- (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.

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

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

Thanks for joining us.

I am joined tonight by Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris.

Thanks for being here again.

- Thanks for having me.

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

We'll talk about a bunch of issues tonight.

The status of the renovation, expansion and overhaul of Regional One.

I still call it the Med, we'll talk about the upcoming legislative session and many other things.

But we'll start with crime, public safety, criminal justice.

And let's start with your proposal that you've really advocated for.

We at this table have talked a lot about crime, about policing with the city mayor's race last year.

There was lots of talk about policing and CJ Davis and you know, former, now former Mayor Strickland, talking a lot about the revolving door at 201 Poplar.

You've put a big emphasis on mental health and specifically mental health at the jail.

Talk about your proposal and how that works with other parts of the disparate public safety system.

- Well, we've been working with a lot of the stakeholders, including the sheriff and the District Attorney's Office.

And in fact, this is the sheriff's idea that we expand access to more mental health for the folks that are detained at 201 Poplar, the Bailey Justice Center.

There are about 2000 detainees there right now.

We know based on all the national statistics, that about two thirds of them at some point in their lives have had a mental health issue, a mental health problem.

We know based on our own local statistics, that a lot of the folks that are in that facility, languishing in that facility for 300 days, a year, even as long as 500 days because their cases can't be advanced until they're stable.

And stabilization is about 14 days, fourteen days of stabilization before a case can be advanced.

- Mental health stabilization.

- Exactly.

And so what we wanna do is make sure that the sheriff has more tools at his disposal to stabilize folks that are in 201 Poplar.

And so that means building a new facility.

It's an inpatient mental healthcare facility where we will develop a curriculum administered and led by the sheriff and his personnel in appropriate cases, put some of those detainees in that facility so that they can be stabilized.

It is a model that we see not often around the country.

It's probably in about five or six places around the country.

But the good news is one of the best examples of this is taking place right now in Nashville under the direction of the Davidson County Sheriff.

And so that is moving along very well.

As I said, is quite the coordination because it takes the agreement of the specialty court judges, it takes the agreement of the District Attorney's Office, the Sheriff's Office, yours truly, and all the rest, and the county commissioners of course.

And so we've really seen a lot of buy-in from all those different groups, and so we're optimistic.

- Some quick logistics, I think the County Commission in December approved $2.5 million towards studying and maybe, you know, taking steps towards building this.

It's estimated to be something like a $25 million construction project.

And then what would the ongoing budget be and about how many mental health professionals would be there staffing this entity?

- Ultimately, if the current vision is brought to execution, we'll have about a 60-bed facility.

We're currently estimating that the annual cost to operate the facility is about $3 million per year, above and beyond what we're currently spending on some of that law enforcement activity.

The reality though is there's a great chance that we'll save money in the operation of this facility.

And so right now it costs us about a hundred dollars a day or $37,000 a year to house a detainee in the current facility.

To do the mental healthcare services that I talked about are at least three to four times as much per day.

So that may seem like we're, you know, going up on the cost, but remember the program that I talked about is about a 14-day program.

And so we, if you get people stabilized and take care of their cases after about 14 days, you actually save money in comparison to the folks that have to languish there for 300 days, a year or 500 days.

And so that's what we are really taking care of.

And so ultimately we could save money by building the facility and creating this extra tool.

- Couple more from me, then I'll go to Bill.

Save money in the sense that you would get people to trial quicker?

Is that the math or, break down that savings a little bit more.

- We would get those cases disposed of.

So this is ultimately one type of diversion program.

It's a early diversion program.

So the agreement, so this is a team approach and this is how Nashville do it.

You have all the stakeholders in the room to decide which cases are appropriate for stabilization and diverting those individuals.

- To people who listen and say, I'm sure there are critics who say two things.

One, isn't this just being soft on accused criminals and two will this just get them out of jail faster?

And it gets back to former Mayor Strickland's notion of the revolving door, people back out on the street, probably not, maybe not getting mental health treatment once they're out of the jail and you're accelerating people getting back out there to re-offend.

To those critics you would say what?

- Well, part of the issue is the exit care.

So once these individuals are eligible for the diversion program, you've gotta make sure that they have the kind of housing, reentry services that they need to be productive members of our community again.

