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Folks in Memphis know about racism and social justice. After all, significant media coverage is dedicated to the former subject matter, all while ignoring the real problem of runaway elitism. And to add fuel to the fire, unnecessary rhetoric like “institutionalized racism’, pertaining to current day local governance, is routinely circulated in the local discourse presumably thereby giving sanction by way of excuse.

Circulating such rhetoric is irresponsible and unfortunate. As it typically divides the taxpaying public along racial lines when they should be united in pursuit of taxpayer justice for a majority black community in need. Besides, such terminology markets Memphis to the world as backwards in 2020. And while appropriate for the history books, institutionalized racism in current day local Memphis governance cannot be proven.

Connecting the Dots

At the same time, institutionalized elitism in local Memphis governance can be proven. The straightforward proof comes from connecting the dots between the racially diverse public-private complex and its resulting product. The public-private complex consists of local government, tax abating boards and non-profits.

Elitism is most evident in the primary beneficiaries of the public-private complex in the elite small few. And to the extent that elements of elitism exist elsewhere, its far worse in Memphis when benchmarked against other cities.

Further, several players exist that allow elitism to persist, on the back of a majority black community in need in its authors, overseers and enablers. Some of these players are examined below:

Local governmental bodies that oversee and look the other way as taxpayer funded economic and workforce development efforts go unmeasured. The former occurs as $50 of $120M in annual recurring economic development tax incentives can be shown to be in excess when benchmarked against both research and tax incentive awards in other peer cities. To make the excesses even more unnecessary, Memphis already delivers some of the lowest business operational costs in the county.

Memphis Tomorrow facilitated botching of the workforce development system over a 5-year period while local small business solutions to fix the problem were systematically dismissed. The former results in deficient employment, wage, business and tax revenue growth. Memphis Tomorrow is the top CEO organization in Memphis that is down in all its selected categories over almost 20 years while their initiatives use your Federal, State and Local tax dollars.

While benefitting from excessive tax incentives and taxpayer injustice that undermines the tax base, in a majority black community in need , local elitists “smoke their own dope” participate in pageantry and serve on the National Civil Rights Museum Board (NCRM) Board. The NCRM has not generated any local public policy positions since the one that supported the symbolic gesture of taking down confederate statues 3 years ago.

A local press corps that chooses to not write about even the possibility of excessive tax incentives for the benefit of the small few occurring on the back of a black community in need. Proving excessive incentives can be done in a variety of ways. The simplest, is pulling the 2019 State of TN Comptroller  report which documents tax abatements across the state. The report reveals that Shelby County has 512 parcels under payment-in-lieu of taxes (PILOT) contract, Davidson 35, Knox 68 and Hamilton 37.

A Public University of Memphis, while in partnership with the Economic Development Growth Engine (EDGE), does not exercise thought leadership regarding economic development. One example of the former was, without explanation, the discontinuation of economic development measurement under the UofM Memphis Economy project during the 2019 City Mayoral election. Among other items, such measurement could have served to debunk claims of competitive momentum which would typically inform course correction for community benefit.

Of course, when connecting the dots and reporting on the above, enablers of elitism question one’s clarity in communication as well as their methodologies. This tactic is a common one while at the same time uncommon in American cities is the existence of runaway elitism coupled with an unmeasured public-private complex that is down in all its categories over almost 20 years.

And uncommon further, is a racially diverse and elitist public-private complex that feels no accountability to course correct when taxpayer funded work goes off track while the small few benefit. This reality is a design for community decline.

Solution: Community Actualization through Taxpayer and Social Justice

As one can see, the Memphis taxpayer is disconnected from reality. Without measurement, public university thought leadership, press and governmental oversight, the Memphis community is ignorant as the small few benefit on the back of a majority black community in need.

To that extent, non-traditional education, such as this blog, becomes necessary while knowing social justice will never happen without prerequisite taxpayer justice. Given this, public measurement provides the best opportunity to educate the taxpayer in a majority black community in need. With the aid of public measurement, a supporting framework is the Hierarchy of Community Actualization. The hierarchy, as shown above, prioritizes taxpayer justice for all in a majority black community in need.

Properly monitored social justice programming comes in addition to taxpayer justice for target populations. An example of social justice programming would be Minority Women Business Enterprise and Locally Owned Small Business (MWBE/LOSB) programming targeting small, less established businesses on the margin and not highly established businesses or businesses with locally affluent individuals at the helm.

Equipped with public measurement, taxpayer advocacy for all becomes the norm, in a majority black community in need, away from divisive and false claims of institutional racism in current day governance. The former work occurs, while checking runaway elitism using public measurement that all can understand. In this way and through public measurement, taxpayer and social justice can proceed with community actualization in mind. 

