- (female announcer) Production funding for Behind the Headlines is made possible in part by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund, and by viewers like you, thank you.

- Outgoing County Mayor Lee Harris, tonight, on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian.

Thanks for joining us.

We are joined tonight by County Mayor Lee Harris, about to be out of office in about a month.

Thank you for being here.

- Absolutely.

Thank you.

- Along with Bill Dries, reporter with The Daily Memphian.

Before we get to questions with Lee Harris here and talking about his two terms in office, we'll just note that we had to tape this a week early.

So actually, as you watch this, you know who won all the various elections and who will be the next county mayor.

We don't at this time, but we'll still have a good conversation with the mayor.

With that complete, with the primaries for the state and federal elections done and all the county races completely done, we'll begin to look at getting the folks who are in those big county, excuse me, those federal and state races, very much including the redistricting, the governor, state legislature, whatever we can get to between now and November 3rd, which is election day for those races.

And of course we'll be covering all of that at The Daily Memphian.

But, Lee Harris, you got, as we record this, about a month left.

Two terms.

You were in the state senate before that, City Council before that.

For the new, I mean, we don't know who it is, but for the new county mayor, what would your advice be?

- Well, my advice would be that, get ready for some action.

I think it's a wonderful job.

It's an extraordinary opportunity to change things in Shelby County for, you know, hundreds of thousands of our residents.

But there's some challenges on the horizon, and one of them is gonna be how he navigates the new relationship with the state.

There's an oversight board with respect to education.

And that's going to make things very, very difficult, I suspect.

Hopefully not, but I don't see any way around it because it's another layer of bureaucracy, right?

We already had one huge container ship in the form of Memphis-Shelby County Schools system.

We have another one, a huge behemouth in the form of Shelby County government.

And then you throw another layer on top, and now the State of Tennessee is actively involved in managing the school system.

It's gonna be very, very difficult, particularly trying to rearrange the financial relationship and how that works.

And so everything will have to be overhauled.

And it, I, you know, I don't know quite yet how he can get a budget passed in this new kind of orientation, but that's where I'd start job number one is trying to make sure that we were setting up a financial structure that responds to this new extra layer, which is gonna be, you know, wielding power around the school system, which is a huge client of Shelby County government.

- Yeah, and then for the, we'll dig more into the schools, I'm sure, as we talk, but the other big county race that was settled, and again, we don't know who it, is the county sheriff.

The county sheriff doesn't work for the county mayor, but there's a lot of interaction, obviously.

You had a lot of interaction with Floyd Bonner, the outgoing county sheriff.

Your advice, recommendation, thoughts for the new county sheriff?

- Yeah, I think more interaction with the county sheriff is a great idea.

So, I don't know that I had a whole lot of interaction with Floyd Bonner.

I'm not sure about that.

But I think that the new mayor and the new county sheriff are poised for a nice reset to that relationship.

I think that'll be great.

I think that's the same sort of thing that happened when I came in.

Of course, Mark Luttrell, of course, if you recall, was, you know, at odds with Terry Rowland and any number of county commissioners.

And there was lawsuits flying between the county Mayor's Office and the Shelby County Commission.

And so when we came in, we had a new chair, it was Van Turner, and a new set of commissioners.

[fingers snapping] We immediately settled those lawsuits and established a reset of those relationships.

And so that was a great thing right in the first, like, few days of coming into office.

And I think the same thing is true for whomever the next mayor might be, whether it's John DeBerry or Mickell Lowery, and whomever the next sheriff is.

- Yeah.

Let me bring in Bill.

- And talking about education, county government provides about $427 million to public education in Shelby County.

There's a formula involvement.

Most of that goes to Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

Both of the candidates talked about more of a role for county government in the school system.

That's not an easy thing to do even without the state takeover, right?

- Oh, it's impossible.

There's not gonna be, there's gonna be less of a role for county government with respect to what happens in the school systems in the next four years.

And that's just a challenge, because obviously moving our schools forward is a huge objective of many folks in this community.

That's not gonna happen.

There's not gonna be, there's not gonna be the ability to, you know, pull levers and make something happen in the school system.

No one's gonna know who's in charge.

The school system right now is probably uncertain about whether or not they can pass a budget, should they pass a budget, what that looks like, because there is just too many layers of decision makers.

So you have the board of oversight or overseers or whatever they wanna call themselves.

But that board of oversight is, specifically exists at the pleasure of the governor, the speaker of the House, and the lieutenant governor of the state.

In other words, they can remove those people and replace those people [fingers snapping] on a dime for any reason or no reason whatsoever.

