- (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.

- The City budget gap, a new superintendent, and an update from the legislature, tonight, on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian, and thanks for joining us.

I am joined tonight by a roundtable of journalists talking about some of the biggest stories of the week.

Toby Sells, News Editor, Memphis Flyer.

Thanks for being here again.

- Thanks for having me, sir.

- Julia Baker covers criminal justice and public safety for us at the Daily Memphian.

Thanks for being here.

- Thank you.

- Laura Testino is a reporter with Chalkbeat covering education.

Thanks very much for being here.

- Of course, thanks.

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

we'll start, we're gonna try to cover a whole bunch of stuff.

I think, let's start though with the budget gap, and I'll go to you, Bill.

Mayor Young this week said there's something like a $30 million gap.

He has talked about a property tax increase.

That follows, what, a week or two ago where there was $10 million that was found to not be funded.

I don't know how to say that accurately, but there was a $10 million gap before that related to hiring in the fire department and training and so on.

So something like $40 million.

That they covered with the rainy day fund.

But the $30 million, do we know, is that, is that the scope of the gap?

Do we know, where are we?

- Mayor Young, in his address that he did at Mount Vernon Baptist Church in Westwood said it is at least $30 million.

He is not saying at this point how many cents on the tax rate that would be, because he will be doing his best in his budget plan that he'll present to the City Council this coming Tuesday, he will be trying to find other ways to get that $30 million figure down.

How many pennies that is on the tax rate depends on the calculation.

For the current fiscal year, each cent on the property tax rate produces $1.4 million in revenue.

So that's how the calculations are done.

What's the revenue you get from one penny, and then you start figuring out how many pennies you need to get to $30 million, or the administration's hope here is that it can be something less than that, or that it can be combined, a tax hike and some budget cuts or realignment.

- And the gap comes from, this budget gap comes from what?

- The budget gap comes from several sources.

First of all, all of the Federal American Rescue Plan Act funding that the city and county and numerous local governments have relied on for several years now is coming to an end at the end of December, which is right in the middle of the next fiscal year that's coming up because the fiscal year starts on July 1st.

Also, the city is expecting that its annual contribution to pension liability will be going up in the next fiscal year.

So that money has to be accounted for as well.

Put those two together and some other factors, and you've got at least $30 million in the mayor's own words.

- And we've been many years now without a property tax increase.

- More than eight years.

- Yeah, yeah.

This also comes as we have a new superintendent for Memphis-Shelby County Schools, and Laura Feagins, and she is, came out and asked for $25 million to support capital improvements at the city, sorry, Memphis-Shelby County School System.

I still struggle with the name.

A lot of people kind of lose track, and they'll say to me that they assume the City of Memphis funds the Memphis-Shelby County School system.

It has not since those early years of Behind the Headlines.

- 2008.

- Yes, when Bill and I covered that story so much that people stopped me in the grocery store and said, stop talking about it, but the city has not funded, has been a regular funder of the system in all that time.

But go to you, Laura.

It was a bold move.

There's $100 million in stuff of like electricity and foundations and HVAC, and she's asking Mayor Young for $25 million, that would be $25 million over and above this $30 million gap we're talking about.

- And it would probably be capital funding.

- Yeah, capital funding.

- Which is different than funding that's generated out of the tax rate in the City General Fund.

- Fair enough.

Let's talk about that ask.

Did that surprise you?

- That's right.

No, I don't think it's totally an unexpected ask.

What we know about the district and Dr. Feagins is that she's continuing down the road that previous Interim Superintendent Tony Williams did of gathering county, city, and other leaders across Memphis and Shelby County to create an infrastructure plan that the district wants ultimately to drive potential new redevelopments so that they're not doing closures that lead to blight in communities, right?

They don't, they want more of the exciting stuff that's happening in Melrose and less of what was happening in Melrose before the new library.

And so last year, we know that at the County Commission, the district did not receive funding for deferred maintenance.

The capital funds that they got approved for were all for new buildings within the district.

And so the district has been saying really since the fall that they're seeking additional funds from federal and city government for this capital plan.

And even took a look back at my notes from Mayor Young's campaign back in October, very clearly was, you know, said that this would be a way that the city could in the future support it.

