The following is an excerpt from our May issue:
By Chuck Bates
It cannot be stressed often enough that the government that gives you everything you want must by definition take everything you have to pay for it. This is certainly true in Shelby County. Daily it seems someone is crying out for more programs which in turn equal more government. Sadly those crying the loudest are often government officials and their bureaucracies who stand to gain from the new largess. While government does have some basic functions for which the people appoint it to oversee, the vast majority of the growth in government is actually perpetuated by those in power. As we will uncover there is a constant attempt to remove the power from the people and instead place it in the hands of a few non-elected bureaucrats.
Recently I had the opportunity to sit in on a meeting with Shelby County Trustee Bob Patterson as he went over some of the finer points of the financial condition of the county. What I learned was sadly not surprising to me or likely to anyone acquainted with Memphis and Shelby County politics but it was frankly appalling. Most know that the county is in extreme debt to the tune of over $2 billion. Mr. Patterson led me through the projected income and budgets for the county. He also explained the background for some numbers that simply did not add up to this economist.
Like many of the readers of this publication I manage and run a business. I see to it that we maintain our budgets and know what our anticipated costs are as well as the costs associated with specific projects. This is not the case when it comes to Shelby County government. Well at least the numbers are not always what they appear to be. Let me explain. County Commissioner Wyatt Bunker as well as some of his colleagues on the Commission have been surprised at the lack of transparency in the county budgets with which they are charged to oversee. What I have learned in the process of researching this article is that the County Commission is indeed getting a book full of numbers for their review but those numbers are greatly veiled as to just where your tax dollar is being spent.
It would seem that within the last four years, during Mayor A.C. Wharton’s administration, slick bureaucrats convinced a past commission to abandon some of their oversight authority and instead place power into the hands of the non-elected that have little or no accountability to the taxpayer. Specifically we have learned that the County Mayor’s Chief Financial Officer pushed through the County Commission a resolution that allows him to completely obscure those funds set aside for special projects by placing them in the County general fund. Previously funds set aside for capital expenditures such as specific road projects were held in an account just for the pr