The reality is all these folks aren't gonna get out, right?

What's holding them back is the stabilization care.

So we've gotta do something about that.

- Okay, Bill.

- And to be clear, they are in the custody of the Shelby County Sheriff's Department when they're at this facility.

They're not just coming there voluntarily, right?

- Exactly.

And we hope that you could stabilize these individuals across two weeks, but if they can't be stabilized across two weeks and they remain in custody until everyone is satisfied that they have been stabilized, a lot of these cases are access to prescriptions.

They haven't been seen by a doctor.

Their prescription has run out.

There are problems like that that could be solved to stabilize these individuals and take care of those cases.

- In one of the County Commission discussions, I heard some commissioners, not all commissioners, but some commissioners saying, well, why don't we just incorporate this into a new criminal justice center?

- Well, a criminal justice center will cost, you know, upwards of a billion dollars.

And so I don't know if our criminal justice system has been as productive as all of us would like to make us feel comfortable as a community investing that level of resources in the system.

And so I think we've gotta show some ability to take care of more cases in our criminal justice system before the public will entrust us with that level of investment.

And so I think this is the start of showing that we can take care of these cases.

There's a long backlog of cases right now, and there are not enough trials and you know, obviously we hear all the commentary about that.

And so this is one of the ways that we can take care of some of those problems and give the public the kind of confidence that it needs for us to invest a billion dollars, upwards of a billion dollars for an entirely new jail and an entirely new court system.

- Would you want the setting for these mental health services to be part of the criminal justice center?

Or would it need to be separate from that?

- So a lot of that can be answered by the siting decisions of where the new facility will be built.

And so we're gonna, you know, we've got some money from the County Commission already, and so we're gonna explore and really drill down on a couple of sites.

But both of those sites are in alignment with whatever may come in future administrations.

And so one site that we'll be looking at is downtown, adjacent to the current criminal justice center, the Bailey Justice Center, 201 Poplar.

And the other site we'll be looking at is adjacent to some of the sheriff's facilities out at our east or Shelby Farms location.

So either one of those are in fully in alignment with whatever may come in future administrations if there is a decision down the line to build a new complex.

Remember a new complex is a, you know, it's a 10-year project, right?

A project of that size is a 10-year project from go, right, from the time you've identified the resources and start the process, you don't finish for another 10 years-- - That would be a full billion dollar new jail, criminal justice facility.

That would be 10 years?

- So the complex is office, jail, and courtrooms.

So I assume when people say a new facility, they're talking about a jail and courtrooms, they may be talking about offices too.

They're probably talking about all of it.

But either way, that is a large 10-year project no matter how you cut it.

And so that's highly, it's just, it's not gonna happen on my watch, and it's probably not gonna happen on the next mayor's watch.

I'm not saying that there's not the studies that can be done and the process can be started, but you just gotta remember that's a 10-year project.

And by the time we finish a project like that, guess what?

It's time to rebuild the mental health facility because it will have aged out anyway.

- We'll say, I think at the same meeting around the same timeframe that the County Commission approved the money we're just talking about to begin this mental health facility and begin looking at it.

They also approved $2.3 million in funding for 21 full-time youth development specialists that would be part of the Memphis-Shelby County Juvenile Court and then also went ahead and approved $4.6 million for the full next year.

I think you were very supportive of that.

I think it was a 12-0 vote, but Bill can correct me.

Again, this notion of, we talk a lot about enforcement, more police, more cameras, more, you know, state highway patrol, but this is a different, this is something else.

And talk about why these kinds of programs and maybe other programs the county have going on can be effective or have been effective at reducing crime in Memphis.

- Well, this is an initiative of the Juvenile Court Judge Sugarmon, but you're right, we are very supportive of his vision for the court system and the investment that the County Commission decided to make is one of the largest investments that we'll see in our juvenile court system for many, many years.

So his compliment is gonna be dramatically increased by way of this investment.

You talked about the number of new positions that he's able to afford.

And he says among other things that this will allow him to have more contact with juveniles, right.

That there is not enough follow up, there's not enough contact with those juveniles to make sure that we know, you know, where they are and whether or not they're still on the straight and narrow path.

And so I think that's what he is trying to do.

He's a new elected official.

Him and Steve Mulroy came in with new visions in the last election cycle.