Of course, we don't know if that's in the budget as of yet, as The Daily Memphian has reported, but we do know that the district is very clearly wanting to set forward on, you know, really spending a lot on its infrastructure right now to rightsize the district in a new plan.

- We'll come back.

The new superintendent is, what, two weeks?

Two and a half weeks into the job as we sit here.

We'll talk some more about that, but I wanna go over to Julia.

We'll kind of bounce around a bit tonight and talk about a whole lot of things going on in your beat and in public safety, criminal justice.

Maybe we start with some of the things going on locally, and that'll segue into some things, a lot that's going on at the state.

I guess we start on a better note.

I don't wanna say it's a great note, but that crime, the first quarter crime stats came out.

Overall crime was down 14% compared to the first quarter of 2023.

Violent crime down 10%, property crime down 22%, all compared to 2023, but still elevated compared to say 2021 or 2020, you know, COVID, and the depth of COVID.

What else is going on?

There's so many things, and maybe we talk about the tragic death of the Officer McKinney and where things stand with that.

- Yeah, you know, remains to be seen what the cause of the, you know, the decrease in crime is.

You know, we have a new mayor, new City Council with fresh ideas.

That could certainly be part of it, but crime is definitely not gone.

As we saw with the death of Officer Joseph McKinney.

One of the suspects in that case is dead.

And he had been released out of jail for a previous crime, you know, released on his own recognizance.

So obviously, you know, that's an indication that crime's not gone.

But yesterday we found out that Officer McKinney was shot by friendly fire.

I'm assuming one of his partners mistakenly shot him.

So, you know, Chief Davis said in a statement yesterday that, you know, although it wasn't one of the suspects who, you know, shot him, it was, you know, the cause of his death.

- In the sense they're saying that the young men in the car shot first.

It gets into the whole notion that the young man who died, who was released gets into a thing we've talked about a ton on this show and that is a heavy issue up at the legislature right now.

And I'll just walk through real quickly some of the things that had been changed at the legislature.

There's more that could happen.

Most of the laws and rules, and we've talked about this at the table, about how bail and who is released, that's really set at the state with a lot of discretion from the DA's Office, from the judicial commissioners and the judges.

A lot of what's happening up at the state is probably, I think, summarized as reigning in that discretion.

So the ability to pay is no longer considered when setting bail.

That's been a very controversial thing for a lot of people.

There's probably gonna be some lawsuits and challenges on that on the federal level.

I think those setting bail and judges, if I have this right, are now have to consider the safety of the community in terms of who gets released.

There's also I believe this passed, bail that would fine parents of delinquent juveniles, in some way trying to hold them accountable for or fine them for delinquent juveniles.

What else have I missed from the legislature that has this kind of really big influence on how the judges and judicial commissioners and DAs work?

- Right, so yeah, you've got the, you know, where judicial commissioners cannot consider the defendant's ability to pay.

So the parent accountability, Parental Accountability Act would charge a parent $1,000 or make them, you know, do community service if their child is charged with a delinquent act.

That is actually up in the House today.

So by the time this episode goes out, we'll see, you know, where that has gone.

Also, blended sentencing is up today as well.

It passed in the Senate a couple weeks ago, so we'll see.

- Blended sentencing is a proposal we've talked about here that's pretty widely supported.

Not totally, nothing is totally supported, but right now, the choice that DAs have to make you know, to either try a juvenile as a juvenile or as an adult, that comes with a whole lot of consequences that in some cases, people on many sides of this issue have said, look, we need a middle space where we have a little bit more authority and tracking.

We don't want the record to be just completely expunged for every 18 year old, but we also don't wanna take certain lesser offenses, and I'm not talking about the McKinney case, but lesser offenses and put this person in the adult system.

And so this has been pretty widely supported.

Fair enough to say?

- Yep, it's received bipartisan support.

So, you know, it seems it could pass today, but, we'll see.

- Let me, before, I'm gonna bring Toby in on some of this legislative stuff, but one thing that we did a story Ian Round on our staff did a story about guns, gun legislation and gun, some level of gun restrictions are widely supported.

The polls show, in Memphis, specifically in Shelby County, really statewide.

