It's Here, We Fear; Get Used To It

The Commercial Appeal has an editorial in Saturday's paper taking the Shelby County Commission to task for wanting their own oversight on the FedEx Forum project.

The officials who insist on duplicating the work of the arena's chief consultant - at taxpayer expense - say they are performing the watchdog function their constituents expect of them. But it's hard to escape the suspicion that they are maintaining this obstacle mostly because they can, and perhaps to fight the last war over arena issues that already have been resolved.

Wah, wah, wah. Given how this project was ramrodded down the people's throat, with the CA's enthusiastic support, wanting to have their own watchdog is not an unreasonable thing. And the strength of the CA's and officials' opposition might be something to look at.

The disputed sum, consisting of the $50,000 cost of the proposed county consultant and of arena-related legal expenses, might seem negligible within the project's $250 million budget, which includes $12 million in county money. But arena authority officials say the controversy jeopardizes their ability to keep their pledge to deliver the project on time, within budget and at the promised level of quality.

That's a potentially high price to pay because some commissioners feel the authority has been insufficiently attentive to their micro-managing demands for information. City officials and executives of the Memphis Grizzlies, the arena's primary tenant, have expressed growing exasperation with the commission's stance.

All this for $50,000? That's barely a good party in a skybox at the Forum. Out of $250 million? That's really a sign of this being a power play. Heisley has already forgotten who is the tenant and who is the landlord. Let it go and give the Commission its head. What are you afraid they'll find?

And notice the snarky tone of that second paragraph's first sentence. A sure sign of the lack of good facts to make your argument is when you devolve to name-calling.

For better or worse, city and county officials chose to subsidize the arena project with public money. For better or worse, they chose not to submit that subsidy to a popular referendum. For better or worse, they gave the Grizzlies effective control over the project. Many city and county taxpayers continue to disagree with those judgments, but they have been made and will not be reversed.

What a crock! "For better or worse?" Please. The City Mayor, the tiger team, the developers, the businessmen who stood to vampire a dollar from the franchise and the CA all ganged up to speed this project down the pike. Opposition was treated with the utmost contempt and derision. Reasonable questions were brushed aside as though they were unruly children. And the CA was at the heart of all this.

Normally, a project like this is in danger of bogging down in a mire of turf-wars and "where's my dollar." We're famous for it here. Any project will take a lot of time and a lot of commissions and a lot of lawsuits before it happens. But no the Forum. Even the CA was amazed at how fast this came together. They wondered by local schools couldn't get this kind of action and priority. We still wonder.

This "Hey, it happened. Let's all get over it and move on." attitude is insulting. Just a decade old, sold to us by a huckster the CA failed to uncover, with $60 million in debts still to be paid, and already slated for abandonment, the Pyramid should be a stark and humliating reminder of just how much oversight our "leaders" and the CA really require. For them to tut-tut those of us who think we're being sold yet another bill of goods in a long line of them just won't stand.

The more relevant consideration is that arena construction has proceeded to this point without major problems or cost overruns, despite the delays forced by last July's windstorm. That record appears to speak to the competence and credibility of the arena authority and the professionals whose work it oversees on the largest public construction project in this community's history.

Given that it should have put the arena behind, and there are some reports that it has, we have a right to wonder how they've done it, and what is being done. Do I trust these jokers? Not at all. Give me facts.

It also gives no cause to expect the authority will drop the ball, so to speak, before the arena opens next year, despite the lurid warnings offered by the project's critics. Commissioners' demand for their very own consultant seems less an opportunity for a meaningful independent review of the project, and more a product of the culture of self-important entitlement that has afflicted county government in recent years.

In service of its own needs, now the CA rails against the "culture of self-important entitlement" in our government. Maybe they shouldn't wait until they need it as a defense, and should take the offensive in rooting it out. Remember the scandals that rocked the County government right after the elections? The Ed Jones spending scandal? It wasn't the CA that broke the story, it was the State Comptroller's office investigation. And the CA itself reported that the results of that investigation were being discussed around County Hall for almost five months before the story broke. Great work, guys.

FedExForum will not be torn down. So it is in the interest of all Memphians, both advocates and opponents of the project, to ensure the arena becomes the community asset that will justify the public investment made in it. That is less likely to happen as long as some elected officials equate good government with personal privilege.

That's a persuasive argument: "It's already gonna happen. Let's all just get used to it." The creed of servants, to borrow a phrase. I don't think this is as much about "personal privilege" as it is about lingering anger over a very bad deal that we're all forced to live with.

What's $50,000 to help calm that anger and heal the wounds. If there's nothing to be found, then there's no need for worry. But if it worries you so much as this, I have to ask: What is there to worry about?