And so we've done everything we can as an administration to support their vision.

And you know, Tarik Sugarmon is obviously, you know, shooting for the stars and that's good news for this community because we're gonna see the largest expansion of his ability to impact the lives of youth that we've ever seen in the juvenile court for many years.

- You mentioned Steve Mulroy, Shelby County District Attorney, a year into the job and is under tremendous pressure, right?

I mean there is a lot of talk about the upcoming legislative session of looking really hard one at how the DA operates at even, you know, there's been talk of people making it easier to recall or remove a DA, I mean, there's just huge pressure on him.

There's been pressure from other parts of the, Jim Strickland was a big critic of Steve Mulroy and his approach to how people are sentenced and so on.

You've been a friend I think and an ally.

I think you campaigned with him a year ago when he was running.

How do you think, he doesn't work for you?

I always want to clarify, you know, the county mayor is not the president, right?

Everything doesn't flow down from that.

You are a part of the county government, of the local government.

But as a political ally and as someone who cares, you know, been in politics a long time, how is Steve Mulroy doing and is the criticism and pressure fair?

- He's doing great.

I think he's doing, I think he's, you know, doing everything that he can from his domain to address all the concerns that are on his plate.

Obviously he's got a big plate, you know, he is one of the chief law enforcement officials in town.

And so that's the biggest issue we have right now.

But he's, you know, doing an excellent job so far.

He's convened most recently a crime summit.

And that was probably the first time in a long time that all of us got in the room together.

And obviously it's hard to program next steps with such a large room and lots of diverse opinions.

But we all got together and we all came out and were on one page at least for those moments.

And those are really important moments.

And I think those have led to a lot of other kind of moments like that.

One of the takeaways from his crime summit was an effort to make sure that we had a more robust violence intervention program here in Memphis and Shelby County.

We've got a lot of violence interventionists or violence interrupters, and we have a lot of folks operating in that space.

I think the name that comes up most often is Memphis Allies or Youth Villages.

And so given that we've got multiple organizations operating in that space of violence interruption, you know, how do you pull all those together?

That was one of the follow-up components of his crime summit.

And so we're doing that now.

I mean, we just had a meeting at Le Bonheur, which also has a violence interruption program with District Attorney Mulroy and all the violence interruption operators to talk about how we're doing the follow up when people are, you know, either shot or a family member in their household is shot and we know that they have a high propensity to be involved in another shooting very, very soon.

How are we following up with them?

How are we delivering care to them?

How are we getting them back on the, as I said before, getting them back on the straight and narrow?

- Bill.

- Let's talk about Regional One Health.

The County Commission was to get an update this week on how that's going.

But that's been put off 'til committee's, next committee sessions.

But during their discussion, there has been some concern that all of the money for the Regional One Health and the building of the two new high schools, one in Frasyer and Cordova may not be there or that the dollar figures are tight on that.

What can you tell us about that?

- Well, we're committed to all of these projects.

I'm committed to all of these projects and we have to invest in these things that are gonna make a difference in the lives of, you know, folks in Memphis and Shelby County.

I know that sounds cliche, but you've gotta remember that Regional One is our only public hospital and that's where all of us will have to go if we really in need of urgent medical care because they have the kind of specialties in place that'll save our lives.

And so I'm committed to that.

Obviously we proposed the plan that leads to $350 million over 5 years to get their construction started and that money is there and already accounted for.

We think that we can do even more if we have to.

With respect to the two high schools, you know, we had that long running problem of the Germantown namesake high schools and to whom they belonged and how to work out and negotiate that deal.

And so that came together, right?

We had, you know, great superintendent and a great mayor in Germantown and all of us, you know, sat in the room and worked that deal out.

And part of that, as you said, is a new high school in Cordova.

I think they call it the East Region High School.

And so I'm fully committed to that project and we've already allocated the resources for that project.

If the costs balloon because we realize, you know, I realize we're in an inflationary environment, if those costs balloon, Shelby County Government will be there to support our students and to support Memphis and Shelby County Schools.

There is no conflict, there's no better expense, there's no better priority than supporting our kids.

And I've organized enough tours of school buildings and some of you may have been on those tours and so forth to show the mold, to show the leaky roofs to show the inadequate facilities, the heating system's not working, the cooling system's not working.