A number of groups have done, asked questions about this.

But so far this session, stalled bills include red flag laws banning high capacity magazines and assault rifles, repeal of permitless carry.

There was a bill to enhance or, you know, tighten the storage requirements around guns.

All that have stalled.

And in terms of failing, there was a proposal that permits would be required in Shelby County, more liability insurance around guns.

Again, a ban on assault weapons, increased penalties for stealing guns.

Those have all been, have failed in this legislative session.

I dunno if you want to touch on those, Toby, or move in some other legislative stuff about, that you guys have been covering.

- Sure, on guns, guns are here to stay.

The GOP super majority we have in Nashville right now is, they are pro-gun all the way.

Even a special session of the legislature called by GOP Governor Bill Lee last year yielded very little results.

And it seems like the harder that other folks are trying to hit this legislature with some laws on guns, the harder they push back and say, no, we're actually going to make the laws looser.

That has no support from law enforcement officials across the state.

You know, so if you look at a poll from Memphis, those folks, our lawmakers up there, they do not care what those polls say.

They're gonna do what they're gonna do.

And to me, their motivations are mysterious.

I have no idea why, you know, they don't want to push on guns.

You could read the handwriting on the wall there, but not very sure.

I know we're right now, a bill is still up to I think about arming teachers in the classrooms as a safety measure, which is mind boggling.

But there's a lot of things going on with the legislature who continues to override the things that we want to do in Shelby County and all the big cities and every cities here and on money bail.

You talk to criminal advocates, justice reform advocates.

They say the money bail reform was really just following state law.

And then when we got a new state law on that, The Daily Memphian reported Wednesday morning, Thursday morning that when Jaylen Lobley was sentenced, Chris Ingram was just following state law on that.

- Chris Ingram being the judicial commissioner who released Jaylen, the young man killed in the McKinney case.

Released on his own recognizance by the judicial commissioner Chris Ingram.

- Exactly, then you have lawmakers saying, well, you know, you needed to use some common sense on how you use that law, but at the end of the day, you're a lawmaker.

This is your product that we are using in our communities here.

So, you know, tighten it up, that's what you do in Nashville.

Give us a law that you want us to follow.

- You wanna touch on the arming teachers?

I mean, I can't remember, but I think I read, in probably an article in Chalkbeat that you wrote.

I don't think that the unions and the folks, the teachers are particularly in favor of this arming the teacher's proposal.

- Many teachers are not.

What this proposal would allow, and I'm gonna rely on the expertise of my colleague in Nashville, Marta Aldrich here, would be for school staff to also consider, you know, following the measures that the legislation lays out to carry a gun onto school.

And so that would, you know, could look like anything from a bus driver that works for the district to a principal.

- Wow.

- Being inclusive in school staff there.

And so it wouldn't necessarily just be teachers, but that still has one more chamber to make it out of as of Thursday.

- Let's stay with crime, and then we'll move on, I think, but coming back to you, Julia, some other things up at the legislature there.

I believe a law was passed that would, this gets, I can say this as a double negative, that would stop municipalities from banning pre-textual stops.

It was a controversial thing.

It does go back in no small part to Tyre Nichols who was, there was a clearly pre-textual stop going on there and that whole tragedy.

The City Council wanted to stop that, but state law allowed it.

This one just clarifies that you can't even pass, the city or county can't pass a law that says you can ban pre-textual stops.

Pre-textual stops include people who are maybe driving erratically, missing a taillight, missing a, you know, a expired tag, and then you find guns or you find drugs or you find some kind of, that passed as well.

Is that correct?

- It did.

It was signed by the governor a couple of weeks ago.

It's currently in effect.

So right now that local ordinance is completely nullified, and local police officers can pull people over for things like that.

There was a question as to whether they were following that.

We heard, you know, mixed, you know, perspectives from leaders like Mayor Young who said he was going to enforce it.

Chief Davis said she had already been enforcing it, but we heard, you know, otherwise from other sources.

- Also there's, it looks like there'll be a study of a crime lab for Memphis.

A lot of Memphis legislators and local law enforcement and elected officials would like to have a crime lab here.

And there's still unclear whether the state will reduce the number of judges that, by two, that Shelby County has that still kind of in process.

