The march going on now, to raise local taxes, starts well before budget season. And that march is not covered by a local media hyper-focused on crime and politics. With the former in mind, a new joint City-County branch of financially non-transparent government called “More for Memphis” (MFM) is currently being legislated, as the elitist holiday season begins in public chambers. 

Sponsored in City Council by Dr. Michalyn Easter Thomas, the MFM public-private ordinance is authored by County Commission Chair Michael Whaley and co-sponsored by Commissioner Erika Sugarmon. In this way, Sugarmon is also a high school U.S. Government teacher championing public non-transparency.

Sadly, the Whaley ordinance is a public botch and involves the implementation of an entire new branch of redundant, financially non-transparent and publicly unaccountable local government. Why is MFM deemed a new branch of government? By proposed ordinance (local law), MFM will be eligible for annual budgeted local appropriations, with the enhanced luxury of being financially publicly unaccountable, while measuring themselves through quarterly reports and being exempt from public information requests.

MFM will only be required to submit quarterly reports, and a public funding ask, in the form of an annual budget to be considered for annual public local funding. No current financials will be required. Quarterly reports have for years been a useless pageantry filled exercise, before public legislative bodies where nonprofits and quasis measure themselves with whimsical PowerPoint presentations featuring colorful balloons and images of black and white people happily laughing, with the occasional insertion of Asians and Latinos. Public funding oversight cannot occur without current financials.

Before further discussing Whaley’s botch, what is More for Memphis (MFM), which I like to call “More Taxes for Memphis”? MFM is much like another massive Memphis Tomorrow public-private affiliate that will be eligible for annual local public funding to address 1) community development, 2) economic development, 3) education and youth, 4) health and well-being and 5) justice and safety. It’s pretty much everything local government is supposed to do outside of paving roads and sewers.

At the same time, everyone knows Memphis Tomorrow has been a massive 20 yr failure, due in large part to their affiliate nonprofit’s poor results, lack of transparency and accountability. Some examples of Memphis Tomorrow failures include Memphis River Parks Partnership (MRPP), EDGE, Greater Memphis Alliance for Competitive Workforce, Innovate Memphis, and others.

Blair Taylor, President of Memphis Tomorrow is on the board of Seeding Success, which is an educational non-profit. Seeding Success is the lead advocate for creating this new MFM branch of local government. A few other names on the Seeding Success Board include Al Bright, EDGE chair and Michael Fulton the board chair of Seeding Success. Fulton was recently deposed as MATA chair and also serves as Director of Government Affairs and Business Diversity Development at FedEx's Memphis International Airport. So yes, FedEx is likely directly involved in this Memphis Tomorrow like More (Taxes) for Memphis initiative.

If this reckless ordinance passes, there’s a good chance that Seeding Success will be named as the technical assistance fiscal agent for MFM as evidenced in the MFM plan and lead image in the next section. The image signals anything but expeditious public efficiency but let’s explore why Whaley’s MFM legislative design is a botch.

First, know that none of the nonprofit backers of MFM ever, ever, ever publicly advocate for public cost containment or greater transparency. Innovate Memphis for example, that was over the years supposed to bring the public an adequate public transit system, is not currently banging the table demanding MATA public transparency nor are any of the other MFM backers.

So how is Whaley’s ordinance a botch? Well, the public-private partnership of MFM is an expensive redundancy to what local government is already supposed to be doing. Besides the redundancy, and perhaps more concerning, is that MFM and their affiliates do not have to publicly report current financial information or answer public information requests while receiving public appropriations. The only requirement is a formal budget ask, followed by whimsical quarterly reports.

Can public-private partnerships work? Sure they can if they are publicly overseen, transparent and publicly accountable. In concept, public-privates are supposed to bring the best out of each sector in public transparency, funding and private efficiency. But in Memphis, public-privates have for 20 yrs of the corporate socialist FedEx/Memphis Tomorrow complex, failed the public. Contributing to this failure is a lack of press coverage coupled with non-transparency and impotent public oversight.

The More (Taxes) for Memphis initiative is largely a rallying cry to the locally failed public-privates like Innovate Memphis and Seeding Success to come together in a pact, to support local legislation that publicly funds, as part of the annual local budget process, a financially non-transparent new redundant branch of local government. Just know, taxpayers have case studies of public failures due to lacking public oversight and financial non-transparency. Those examples are MATA, MRPP, EDGE and the Downtown Memphis Commission just to name a few. Now to expenses and data.