And so in effect, those folks are not fiduciaries and have no independent power on their own to make decisions.

They've got to make sure that the governor, the speaker of the House, and lieutenant governor are pleased at all times, or they lose their job.

And so you got that, a few politicians that don't represent Memphis and Shelby County, know nothing about it, or know very little about it.

I mean, obviously, you know, they've been here, but know very little about it.

Then you got a board of oversight, then you got a school board system, then you got a superintendent.

It is a huge colossal mess.

It's the biggest mistake that's ever been made in the history of Tennessee, perhaps.

We know that obviously they're gonna have to, you know, address the superintendent issue, right?

Who's in charge of Memphis-Shelby County Schools?

I think we can see the writing on the wall that that is a complete mess and filled with uncertainty.

And so there, yeah, the county government won't have a great role or a path to have a great role in moving our school system forward.

And so that's gonna be a tragedy, and we're just gonna have to wait it out.

So we're gonna have, you know, several years of stagnation, and we'll just have to wait it out.

- So one of the things that's pending is finding a new site for the east regional high school somewhere in Cordova.

I take it you think that falls prey to the same thing?

- Yeah, I think that project is probably dead or dying.

- You've been, again, eight years in county mayor, in the legislature before that.

In legislature, big funder, a lot of decision making even back when you were in the legislature, and obviously much more so now with the takeover board.

If you could snap your fingers and say, "This is how..." Because I don't think you're saying that without the takeover board, Memphis-Shelby County Schools was a smoothly operating machine that needed no changes.

What would you have wanted to do to change Memphis-Shelby County Schools, if anything, to make, improve performance, streamline spending, whatever aspect?

- Well, improve the relationship between Shelby County government and the school system is the most important thing.

Prior to this last change, we worked really hard to do that.

We worked with several superintendents.

I think that all of them would say that I, you know, worked very collaboratively with them to accomplish things and to move the direction.

And so, you know, Memphis-Shelby County Schools system before, you know, I came in the office, wasn't really talking about building new schools and so forth, and we wanted to change that conversation.

That took years of advocacy and relationship building with the school system for them to buy into that approach.

They bought into that approach, and now poof, right?

We're not gonna get an east region school, right?

That's highly unlikely, at least not in the next several years, as long as the board of oversight.

And instead, we're gonna go back to the prior approach, which was, let's Band-Aid the school buildings.

And so we're gonna be Band-Aiding the school buildings for the next several years.

But to your question, Eric, the best approach, at least in the short to medium term, prior to this transformation by the state, would have been just to really, really try to support the relationship between Shelby County government and the school system.

And, you know, and we were doing that.

We were doing that as an administration.

- And somebody, you know, again, back in the legislature and also lobbying, working with legislator, or at least trying as county mayor, I pulled some data together.

And when you look at the state letter grades that they do for all the states, and I think I've mentioned this on a recent show, but Memphis-Shelby County Schools, they do A, B, C, D, and F. A third of Shelby County Schools, Memphis-Shelby County Schools, are A and B, a third are D and F, and a third are C. So you got third schools failing, no one want, my word, failing, D and F. You also have a third in Nashville that are failing, right?

A third in Chattanooga, Hamilton County that are failing.

Knox does better in terms of just 14% of its schools.

That sort of sense of Memphis gets targeted, Memphis gets treated differently, I, is that just been reinforced in your many years in county and state government?

- Yeah, absolutely.

The state has mistreated Memphis and Shelby County, continues to mistreat Memphis and Shelby County.

Uses as a kind of a political ball that it can kick around and use in political ads.

I don't know if they quite believe we're China, but they believe we're pretty close to it.

And as you say, we've got failing schools across the state of Tennessee.

It's not like Tennessee's at the top of any education charts.

And so Memphis and Shelby County is not different in many ways from many of the 95 counties that have failing school districts.

But, you know, we're targeted.

And, you know, the whole state as a whole is not doing very well.

If we wanted to have gains, we'd replicate what's going on in Mississippi.

And Mississippi, as a state, is doing an incredible job of having growth in terms of their educational levels.

And instead, in Tennessee, you know, we're focused more on politics when it comes to education, and that's just not good for anyone.

- Let me go back to Bill.

- So you came in with a set of goals, or priorities I should say, two terms ago.

And you have pursued those.

And sometimes people have said things like, "Well, this should be a priority."

And in your pursuit of your priorities, you've really kept your eye on the ball.

What do you feel like has been accomplished, and what is still out there as you leave?

- So a whole host of things.

I mean, as hopefully most people know, our goal was to shift the conversation completely, and we shifted the conversation completely for the entirety of eight years.

