You have to admire Memphis City Councilman Jerome Rubin's spunk, if not his legal acumen. His proposal to ask Memphis Light, Gas & Water to stop service to the three "towns" chartered under the state's new incorporation law would be a ringing return of serve to those upstart secessionists. It echoes the "Let `em freeze in the dark" sentiments of Texas residents during the oil shortages of the 1970s. Unfortunately for Mr. Rubin--and those of like mind--MLG&W's charter apparently requires the utility to serve all Shelby County citizens, not just those who reside in the city of Memphis.
What the city can and should do, is play the cards it has control over. Freezing the proposed sewer extensions is one good idea. There is no reason the citizens of Memphis should be financing sewer lines for the citizens of other "municipalities." The city should go ahead and play out its hand in court, to settle the annexation issue once and for all. If the city wins, the annexation process will continue as planned. If the city loses, then it will just have to make do with the considerable land it already encompasses.
Either way, the emergence of this issue should encourage city leaders to begin to think of creative ways to emphasize the city's plentiful assets. Perhaps Memphis residents should get a small price break at city-owned facilities such as the zoo, the museum system, public golf courses, the trolley, and the like. It takes more than a mall and some subdivisions to make a town. Police, fire, sanitation, and public works services cost money to set up and maintain. It's a lesson we suspect some county residents may have to learn the hard way.
If the council and Mayor Herenton seemed to have embarked on a possibly errant but still potentially useful strategy for dealing with the current urban crisis, the same cannot be said for Monday's action by several African-American Democratic members -- partly in response to the same stimulus --to boycott the Shelby County Commission.
How many things are wrong with this picture?
* Well, first, the protesting commissioners' act ignored the fact that most of the issues they cited -- judicial primaries, minority procurement, school budgets and elections -- had already undergone commission action and had been voted on fair and square. A couple of the issues were now in the purview of the courts, and another issue -- that of the incorporation controversy -- was unlikely even to make it to the commission for action. What's being boycotted here seems to be due process itself.
* Secondly, the public has already made it clear that -- however much it may complain about its elected representatives, their deeds, and their misdeeds -- it wants them to stay on the job. Newt Gingrich's band of Contract-with-America zealots tried a governmental shutdown, and all it earned them was a public contempt they have never recovered from. We suspect that something suchlike will be the fate of the six Democratic commissioners if their boycott endures for very long.
* Finally, the boycott won't work. As soon as Republican Pete Sisson gets back into the play, at the end of August, the seven-member GOP faction will have a quorum and can pretty much play its own tune. The Democrats won't even be at the dance.
Enough! The commissioners have made their point. Now it's time for an honorable but graceful retreat from the no-win position in which they've put themselves -- and us.