First, public data should fundamentally be an exclusive taxpayer funded product of public government. A public product that does not incestuously involve the private sector. One would think that Sugarmon, a high school U.S. Government teacher would know about this fundamantal separation between the public and private sectors and that entity self measurement destroys the foundation of checks and balances. But apparently not.

But aside from Sugarmon's philosophical divorce from checks and balances, the costs of public data compilation, packaging and distribution are just not that expensive. With the County serving as the public data hub, the costs should be no more than $250K per year or $1.25M over 5 yrs, while leveraging the County’s existing technology investment .

“Collaborating” with the private sector on public data production feels comfy, but is stupid, incestuous, and much like having the private sector helping prepare commercial tax bills or keeping the books of public government.

See above table from MFM plan. With technical fiscal agent assistance likely coming from Seeding Success, per the MFM plan, Innovate Memphis will serve the Data Mid-South civic data hub. The cost of the hub is a whopping $2M per year or $10M over 5 yrs with the data not going live until the second half of 2026. Many have heard given a fixed level of quality that “fast is expensive,” “moderate is fair” and “slow is least expensive". This 2 yr public data project is both slow and expensive.

Inspecting the above budget closely, jumping out over 5 yrs is the $5M for “Community-led data development, quantitative and qualitative data collection sub-contracts”. Nuts! How about just getting the existing publicly surveyed data published expeditiously? An example can be found on the Taxpayer Justice Institute site.

Can this above data dashboard example look better and have other data sets? Sure it can. But the point is this public data has been available at an affordable public cost for years. I quoted the County less than $100K for this comprehensive and exclusively publicly sourced data dashboard and $20K per year to maintain the data. This public data quote, administered and paid for exclusively by the County, would leverage the County’s currently deployed technology backbone or optionally deployed on a site dedicated to Shelby County public data while scaling to serve other municipalities.

Looking further at the budget, it appears to have about five data employes. Maybe 3 County employees are all that is needed while the work converges with their existing responsibilities. Data management contracts, who knows, but not necessary. The $1M for hardware and software is also an additional cost to taxpayers while not leveraging the County’s existing investments in technology. The only line item that makes any sense is the $200K for sustainability or education/marketing. That’s about right.

In the MFM plan, Innovate Memphis is said to be a “data intermediary.” Shocking is the fact that Innovate Memphis, with its failed and outsized role in public transit, has yet to publish an instance of the Federal Transit Database to inform public transit policy and practice. Such an instance was published within a couple of days by the Taxpayer Justice Institute.

The fact is that public data packaged for local public dissemination has been available since 2016 here in Memphis but dismissed by a FedEx/Memphis Tomorrow punk public-private complex that is determined to rip off taxpayers and keep the electorate ignorant. This conforming elitist, oppressive and stone age bipartisan complex is diverse and consists of strong black women, hear me roar white women, full grown black men and mean ole white men.

Local bodies can spend as much money as they want to spend on public data, while unnecessarily getting wrapped around the axle and hyper-focused on too much data. The exclusively public data needed to inform oversight, public policy development and the electorate generally, is just not that expensive at around $250K or $1.25M over 5 yrs. But MFM is setting up to spend $2M per year or $10M over 5 years and this is just one example of the excessive and redundant MFM scheduled spend.

Significant pageantry has been associated with electing women along with promises of improved public representation from them, but not much has changed. On the other hand, the above video serves as a beacon of encouragement to female legislators in hopes of improved public representation.

Below are questions, really for anyone on the Council or Commission but primarily for the MFM sponsors in Whaley, Sugarmon and Thomas. Here are the questions:

Why should the public have confidence in MFM with Seeding Success, the likely fiscal agent, having its board led by recently deposed MATA board chair Michael Fulton?

In what way can anything publicly funded benefit the public if not publicly financially transparent with current financials, while also having public board meetings and answering public information requests?

There will likely be more questions, but those 2 questions should get a needed public conversation started around a new redundant MFM branch of public government. That is a new branch of local government that promises to raise local taxes, all while the press looks the other way. The elitist holiday season has now begun in public chambers....

Check the Facts

More for Memphis Plan

More for Memphis Ordinance