It remains to be seen whether or not it's sustainable, whether, you know, it stays on the areas that we focused on, which are basically, you know, everyday Shelby Countians, working families, and so forth.

So, you know, huge gains in terms of focusing on healthcare, right?

That's an important objective of our administration.

So from Regional One to Healthy Shelby, to Senior Prom, to Shelby Cares, which are access points where people can go get preventative care across our county, to mental healthcare.

Shelby County government very soon will be one of the only local governments in the entire United States that owns and operates a mental health facility, right?

That kind of stuff is not happening anywhere else in the country.

To employees, making sure our employees, and Shelby County government is the best place to work in America.

You know, we brought to Tennessee a $40,000 minimum wage, right?

And so that's every employee in Shelby County government makes a minimum of $40,000.

Healthcare expansion, paid parental leave.

I mean, on and on and on.

With respect to youth, making sure that youth, which are kind of, you know, the center of the family, and focusing attention on them, from the Youth and Family Resource Center to the Frayser High School.

No one wanted to build Frayser High School when we came in.

So many people objected to it over and over again, to the rugby field for kids so they can play non-traditional sports.

You know, to pre-K.

Obviously, pre-K was not funded when we came in.

There was no real plan.

Nothing was going on serious in terms of that when we came in, and worked with the Commission to put together a plan and fund pre-K.

So on and on and on with respect to all these areas that are important to working families and being a role model to the community, we've pushed forward.

And so the question is, the challenge is, you know, whether or not that conversation will continue.

I'm hopeful that it will, but it'll be really tough, right?

Because, again, we've shifted from getting out of this deferred maintenance cycle that have been talked about for 15, 20 years.

And the way to get out of it is to build new schools, and now we're back to Band-Aids, right?

We can't do the east region anymore 'cause there's a million challenges.

The board of oversight being the most important one.

And we're not gonna do the Treadwell, right?

Commissioners got a little, you know, they got scared, right?

So we're not gonna do the Treadwell.

So everybody's gonna choose the easier course there, which is Band-Aids, which is same thing in the newspapers year after year, deferred maintenance, deferred maintenance, deferred maintenance.

- And deferred- - Billions.

And it won't stop because, you know.

And so those are the challenges that remain, and hopefully those will be taken up.

Because we had a lot of momentum across many of those areas during my years.

- Well, you certainly weren't shy about saying, "This is the direction we're going.

These are the priorities."

Did you expect that there would be that much of folks jumping in and saying, "No, we need to do this now.

Forget that plan."

- I was not surprised by that.

I was surprised by how decentralized power is in Shelby County government.

And so there are many power centers in Shelby County government, which is a little different from my prior political experiences.

- Elected officials.

- Exactly.

Yeah.

Elected officials.

And judges, elected officials, commissioners.

And that's unique for Shelby County government.

And that's unique for me having come from the state Senate where there's process and order and much more centralization.

Still, there are plenty of people talking, plenty of voices.

Much more centralization, or the City, which has done a lot of things before I got there in 2011, did a lot of things to kind of centralize things, you know, make, you know, in the Mayor's Office and so forth and streamline process in terms of the City Council.

We don't really have that.

You know, when I came in, they weren't passing budgets by June 30th.

I mean, what?

I mean, I had never been a part of a government or observed any kind of process where you can't pass your budget by June 30th.

Shelby County government was not doing that when I came in.

They were doing continuation budgets and all these kinds of things that I'd never heard of.

Well, I heard of them, but they were completely things that you can't do, you shouldn't do.

And so we had to just establish that, no, no, no, no.

You have to fund things.

You have to fund things by way of a vote, and you've got to pass a budget by June 30th.

And so, but it is unique.

It's a unique creature.

Elected officials, as you say, lots of power centers.

The Commission appoints people.

Like, what the heck?

Why are they appointing people?

They appoint people to judicial commissioner.

That's a broken system.

They shouldn't be appointing people.

Obviously, executive branches should appoint all the folks that has a vetting quality to it.

And the Commission should affirm those appointments.

But it's a unique creature.

And it comes out of a history of, you know, these kinds of commissioners.

I think they were called something else, you know.

Something else in a prior-- - They were called squires.

- Called squires.

And part of that history- - I learned something new today.

- Yeah, part of that history is those squires/commissioners were the executive and the legislative branch.

- And you didn't have a mayor.

- You didn't have a mayor.

They did all of the functions.

And so out of that history, you still kind of have some of that left over there.

And then you've got a host of elected officials with the sheriff in charge of the jail.

Like, I wanna be in charge of the jail.

I'd love it.

I'd take it over.

