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When EDGE Subsidizes Pricey Apartments, Developers Win And Low-Wage Renters Lose
Because little has changed since I wrote two articles in October, 2020, for MLK50.com about EDGE’s tax breaks for apartment developers, the first article is reprinted here and the second will be...
View ArticleShelby County: Picking The Best Option From A List Of Bad Ones
In searching for the money to rebuild the Regional One Health complex, Shelby County Government is faced with picking the best option from a list of bad ones. As is often the case in local government...
View ArticleNext Memphis Mayor’s Mandate for Tax Breaks Reform
As the agencies that have been delegated the power from city and county governments to give tax breaks to companies and real estate developers, there are questions that every mayoral candidate should...
View ArticleMemphis: Public Service Poor with a Math Problem
City of Memphis government is public safety and house value poor. For example, the total amount of expenditures in the city budget for police and fire totals $506 million. Meanwhile, all of the city’s...
View ArticleNew Jail Need Overshadowed By Doable Plan To Pay For It
Paint and polish can only gloss over the problems of the Shelby County Jail, which is housed in an antiquated building unfit for its present use. It was July 19, 1975, and that was the lede on the play...
View ArticleCounty Commissioners Seek Greater Accountability for PILOT Programs
It’s hard to remember all the times committees have set out and failed to analyze/reform/rationalize our local PILOT program but there is greater hope this time because a committee of the Shelby County...
View ArticlePILOT Tax Break’s Missing Piece – Equity
The most glaring problem about PILOT tax breaks is that it is a massive wealth transfer – from the people in one of the cities and counties with the highest poverty rates to the stockholders of major...
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Big Fish Landed at McKellar Lake
By John Branston Some mighty big fish have been taken from the waters in and around McKellar Lake in southwest Memphis. An angler recently landed an 80-pound catfish, but it could have been a...
View ArticleMemphis and Musk
It’s hard to remember when a major economic development announcement has generated a dichotomy of opinion as stark as the one that greeted the announcement that Elon Musk’s xAI supercomputer will be...
View ArticleOur Upside-Down Tax Systems Asks The Most Of Those With The Least
Tennessee’s tax system is farcical, and because it is, so is Memphis and Shelby County’s. But there is no humor in this farce. In truth, the Tennessee tax system should not be called a system at all,...
View ArticleCity and County Bond Ratings Are About Investors, Not Taxpayers
When Rick Masson, Robert Spence, and I negotiated the agreement to bring the Grizzlies from Vancouver to Memphis, it often felt like there was an unseen third party in the room. We would come to an...
View ArticleLegislators’ Lack of Curiosity And The Tax Burden
The lack of curiosity by local government legislative bodies is staggering. This blog’s last post pointed out the questions that never get asked because CFOs talk about bond ratings with thick...
View ArticleIt’s The Value of Taxes, Not The Amount, That Matters Most
There are many high tax cities that are among the U.S.’s most economically successful. That’s because taxes alone are not the definitive determining factor for whether the public considers taxes are...
View ArticleReport: Memphis and Shelby County Gave $344 Million In Tax Breaks In 6 Years
Only one county in the United States gave away more tax money in the form of business incentives than Shelby County – $239.2 million between 2017-2022 – and that doesn’t include $105 million in PILOTs...
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10 Most Read Blog Posts of 2024: Population, MLGW, Tax Breaks, African...
The following blog posts were the most read in 2024: 1) City Council’s New Salary-Setting Power Calls for Clear Rules and Ethics, November 20, 2024: So, now, Memphians will see if they have put the...
View ArticleMemphis Nears The Top For City With Highest Hotel-Motel Fees
Memphis City Council is poised to raise the city hotel-motel tax to its maximum of 5.0%, an increase of 0.5%. The increase moves Memphis closer and closer to the top of the list of cities with the...
View ArticleBeaching Wall Street Whales Buying Up Memphis Houses
In just a two-year period – 2019-2020 – more than 7,000 single-family houses in Memphis were purchased by out-of-town investment groups and hedge funds from New York and California but also China and...
View ArticleTrump Cuts Confront Memphis – Nonprofits, Income, and Immigration
“All politics is local” was the oft-repeated maxim of former Speaker of the House of Representatives Tip O’Neill to describe the politics of his day, but these days it’s more like President Donald...
View ArticleTax Rates Lower, Tax Bills Likely Higher
State law forbids local governments from receiving windfalls from reappraisal but that doesn’t mean that they don’t have opportunities to increase their revenues. That’s what’s under way in the...
View ArticleThere Is No Holiday For Memphis Mayor Paul Young
Leave This Blank:Leave This Blank Too:Do Not Change This:Your email: Today is a holiday for Memphis city government employees but for Mayor Paul Young, there has been no respite in the 512 days since...
View ArticleThe Austerity Trap: A Tale of Two Tax Policies in Shelby County
By Cardell Orrin This budget season, a quiet but significant divergence in fiscal policy has come to a head. While the majority-Republican suburbs are making bold decisions to invest, the...
View ArticleState Certified Tax Law Is Archaic and Punitive
The certified tax state law, the so-called “truth in taxation” law, mandates that local governments cannot automatically receive more revenues as a result of reappraisal. It is archaic and punitive....
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