We’re all in favor of people keeping their promises, as the reelection ads for Shelby County Mayor Jim Rout boast this year. But that isn’t always the key point: More important is whether a promise should have been made in the first place.
The latter question is at issue after Rout’s announcement last week of a $420.3 million county operating budget which strips The Regional Medical Center at Memphis of some $2 million and reduces key funding for a number of other public agencies. All this, mind you, in the service of the county mayor’s election-year promise in 1994 not to raise the county property tax rate during his first term. “Promises Made, Promises Kept,” Rout’s ads are saying now, as he skates toward easy reelection against less than nominal opposition.
“I have grave concerns,” was the reaction to the cuts by commission budget committee chairman Cleo Kirk. “I think it is going to be a challenge with a Capital C,” observed commission chairman Tommy Hart of the new proposed budget, which Rout called the “most difficult” to prepare of any he has had a hand in for the last 20 years – many of which, in his pre-mayoral years, were spent as the commission’s budget chairman.
Granted, there were some unexpected developments – a confusing property reassessment, for example – that may have complicated the county’s financial picture and contributed to a shortfall. But conceding that is merely to say that nobody should make binding promises – especially not four years’ worth – into an unknown future.
Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton pulled rabbits out of the City of Memphis’ financial hat last week, managing to beef up essential services in some sectors without scraping any bone in others. Governor Don Sundquist got his austerity budget out of the way last year and was able to serve up some pork this year. After years of unmanageable mega-deficits at the federal level, President Clinton could actually boast a surplus this year, and much of the national debate has focused on what to do with the resultant windfall.
All the aforementioned chief executives profited from a booming economy, of course, but so should Mayor Rout have. We have never doubted the county mayor’s sensitivity, integrity, or ability – and we welcome several of his new initiatives to adjust the way in which city and county share the costs of basic public services.
But we’d just as soon that he take a little time away from his
current round of patting himself on the back to take an honest
Mea Culpa concerning the present shortfall. And we’re pleased
that – so far at least – he isn’t making any rash promises about
holding the line on taxes for the next four years. 
It isn’t hard to see why Memphis and Shelby County get treated as stepchildren by the General Assembly when the members of our county’s delegation insist on acting, not like a unified family, but like orphans at war with each other. Issue after issue in the just-concluded legislative session turned on the unpleasant realities of city-vs.-county or Democrats-vs.-Republicans or even blacks-vs.-whites. A state lottery, retention of the state Racing Commission to oversee a promised new track, authority for the county commission to redistribute state school money between city and county systems, fiscal relief for endangered institutions like Shelby State Community College: All these fell victim to one or another civil war in the Shelby County delegation.
We all know the old saw: With friends like these, who needs enemies?