I'd reform it.

But the charter prohibits that.

It says the sheriff's in charge and I can't do anything about it.

- I mean, again, 10 minutes left in show.

And let me, again, remind everybody, if you joined late, we're taping this, and we're airing this a week after we taped it.

So the election is finished and so on.

So we just, we had to delay it for some scheduling issues.

And when you talk about that decentralization, I mean, you've got the DA's Office.

Totally separate.

All the judges, separate.

And the judges are very much kind of separate from one another, some would say.

You've got the Juvenile Court separate from the other courts.

You've got all this.

A lot of that really came to light, especially on the criminal justice side, in that post-COVID period when crime spiked nationally, right?

And Memphis has a historic high crime rate.

It went higher, like a lot of other cities.

It has since come down pretty, you know, dramatically.

Your, the county mayor has these kind of, not a lot of direct authority over public safety, right?

I mean, it's one of those ones where you don't run the sheriff, you don't run the deputies, you don't run the courts, you don't run the DA.

And yet everybody, it felt like, for a couple years were first talking about COVID and then, oh my gosh, this big jump in crime.

Talk about that period and what that was like.

- Well, the COVID period was, you know, I don't think anybody wants to talk about COVID.

It was just a horrible period for all of us in all of our lives.

But you're right that decentralization is one of the things that, you know, makes things even harder in Memphis and Shelby County.

And then of course we've got two big, huge local governments right across from each other in Civic Plaza.

In terms of public safety, the Mayor's Office, as you say, you know, I can't do anything at the jail, 'cause I don't, you know, the charter says I can't.

But what I can do is I can support the sheriff, which we've done a great job doing that.

And I do have control over our corrections facility.

So I have a corrections facility out at Shelby Farms.

At the same time, the Youth Justice and Education Center, the sheriff said he couldn't run that anymore.

I don't know if it was capacity or competency, frankly.

But he couldn't run the Youth Justice and Education Center, so we took that over and ran that on behalf of the court system.

We also are doing, in terms of public safety, the Shelby County Office of Re-Entry.

And so we reformed that office when we came in.

You know, people little remember that that office was a joint office, city-county.

And when I came in, we reformed that office.

We made it a county-only office.

Working with the city, right?

They agreed to that change and so forth.

Made it a county-only office.

And then really had some accountability on some of what the programming was, and expanded that office dramatically.

- Let's talk, before I go back to it, county finances.

Just, I think what, this last week, in the last week or two, the County Commission borrowed $125 million.

It's part of the trying to fill some gaps as, before property tax revenue come in.

Are you comfortable with where, I mean, some people are very concerned, I think, about our county finances not in a good place.

The county's fund balance, I guess, is that fair to call the rainy day fund, is not where people want it to be?

Is the county going in the right direction in terms of its cashflow, balance, and reserves?

- Well, we always need to tighten up on spending.

So there's no doubt about that.

And we always need to shore up our rainy day fund, right, our fund balance, particularly now.

It's at a horribly low level.

And I would love to shore up that rainy day fund because that's how we manage cash flow.

So we shouldn't manage cash flow by borrowing.

We should manage cash flow by having a rainy day or savings, a savings account that we can tap into to manage our cash flow.

So those two things worry me.

Do I think we are in a fine position, generally speaking?

Sure.

I mean, absolutely.

We're gonna see growth in our revenues in the years to come.

We need to cut down on our grant spending.

And this, and the whole process is gonna be politicized.

Obviously we've seen it politicized in the past.

It's gonna be politicized in the future.

We won't be able to get auditors very easily because of the state's, you know, heavy-handedness.

So we won't be able to hire people very easily to audit our finances.

It'll be difficult for the next mayor to get approval for budgets from the state because of just the nature of how they treat Memphis and Shelby County.

So those are, you know, real problems, real, you know, icebergs that are in the offing.

- Does that make, you know, you, the county has, you've advocated for a really big expansion, rebuilding, remaking of Regional One.

There are people out there talking about, we need to build a new billion-dollar-plus jail.

Does it put those kind of big projects really out of reach?

- Well, the jail is something we shouldn't do because we've got higher priorities.

So hopefully that's out of reach.

I pray that's out of reach because, you know, the jail is a 1981 facility, and our school buildings on average are 30 years older.

And what we do about our schools has a direct relationship to our jail population.

In other words, if you get the school's piece right, then your jail population hopefully will go down.

So I'd like to make sure that we focus on the important things.

And the jail is something out there that needs to be done, but it is less important than our schools and our neighborhoods.

And so I think we can do a lot of those things.

I think we should prioritize.