And so I'm fully committed to that.

And so it is a ghost story.

Nothing more than a ghost story to say that the Shelby County government is not gonna have the backs of the school system.

We're gonna have the back of the school system.

We're still gonna have the back of the school superintendent because our visions are aligned.

We wanna see a new school in Cordova, we wanna see a new school in Frasyer and we wanna see schools everywhere, right?

We wanna see schools everywhere.

And so I've gotta watch the the meter of course, but I've gotta watch the meter only because I want to keep this going, right?

I wanna keep this going.

You know, we just recently worked with Shelby County schools to do the rugby field.

Right?

To do the rugby field, which is something the school students told us that they wanted, they wanted more investment in non-traditional sports.

And so we, great partner, Memphis Inner City Rugby was ready with a shovel-ready project.

And so we're gonna build a rugby field to support students in the Memphis-Shelby County School system that wanna do non-traditional sports.

- You proposed a a $50 increase in the wheel tax to fund all of this and through compromise that made it to $25.

So you told the Commission this is enough to get Regional One started.

this is enough for the two high schools, but it's probably not enough for beyond that, right?

- Right.

- And that still remains to be seen, but in the governor's upcoming budget, there will be the first of the funding for Regional One Health.

Am I right on that?

- Well, I'll leave the governor to propose his own budgets.

- But that's the anticipation though that the state sees the local money is in there first and then they come ahead with a commitment to it.

- That's exactly right.

We're hopeful that we're all in alignment.

We just met with some of the congressional delegation and you know, the feedback from the congressional delegation in Washington was very hot on this topic.

Everybody's very supportive of rebuilding the campus at Regional One.

We've met with the County Mayor Association from the entire state there unanimously.

The county mayors across the entire state are unanimously in support of this project, rebuilding Regional One.

Everybody can see the dividends that will accrue to all of us from the construction project, but also the other part, which is a long-term partnership between UT Health Science Center, which is our health and medical campus here in Memphis and Shelby County.

A long-term partnership between them and Regional One.

We've gotta have that partnership.

It's the right time to do it.

And so we'll see lots more in terms of research dollars flowing to Memphis and Shelby County and our ability to recruit and retain medical talent in addition to, of course, all the things I've talked about, any of us might need that healthcare when we least expect it.

- And Eric, just to give folks an idea about the dollar figures involved here, it's about a $750 million project to rebuild Regional One Health and the county funds are about $350 million of that with state and federal coming along.

And also Regional One and the University of Tennessee Health Science Center involved in some fundraising beyond that.

- A quick question on that.

Is there, and people have talked about this before, because Regional One does serve the region, including, I mean as far as Missouri, certainly Arkansas and Mississippi, are those states, either, whether it's through the federal connection or those states going to be asked to fund any of it, is that just a dead issue?

Where does that stand?

- So right now we're working with our federal delegation.

So you know, that's the David Kustoffs and Steve Cohen for West Tennessee, but also the other members of Congress have expressed some interest in trying to find out how they can support to make sure that we're getting resources, national resources, which of course come from all the states in order to invest in this project.

So that's been the best way to navigate that and make sure that there are other players investing.

- Let's stay with budget right now.

We're going into budget season.

I mean, I think you all approve your budget in the summer, but you'll put forward a budget soon, I believe and begin that process.

As you look, the county has gotten, like all counties and all cities and all municipalities across the country, got a lot of COVID money from the federal government, you know, relief for all kinds of purposes.

That money, I believe has run out.

But that's my question to you.

And the second thing is, interest rates are not where they were with, you know, funding, government funding these projects is a lot more expensive than it was five years ago, even three years ago.

So how do you look at those two issues, the interest rates and the expiration or the running out of the COVID money?

- So you're right, it's not a great interest rate environment right now.

We still have some COVID money left in Shelby County and so that's somewhat good news, but we're really, really at the end of all the COVID or slash stimulus money that accrued over the last, you know, two years or so.

And so trying to move forward without those resources is gonna be really, really tricky.

Shelby County has been pretty resource constrained.

We haven't had a lot of, you know, lift in terms of, you know, some of our levers here.

The only one we've had since I've been in office for the last, you know, five and a half years here is the motor vehicle registration fee.