I apologize to The Shelby County Trustee’s Office for asserting that a file had been changed compromising local transparency. After a 4 hour investigation, I discovered what I had done wrong in saving the 2018 Trustee Report on my computer which caused the file to not convert to Excel. 

To that extent, I am protective of the integrity of the Trustee PILOT Report and have witnessed other authoritative public data sources compromised and feared it may be happening again. Again, I apologize The Shelby County Trustee’ s Office. 

With that said, significant County administered opportunities exist for improving local public-private measurement and transparency of the economic development space given the significant taxpayer investment where LOSB solutions exist. 

I do not apologize for the following regarding the persistent prosecution of runaway elitism. 

• Asserting bogus PILOT projection accounting
• Botching the workforce development system
• Asserting excessive incentives occurring on the back of a community
• A $1.7M misappropriation by a local abating board

Thank you. 

First the annual Shelby County Trustee PILOT report is an invaluable authoritative data source for which the Shelby County Trustee’s office should be commended. As a data source, it provides taxpayers with a County wide view of payment-in-lieu of taxes (PILOTs) programming. Without the report, taxpayers are blind. 

The report is produced by the Trustee’s office originally in Excel and then converted to PDF for web based publication. Commercially available software allows taxpayers the ability to convert the report back to its original Excel spreadsheet version which is what I did with the report in December. For research and analytical purposes, Excel allows users to sort and perform calculations. 

But for some reason, a newly posted 2018 Trustee PDF report no longer allows the user to convert to Excel. This obstructs taxpayer analysis and results in the user having to transcribe over 10,000 fields to Excel which would take a community researcher some 4-6 months. Its my guess the file conversion was authored within the bowels of County government and not by the Trustee Administration. My experience with the compromised data source can be seen in the video above.  

The Trustee staff has always been helpful and transparent with my requests but I wanted the community to know of the type of manipulations that routinely occur somehow that obstruct transparency and inquiry. 

Its the type of obstruction the local elitist would in fact support. After all, the community is disconnected from reality on several fronts while blind to the total amount of total annual tax incentives occurring throughout Shelby County and its municipalities. Excel allows for estimates to be made through calculations as many of the abating boards do not publish anything that would accommodate a global Shelby County view of tax incentives. 

Further, the elitist have authored bogus accounting for 8 years with EDGE to justify excessive incentives for the small few while bothcing the workforce development system and administering MWBE programming seemingly to benefit highly established and in some cases affluent companies. Given this pattern of behavior by the elitist, this obstruction is the type the elitists would author to disconnect the community from reality in knowing an estimated total of excessive corporate/real estate incentive amounts.

Solution 

Given this obstruction, the following specification is being requested for the 2019 Annual Shelby County Trustee PILOT report. 

Publicly downloadable and user unprotected 2019 Trustee PILOT report with individual fields populated in Excel

Fields – PILOT Owner, Property Owner, Abating Board, Board Parcel Number, County Parcel Number, Begin Date, End Date, Assessment Taxes, Contract Taxes, Difference

Report Tabs – Summary, ICC Contrcts, IDB Board Contracts, IPH/IHE/IMC Contracts, Debt Service Contracts, Contracts, Aged by Expiration Date and Delinquents.

TIF report available in Excel with above specified populated fields. 

While the above minimum requirements will get taxpayers by, given an estimated $120M in annual estimated incentives, a more robust measurement solution is need to inform taxpayers. A County administered web based application is needed for consolidated tax incentive management for multiple abating boards that would facilitate PILOT sizing, PILOT contracts, MWBE compliance tracking and etc. 

While in the throws of the Coronavirus, runway elitism persisted at the EDGE Board on Wednesday for the benefit of the small few. Citing competition with Southaven, MS., the racially diverse EDGE Board unanimously approved an excessive and sick $2.4M DHL PILOT to retain 105 already existing low wage warehousing jobs. 

The DHL PILOT award violates, just about, every leg of the Brookings FOCUS Economic Development plan while exploiting the taxpayer in a majority black community in need. The problem is, like workforce development and so many other plans in Memphis, the FOCUS plan was never implemented or measured.

Had the plan been implemented, the DHL PILOT would not have even been considered as one of the FOCUS plan goals was to “Diversify the Economy Beyond Logistics”. Incenting the retention of low wage warehouse jobs is anything but the former while in competition with Southaven, MS., which also violates the regional collaboration leg of the FOCUS plan. See below graphic taken from a FOCUS Plan document:  

The fact is that this DHL incentive is another real estate deal and not economic development. The package mirrors in many ways other excessive EDGE job PILOT real estate deals such as LeSaint Logistics and Mark Anthony Brewing.

