Is Mike Keeney our new civic visionary? Keeney takes over as the new Chair of the Chamber Chairman's Circle following the bully terminations of Dr. Marie Feagins and Amber Covington. Will Keeney introduce civic practices, away from civic bullying and elitist entitlement that support real economic development?

Such practice would focus on talent development and oversight of public finances. We shall see. But NOTHING changes for the better in Shelby County without dramatically increased public financial oversight.

At the same time, Keeney’s Orgill corporation feels entitled to 2 corporate PILOT subsidies in Collierville. So, in the most business-affordable City nationally, Orgill is going to bust out and leave Shelby County if they don’t get their entitled incentive like everyone else? So pitiful and sad. Orgill has profitably operated in Memphis for almost 200 yrs, with Orgill's PILOT applications pointing to authorship of two more public ripoffs.

Keep in mind, there are conscious corporations in Memphis. I have tried to get media coverage for corporations that have walked away from corporate PILOTs. Those corproations include Amazon, Smith & Nephew, ABB, and Monogram Foods. But the joke local media refuses to cover and revere these socially conscious corporations that decline excessive local tax incentives.

Anyway, Orgill along with a whole host of local corporations, like FedEx, AutoZone, and Downtown developers generally, help explain Chamber elitist entitlement. Such entitlement has resulted in spiraling ecosystem decline, birthed largely by the Chamber’s companion CEO organization, Memphis Tomorrow. Memphis Tomorrow and the Chamber have been in close proximity to almost every elitist public rip off in the City.

The Chamber claims to be an economic development organization. But they are not. The Chamber is a business membership organization that practices the type of anti-growth corporate socialism that pummels small business. Small business is the primary growth driver of local economies. It would be interesting to ask Keeney or the Mayors how the following practices and incidents promote economic growth. Taxpayer cost losses are in parenthesis and estimated at $1.4 billion over a 10 yr period.

Systemic  workforce development botching ($255M), botching the transit system while the Chamber celebrated Gary Rosenfeld ($40M), bunkering billions in the Sports Authority far in excess of needed funds for FedEx Forum renovation($300M), spending millions to move a centrally located art museum to the riverfront ($50M), botching MIM BBQ ($30M), losing conventions and events like the Southern Heritage Classic ($20M),  ripping off the Depot inner city ($8M), ripping off the Cobblestones($6M), awarding excessive corporate PILOTs ($400M), bullying professionals doing their jobs out of their jobs, allowing non-transparent public-privates to run wild with public funds ($250M), bullying 3 international investors out of Downtown so that taxpayers can subsidize $30M for the benefit of local punk elitist families ($50M), putting taxpayers underwater on TDZs that don’t generate incremental public revenue and public bodies not practicing public financial oversight, further enabled by an intentionally negligent Republican Comptroller.

As far as the estimated costs above, those are informed estimates but please make your own estimates.The taxpayers losses could be much more. But seriously, take a shot at it. $1.4 billion would fund 650 public employees for public safety, bus drivers, counselors and teachers, while giving MATA a fresh start and paying for the County's portion of Regional One. Or if not the former, approximately $1.00 decrease in the combined City/County property tax rate. On a $200K house that is $500 less in property tax per year. 

In short a whole bunch of public money has been squandered, due to failed public financial oversight and that weighs heavily on taxpayers. There is no pathway to economic growth in an environment where elitist led debaucherous behavior goes ignored, while saying “YES” to and “Turning the Page” on punk azz behavior. And Mayors Young and Harris both know about saying “YES” and “Turn the Page”.

In the era of “YES” and “Turn the Page”, local public leadership is pretending that The Chamber was not intimately involved in the unpopular bully termination of Memphis Shelby County Schools (MSCS) Superintendent Dr. Marie Feagins. The Feagins termination follows a similar Chamber involved bully termination of Amber Covington (11/13/24) as Executive Director of the Greater Memphis Workforce Development Board (GMWDB). The Chamber served as fiscal agent for GMWDB where Covington reported the Chamber to the State for making a payment, with federal funds, to an illegitimate account. Covington was just doing her job and then fired for it, and her report seems to have come sensitive to a $500K+ payment to another illegitimate account that occurred, not long ago, with yet another failed workforce development board in Workforce Mid-South.

And now the public is learning about Councilman JB Smiley donors being upset over Feagin’s denial of the Peer Power contract. Peer Power’s Dow McVean is a Chamber Chairman’s Circle member. McVean unpleasantly confronted Feagins over the denial of an automatic renewal of what McVean believed to be good Peer Power programming. And to McVean’s credit, he has since apologized for the confrontation. Besides, good programming often gets cut when a new Superintendent arrives. I know. I have professionally experienced such unpleasant cuts. But an upset vendor in McVean is not the problem. The Chamber bully entitled follow up is the problem and likely the tipping point that led to the Feagins bully termination. Please, I beg you, call me a conspiracy theorist!

So how would a Chamber elsewhere handle a contract termination of one of their members? Well, they would probably say, we gotta support our just hired Superintendent. And then if the membership believed in their member’s program, they would lobby the program in the next budget cycle. What Chambers elsewhere would NOT do is conspire to bully terminate their just hired Superintendent for doing their job. That’s civicly nuts!

So now Mike Keeney takes over as Chair of the Chairman’s circle. What’s going to be the next City vision? Right now, with all the money bunkered in the Sports Authority, it seems to be Downtown, with taxpayers footing the bill, after 3 international investment firms were run out of Downtown, in Hard Rock, Schulte, and Starwood. You’ve heard the quippy vision statement in “So goes your Downtown, so goes your city”. The former is asinine. How bout “So goes your city, so goes your downtown”? Or maybe the new vision is a $1 billion public non-transparent spend in the More for Memphis public-private? Or maybe Memphis becoming a fine art town or tennis Mecca?

Then again, Keeney might depart from the sick Memphis status quo to advocate for what true business civic leaders typically promote in talent development and strong public financial oversight. Strong public oversight in Memphis, where there has been none, will only occur with the adequate staffing of the local State Comptroller’s office.

What makes the Memphis elitists so stupid is they would have probably made more money had they just got on with the business of public economic and workforce development over the last 20 yrs, as opposed to bullying and ripping off taxpayers. And if not making more money, the elitists would have a much better place to call home.