And I would just put the jail, you know, behind some of those things.

I think we can get them all done.

- About five minutes left, Bill.

- So we heard that there have been talks with the state about the tax anticipation note, one of the two that's used.

The state, as fraught as the relationship is, really didn't have too much of a problem with the one you did last November, right?

- No, the state doesn't have any problem with financing your operations in this way in general.

So this is a pretty normal practice across the entire state of Tennessee, right?

There is nothing unusual about borrowing from one fund in order to meet cashflow needs.

That is absolutely normal across our entire state in Memphis and Shelby County.

We're not the first people to bring this up.

It is a little unusual, as you say, the last time that we took it to Commission.

Because in most places in our state, there's no requirement to take it to Commission.

And so obviously the fact that we brought that kind of management of cashflow to Commission for questions and public debate made it an issue.

Mostly a little bit exaggerated.

You know, I'm just gonna be honest.

Mostly a little bit exaggerated.

- Well, political, certainly.

- Yeah.

Political.

It became kind of a political item.

But it's absolutely normal.

And this last iteration, we are borrowing not in terms of one fund to another, which we control all the funds, but we are actually borrowing externally.

And so that's another level of borrowing to meet cash flow, and we should worry about that.

But borrowing to meet cashflow for an organization that only gets, you know, tax receipts a couple times a year is not unusual.

This happens all across the state, and the state did not bat an eye at that when we brought that up last time.

- Yeah, has anyone ever thought of moving the county fiscal year to match when the receipts come in?

- No, I think we just need to cut spending.

I think we need to shore up our rainy day fund.

I mean, I think that's the key.

And if we don't do that, then these kinds of borrowing to meet cashflow needs will only grow over time.

Can they be managed?

Absolutely.

You have to just shore up your finance office for sure.

And there's gonna be growth in property taxes for sure.

So it can be managed, but it is not the best way, right?

I manage through this all every year.

And I never raised taxes, right?

Eight years, I never raised taxes, et cetera.

But you can manage through this another eight years.

Absolutely you can.

But you got to pay attention to your finance office.

You got to pay attention to your growth.

And it will be better to just cut expenditures, which I'd love to do, but you know, county commissioners, there are grants all over the place.

It's just nonstop grants, grants, grants, grants.

- What's next for you?

- So I'm gonna find me a patch of earth and just lay down.

[laughs] - For a week, a month, maybe a year?

Like, how long will you be laying down?

- You know, I, you know, I don't know.

So I, so, you know, I was in the state Senate, City Council.

Both those were part-time jobs.

And I was a professor at the University of Memphis at the same time.

So I'll go back to being a professor.

So I'm not gonna go to the University of Memphis, but I'll go back to being a professor, full-time professor, which, you know, give me some time to reflect.

I'll teach a class in the fall, a couple classes in the spring.

- Where?

- Well, I haven't said quite yet, so that's still to come.

But I'll go back to being a professor, and I'm looking forward to it, and, you know, and be able to speak my mind.

- As if you don't speak your mind as county mayor.

- Exactly, but I- - This will be interesting to see you really unfiltered, so.

- Well, I'm balancing now.

I'm balancing, balancing all the various groups.

But I'll be able to speak my mind without having to balance all the things that one has to balance in a political office, so looking forward to it.

- Do you, future elected office?

- So I'm gonna definitely take a break.

So it'll be awhile.

It'll be a while.

But you never know what might come.

I'm certainly not, like, you know, eager to get back in the political fray.

I've served.

I'm very satisfied with my service.

And I would love for more people to come up through this system and serve and have a chance to lend their talents.

- You joke about speaking your mind.

It is funny to think back, I mean, at the early days of the show, early years of the show when you were on City Council, I do remember you coming on and you were, you danced around a little bit.

And most people do when they first come on and when they're first on Council or elected.

Well, maybe this, maybe that.

And it is funny over the time, and certainly in this second term, you have not held back.

So I'd say that.

I also will express my appreciation that you have come on the show all the time.

People can say, "Well, he's a politician, and they all wanna be on TV."

They don't.

- No.

- And it's not about us and it's not about KNO.

It's not about Daily Memphis.

We appreciate that you have been forthcoming.

You've come, you've talked about why you're doing things and why you don't like things.

So that, not all politicians do that.

And so I think it serves the public well.

So thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

Good luck in your next act.

- Thanks.

- And thank you, Bill.

Thank you for joining us.

If you missed any of the show, you can get the full episode online at wkno.org, The Daily Memphian, YouTube, or you can download the show as a podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

But thanks very much, and we'll see you next week.

[intense orchestral music] [acoustic guitar chords]