All of these deals abated taxes on existing property, which is expressed through EDGE’s community reinvestment credit (CRC) program in exchange, unfortunately, for low wage warehousing jobs in these cases. These elitist real estate deals are unjust to the taxpayer in a majority black Memphis community in need. 

Some Facts About the DHL PILOT

An excessive $2.3M will be transferred from a Memphis community in need to a $69 billion dollar DHL company headquartered in Bonn, Germany and a real estate landlord located in Atlanta, GA. 

Had the jobs been retained in Southaven, MS. there would have been virtually no job loss for Memphians.  

By abating taxes on existing property, which cost taxpayers $1.2M, EDGE increased their fee revenue by more than 100% from $57K to $117K. 

Conclusion

Runaway elitism, carried out by a racially diverse public-private complex, continues in the midst of the Coronavirus while feeding on a majority black Memphis community in need. The winners are a $69B DHL company headquartered in Bonn Germany and a real estate landlord in Atlanta, GA. Oh well. So much for taxpayer justice in an impoverished Memphis community in need…..

Currently, I am writing a white paper entitled “The Problem is Elitism; Not Racism – The Case for Taxpayer Justice”. The paper will conclusively prove that current day imbalances are being accelerated by elitism and not racism. This is important because spending time and energy on solving the wrong problem can result in more of the same while distracting from problem root cause. 

In the meantime, as I complete the white paper, I am rolling out some data tools that will be used in the paper. The “Hierarchy of Community Actualization” will be the conceptual basis of the white paper where social justice along with fiscal conservatism informs taxpayer justice.

Next, I am launching a locally owned small business innovation in the MWBE Dashboard measurement platform. The platform can be accessed by clicking on the MWBE button at the top of this page or accessing http://mcclmeasured.net/mwbe.

Both, The Hierarchy of Community Actulaization and The MWBE Dashboard are scary in their simplicty. Both are designed to help Memphis evolve out of the stone age through public measurement and effective governmental oversight. 

The National Civil Rights Museum (NCRM) is a world class tourist attraction. I know. I have been 4 times and taken visitors from NYC who frequent museums that were blown away by the high quality NCRM production. 

At the same time, the NCRM is not a local social justice activist organization. Over the weekend, Terri Freeman wrote in the Daily Memphian about the possibility of a new national initiative for the impoverished. But sadly, in it’s hometown, the NCRM lacks a local agenda to combat poverty. They stay out of the fray on such local questions. And if the NCRM decided to enter the local debate as a social justice organization, they would find themselves taking on their very own NCRM Board and Memphis Tomorrow founder, Pitt Hyde.

Memphis Tomorrow is a corporate CEO organization that is down in every category over 20 years while their initiatives use your Federal, State and Local tax dollars for community betterment. The fact is that in a majority black community in need, true social justice starts with taxpayer justice. And unfortunately, in Memphis, so called “social justice” and marketing initiatives hog the news cycle where taxpayer advocacy should otherwise reside. Social justice marketing and initiatives, in many ways, are locally mistaken for taxpayer justice. If Memphis is to move forward, in a majority black community in need, social justice starts with taxpayer justice. 

If one just scans the NCRM Board of Directors one will see a plethora of companies that benefit from excessive corporate/real estate incentives on the back of majority black community in need. Or one will find organizations that don’t need the help, that have benefitted from MWBE programming. This local economic development and social justice programming is largely birthed out of the archaic and highly deficient Memphis Tomorrow organization while being accommodated by a lack of local legislative oversight. 

The overarching problem in Memphis is not racism but runaway elitism. Unchecked runaway elitism is carried out by a vast and racially diverse Memphis Tomorrow public-private complex where fundamental social justice in the form of taxpayer justice does not exist in a majority black community in need. 

To gain a better understanding of social justice marketing, we will pose some questions to our moderators Farmer Joe and Church Lady.

When Nike discontinues the sale of the Betsy Ross sneaker, is that social justice?

No sir. That is marketing. Nike, a so called “social justice” company, annually transfers an excessive $4.5M in corporate incentives from one of the most impoverished areas of the country in Memphis back to one of the least impoverished areas in Portland, OR. And to make matters worse, Nike has neglected to regularly report MWBE spend to EDGE, which at this late juncture, anything that they might now report, would likely be highly questionable. 

Is MWBE programming social justice?

Well, isn’t that special. MWBE programming in Memphis is a marketing tactic to justify excessive corporate/real estate incentives for the benefit of the small few. Further, upon investigation, the primary beneficiaries of MWBE programming are long standing, well established and in many cases affluent local entities. Some of these companies do not even reside in Shelby County. 

