunately, our Democratic Party has a lot of people willing to do it.