We did, you know, get that increase and so that has been very helpful 'cause that money started rolling in and that money will roll in from now until forever.

But it's gonna be a tough budget season.

And so, you know, we're gonna meet with the commissioners very soon.

We've got, in the next couple weeks we're gonna have our first retreat with the commissioners.

And so we're gonna lay out some of these challenges and try to get us all on the same page.

- Bill, about four minutes left.

- You've talked before about property taxes and how you feel like the will is not there to raise those taxes.

That's why you proposed a motor vehicle or wheel tax hike.

Do you see that that has changed at all?

- I don't think the will is there to do property taxes.

You never know, I mean, you know, we've done, I've done as best job as I can, you know, trying to shift the arguments to try to make our political dialogue more focused on working individuals and you know, less on some of the other stuff.

And so maybe the dialogue and maybe we're at a different place in this community or we're getting there.

I don't know if we're quite there yet.

I still think the property tax [clears throat] piece is probably still the third rail and there's probably not a lot of folks on the County Commission that will vote for property tax increase.

And so I think that's the, you know, one of the reasons that you said that, you know, we didn't go for property tax increase.

I haven't gone for a property tax increase.

I don't expect I will go for one.

I don't think you'll see one in this budget because I just don't think the will is there.

- Is there still a structural imbalance, that's a term that gets thrown around a lot at the budget retreats and during budget season, county government structural imbalance.

Is that still there, and define for people what has meant when people toss that term around?

- The imbalance would just be that we're spending more money than we take in.

And so I think we're doing a great job of managing that at this point.

I think that, you know, there's always a possibility of some deficit that needs to be resolved one way or another.

But I think we're doing a pretty good job of managing that.

I think the real thing to be cautious of and be watchful of as we go through this is just the one-off spending items.

Some of those items can be really, really expensive, right?

A million dollar grant here, a million dollar grant there can be costly.

And so those can create issues if you don't have a funding source.

So we're working hard.

Like I said, we've got a retreat with the county commissioners coming up in the next couple weeks.

We know we've go a new Memphis City Council.

And I think the message to all these folks is always the same is you gotta have a source for your idea, a source of funds and it's gotta be a real source, a hard resource.

In other words, you would want to take money from something in order to fund something else, but you know, there's no opportunity for the magic money where you don't find a real source.

- Let's shift gears a little bit to Shelby County Clerk Wanda Halbert.

She's under investigation, I think is the right term.

Bill can correct me if I'm wrong by the Hamilton County District Attorney General in order to have somebody outside the county.

Shelby County Commissioner Mick Wright sent a 20-page letter of formal complaint that was partly and outlined a whole lot of problems he has seen in that office.

That was partly because the District Attorney's Office said that no one, since they started their investigation in June, had filed any sort of complaints.

So there's a commissioner doing that.

I think other people are, will your office, you've been critical of Wanda Halbert I think is fair.

Will your office formally submit something to this investigation that they should look at in terms of the behavior and the actions of the clerk?

- I think the answer to that is, I don't know.

I think it's unlikely that I will, but I don't know.

- Are you, with just a minute, I mean, are you happy with the performance of the county court?

- I think we're doing a tour of all the hits now at this point.

No, I don't think anybody's- - It reflects poorly on county government broadly.

I mean there's few people who seem to be rising to defend her.

Is it time for her to be removed?

- I think it's time for us to figure out a solution and it's hard to believe that the solution is Wanda Halbert as county clerk.

It's hard to believe that that's among the solutions.

I think one of the issues, I mean there are a million issues, but I think one of the issues that probably bears more investigation is I don't think she signs anything.

And I think that holds up everything.

So no lease renewals, no accounting forms, nothing.

And so we can't finish our budget process.

We can't finish our internal audit.

We can't renew any leases because she won't sign anything.

And it's for fear of an investigation, which is happening, so.

- Lastly, you have a good relationship with Paul Young, the new city mayor?

- I'm getting to know him, I'm getting to know him and his sister obviously works for county government.

I love working with her.

- All right, well thank you very much.

Thanks for your time.

We'll have you back soon.

Thank you, Bill.

That is all the time we have this week.

If you missed any of the show, you can get the full episode at WKNO.org or go to YouTube and search for "Behind the Headlines".

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

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