Are Pitt Hyde and Fred Smith community visionaries ?

No Sir. Pitt Hyde and Fred Smith are elitist corporate socialists. Their influence and power has resulted in a rigged system that serves the small few, accommodated by a lack of local governmental oversight and stone age measurement tools that have resulted in community ecosystem decline. 

Conclusion

Before there is social justice, there must be taxpayer justice to serve a majority black Memphis community in need. 

FEBRUARY UTILITY BILLS

In this analysis, 66% Higher Total Utility Bills in North GA  Chattanooga, TN area over Memphis. 

• MLGW Memphis – $209
• February North GA Utility Bill – $348
  • Scana Gas – $211
  • Georgia Power {Electric} – $80
  • Ellijay Water – $57

This is a data Bust Out of MWBE spend momentum. Social justice and MWBE is a marketing scam for the benefit of the small few authored by the Memphis Tomorrow complex and accommodated by a lack of governmental oversight. 

The current Coronavirus crisis will demand rigorous public oversight. But oversight of the vast public Memphis Tomorrow public – private complex is effectively non existent. In fact, the Memphis Tomorrow complex used the last economic development crisis to benefit the small few with excessive tax breaks while promising trickle down prosperity through MWBE programming. But the data shows that has not occurred, with in large part, the same long standing established business benefitting from excessive corporate/real estate subsidies. 

At the same time, the local social justice movement along with fiscal conservative oversight efforts are caught in the stone age and a time of Fonzie. You never hear a local legislator dig deep into an EDGE compliance report, ask tough questions or raise questions about the lack of transparency of Downtown Memphis Commission (DMC) data. Local legislators effectively pay the public-private complex to provide incomplete fairytale testimony while the taxpayer suffers in a majority black Memphis Community in need. Hawkeye Oversight Services has solutions that involve outsourced tool development, rigorous oversight and questioning services of the public private complex. 

Local legislators are effectively blinded by stone age tools that prevent effective oversight and legislators are not even calling for better tools. History says that local legislators lack the desire or know how to practice rigorous oversight and its only local oversight in the end that will monitor Federal coronavirus funding.

This blog goes deeper into EDGE MWBE data which points to major concerns regarding local legislative oversight. MWBE is a taxpayer scam.

Hawkeye – Rigorous Oversight and Tools For Economic Rebound

Hawkeye Oversight Services has already proposed the consolidated tax incentive fiscal note impact (TIFNI) platform. Such tools will be needed to facilitate economic recovery. Without TIFNI, legislators don’t even know the total amount of incentives being administered throughout the County or a means to measure economic development efforts. The above data set was compiled using EDGE published compliance reports from 2016-19 and the reports that are published on the webpage for each PILOT.

The most concerning data points from the above is the high WBE and Outside Shelby County spends and low LOSB spends. “Vendor” is for a company that is on local governmental vendor list but not an MWBE or LOSB. It appears PILOT companies are allowed to use vendors on local governmental vendor lists for MWBE spend. These fall into the “Vendor” category when no MWBE or LOSB designation is found. 

With local social justice and fiscal conservative efforts caught in the stone age, Hawkeye is now the first to deploy a methodology for consolidated MWBE measurement to serve both social justice advocates and fiscal conservatives. Again, the concern is the lack of oversight tools and culture with a looming Coronavirus economic crisis. 

With a significant investment in MWBE, a consolidated MWBE platform would provide legislators or designated Hawkeye questioner with the tools to ask the following questions that are never asked in oversight proceedings:

Why is WBE so high ? Real Answer: So that the same established local companies can benefit

Why is Outside of Shelby County spend so high at $25M ? Real Answer: Because the elitist Memphis culture dismisses small businesses. This is why my small business was shut out from providing connected workforce development programming and now its showing up in the data

Why is LOSB so low ? Real Answer: Because MMBC represents only Stage II established businesses to corporations while Epicenter only helps startups and smaller businesses with business planning while they go unrepresented running the risk of closing down through a lack of receipts. Bad ecosystem design.

Why is BDO USA, a New York Corporation, showing up in MWBE spend data. Real Answer: Because there is no oversight. 

Why don’t abating boards, other than EDGE, publish compliance reports? Real Answer: Because there is no oversight

Anyway, due to a lack of tools and oversight culture, these questions don’t happen with social justice and fiscal conservatism efforts caught in the stone age while subservient to the archaic and elitist Memphis Tomorrow complex. 

Conclusion

The only oversight that will work in the coming economic crisis is local oversight. This blog has used data from the MWBE program to show that local oversight is non-existent dooming taxpayer advocacy in a Memphis community in need….