- Yeah.

- Anything else I missed?

Maybe I'll get Bill in here.

Anything I missed on public safety?

I mean, there are a lot going on there, but any thoughts as we move on?

- On the August ballot, there is still this question, there is still this charter amendment that Memphis voters are going to vote on that would, despite what the state has done, would say, no, there are gonna be different gun laws in Shelby County, and there are gonna be permit requirements, and you're not gonna be allowed, or you're gonna pay a penalty if you leave your gun in your car, and it gets stolen.

So there's a showdown beyond what the legislature has passed.

And on the question of pre-textual stops, the legislature really hasn't resolved a conflict between state law and local ordinances that has been in place for some time in terms of traffic offenses.

And the question is still open on whether cities and police chiefs in particular can do what they do every day as a matter of normal course of business.

And that is say, these are the priorities we want you to enforce if you are a police officer.

We want you to spend your time doing this and not this.

So, I think we're gonna see a lot more discussion and a lot more pushback in terms of pre-textual stops in particular.

- We'll move on, but stay at the legislature and come back to you, Toby, a recent cover story y'all did on reparations, and you've done a number, you've also been following the whole bridge, I-55 bridge replacement.

- Yes.

- Which is gonna have a lot of state money and federal money.

And then a story about wetlands developers and how that's all working.

I don't know which of those you wanna tackle first.

- Sure, our cover this week is about wetlands.

Great story by Chris McCoy.

There's been a battle that's been waged for more than a year now, some behind the scenes, some not.

Developers are looking at, you know, pieces of land in West Tennessee that are now protected by state law saying you cannot build on these kinds of wetlands over here.

There was a political action committee formed by developers.

They've been spending a lot of money on lobbyists this year, trying to get those rules loosened, so it can open up some land, especially around Blue Oval City, where they can go and build homes and do those things.

It's looking attractive for them now.

Environmentalists are gonna argue that we need wetlands.

You know, they hold flood waters.

They recharge the aquifer.

They, you know, put CO2, they take CO2 out of the air.

The bill was up by Kevin Vaughn, who's a Republican from Collierville.

He's also a developer.

It's been a battle, but I think there's been open dialogue up there.

I know Protector Aquifer has been, they've testified in front of the House and Senate committees on this.

It kind of got stalled in kind of a good course of dialogue, I think, which is unusual, I think for what happens in Nashville a lot of times.

So now the bill is stalled as we get more information.

Folks aren't seeing it really coming back this year, but you never know with these kinds of bills.

That was the cover story.

Another story that I did, something that was happening earlier this week was about reparations.

We know in 2023, the Shelby County Commission decided to set aside $5 million just to have a committee just to look at reparations in just Shelby County, what that would look like, how that would influence home ownership, healthcare, generational wealth, those kind of things.

And it was a little controversial at the time, and if that committee was formed, they did work.

I'm not sure.

I couldn't confirm that yesterday as I was looking it up.

But there is, there's a legislation in Nashville now that would end that.

They say whatever city- county that you're in, you can't think about, you can't talk about, you can't form a committee to try to have a conversation about reparations, and you can't give any reparations out.

So this was a big battle up there in Nashville Tuesday or Wednesday on the floor of the House.

Both of those bills are stymied now in the House and the Senate.

Big battles.

It's an emotional, emotionally charged issue.

So we're gonna have to wait and see what happens with that.

- Let me stay at the state with you, Laura, a big, big voucher proposal.

School vouchers were proposed.

Bill Lee, Governor Bill Lee, there's been a pilot program, you can kind of describe that.

Wanted to really expand it essentially to all Tennesseans.

Where do things stand on education vouchers right now?

- So we know that once the proposals officially came out of the House and the Senate, those are very different, and neither match the governor's proposal.

So we were looking, even when this began in earnest a few, couple months ago at three different possibilities.

It's still in limbo.

We've got, you know, probably about a week and a half left of session as lawmakers are going through the state budget right now.

We do appear poised to have $144 million for the voucher program that would match the Governor's proposal.

It would not fully fund the proposal that is coming out of the House.

