The Memphis Shell Game

Reading this post at the Smart City Memphis blog, I was caught by something in the third item:

Local legislators have refused to release “storm damage” funds for the arena until their questions are answered.

The anonymous author of this shows one of the infuriating things about Memphis finances: how money is shuffled around like a three-card monte game.

The original source of these funds was the City of Memphis rainy day fund, the place we keep reserve funds for emergencies. It was released from the RDF in order to help defray some of the cleanup costs of Hurricane Elvis in 2003. Not all of the money was spent, and has been sitting around.

Not wanting to "waste" the money, the FedUp Forum greedheads want to use it for their own purposes. We were told the FEF wouldn't cost a penny more than the $250 million bond we took out to finance it, but it's cost a few tens of millions more. The City has paid for street rehab, for one thing; MATA contributed an unknown sum to build a never-used customer service center.

Why isn't this money being sent back to the nearly depleted (less than $600,000 in a fund that should have nearly $50 million) RDF? Where is fiscal responsibility?

Ah, but what should we expect? This is the same bunch that took funds from the City Engineers Office inspection fees fund to pay for the demolition of Baptist Hospital downtown. Something like $10 million. They didn't reduce the fees, that I know of, since they obviously raise more than the office needs; they just skimmed the fatty cream to put into another recipe.

This is why Mayor Herenton needs to go and the City Council needs to be reconstituted. Why the incestuous cronyism of our local government needs to end.