If Memphis were struck by an earthquake, would Shelby County Mayor Jim Rout propose a committee to figure out what to do about it?
Rout's counterproposal to Mayor Willie Herenton's "Formula for Fairness" ignores the urgency of the situation. By the time would-be New Towns vote on incorporation December 9th, just seven weeks from now, it won't matter what Rout's Commission on Alternative Futures thinks in 120 to 150 days. The deal will be done.
Rout is determined not to do the one thing that voters in his neighborhood and other suburbs will in all likelihood do on December 9th: Say YES or NO to incorporation. Where does the county mayor stand? We still don't know.
If Rout thinks incorporation is a good idea, let him say so and explain his vision for how the county will function with a collection of New Towns. If he thinks it isn't a good idea, then now is the time for him to use whatever influence he has to persuade his neighbors to vote NO. (We'll even nominate him for the next edition of Profiles in Courage.)
The Tennessee General Assembly, without any debate, changed the fate of Memphis in a piece of stealth action that took a few minutes. The Tennessee Attorney General's office and a Davidson County chancellor have upheld that action. Two weeks ago, under tremendous deadline pressure, Mayor Herenton put forward a fair and thoughtful plan. It proposes at least two large concessions: to freeze school district boundaries and to freeze annexations for five years.
That's a pretty good start.
A committee of the usual suspects, accountable to nobody, should not have to shoulder the responsibility of figuring out our future. That is what mayors, commissioners, and council members are elected to do. It's called leadership.
Time is short. It would be nice to have some guidance from Mayor Rout, but apparently that is not going to be. Start without him.
And one splendid way to start was proposed on Monday by outgoing County Commissioner Pete Sisson, who had already begun to crown his long career in government by casting the decisive vote two weeks ago against partisan judicial primaries, thereby closing out a long and divisive debate on the commission.
Sisson's contribution this week was to begin a long-overdue debate -- by proposing to convert Mayor Rout's nominal committee into a bona fide city/county charter commission, which would devise a consolidation formula for one of next year's countywide election ballots.
As Sisson recognizes, consolidation of government is probably the only real solution both to the current annexation/incorporation crisis and to the long-term urban/suburban problem. And it is the only imaginable ex post facto remedy for the looming incorporation votes that within months will almost certainly create a tangle of superfluous New Towns in Shelby County.
Both Mayor Rout and Mayor Herenton are now on record as favoring, in principle, the devolution of central power to the sphere of county government. How better to achieve that end than to consolidate?