That proposal includes a lot of changes to public schools, and in some ways that, you know, people have wanted, less accountability, more funds for school infrastructure even, initial proposals were to end the ASD, and the funding for that is unlikely to be there by the time that we get through with the budget.

- Right, and you tell me I'm wrong, but am I right, this is, unlike a lot of things at the legislature, which tend to be urban/rural, like the gun stuff tends to be urban/rural.

A lot of the criminal justice stuff that we've been talking about.

Education was not just, there are a lot of small districts, a lot of rural districts that are not real crazy about the idea of vouchers.

Is that fair?

- That's exactly right, yeah.

We have here in Shelby County even, you know, you don't always see the municipal districts and Memphis-Shelby County Schools seeing eye to eye on education policy.

But this is something that all of them have opposed as well as many other rural districts and suburban districts across the state.

- Let's come back to a new superintendent with just a few minutes left here.

- Sure.

- Laura Feagins, she's again, three, almost three weeks as we record into her, into the new job.

You and I are gonna interview her on the show here in a couple of weeks, so we'll get some one-on-one time with her.

I think you maybe already have had.

Your thoughts.

I mean, what are her priorities?

Where has she sort of made some news, and what kind of tone has she struck?

- Sure, so coming in, you know, she had her month of March to consult with the district and sort of get to know what would be coming up.

She has since announced, since her tenure officially began on April 1st, a transition team that is spearheaded by Council of Great City Schools.

They're specifically Michael Hinojosa, who is a former superintendent of Dallas Independent School District and has been a superintendent of 27 years has helped put together a team, both of experts from that national council that the school district is a member of, as well as five current and former superintendents including Dr. Battle over in Nashville and former Memphis City School's Superintendent Carol Johnson-Dean.

Important to know about her addition to the team is she's been very supportive throughout Feagins' transition into the district, and of course is the last female to have had the role who was from out of town.

So they can share some knowledge there.

Marie Feagins has not been a superintendent before, so she's, you know, I think a lot of people are seeing her acknowledge with this transition team some gaps that were identified earlier on when she was selected.

And so she's really, I think, moving forward and in this group that's due to be in town very soon, if not already, will be helping her shepherd in a 100-day plan.

She's already kind of promising some shakeups of cabinet, and so we'll have to see how that shakes out.

- And I have twice now referred to her as Laura Feagins.

It is Laura Testino, Marie Feagins.

I'm gonna get that right before we sit down with her and I embarrass myself further, so apologies.

A quick thing with just a minute left here.

Bill, if the city, I'm coming back to the city and the ask for $25 million towards capital for the school system.

Would that be, I mean if you go, is it one of those things where if you do it one year, you're gonna be stuck doing it for, I shouldn't say stuck, but it's - No, it's not.

- It could be a one-time thing.

- Yeah.

- They could come back and say here's $10 million once.

That's what we got.

- Right, the capital spending would not invoke the Maintenance of Efforts State law that says you give 'em $2 million, let's say, you're on the hook for $2 million infinitely basically.

- A quick thing for you, for Julia, just to kinda wrap up a few things.

Judge Melissa Boyd, a story that I think for people is a combination of sad, infuriating, confusing.

Where, is that over now?

I mean, where does that stand?

- So the saga continues.

Although Judge Melissa Boyd or former Judge Melissa Boyd is, you know, currently on diversion and doing rehab.

Her seat is now open, and there are four people running for her seat.

But that remains to be seen how long that seat will be open because the Tennessee legislature is considering eliminating that seat and another judicial seat in this district.

- And last but not least, Toby, usually at this point in the legislature, we get a marijuana update from you.

Do we have any updates on marijuana policy laws, regulations?

- Marijuana is not a coming this year, and it's been bandied about, of course, there's a few bills.

None of 'em have risen to the level of getting anything formal here.

We're now, they're working with the state, growers and stuff are working with the state to finalize some rules and stuff, keep products on the shelves, but no, we're not gonna see any significant marijuana legislation this year.

- All right, we will leave it there.

Thank you all for being here, and thank you for joining us.

If you missed any of the show, you can get the full episode at wkno.org or you can get it at YouTube or on The Daily Memphian site.

You can also download the podcast to the show from the Daily Memphian, iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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

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