- (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 race for county mayor tonight, on Behind The Headlines.

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

Thanks for joining us.

I am joined tonight by the two main candidates for county mayor, current county mayor Lee Harris, running as a Democrat for your second term.

Thanks for being here.

- Sure thing.

Thanks for having me.

- Worth Morgan, as a Memphis City Councilman Republican, the Republican candidate for county mayor.

Thank you for being here.

- Thank you for having me.

- Along with Bill Dries reporter with The Daily Memphian.

I'll say a little bit of housekeeping up top here that early voting has begun, it began on July 15th, goes through July 30th and election day is August 4th.

If you don't know where to vote, you all, everyone should vote who is eligible.

You can go to shelbyvote.org, or you can call them at 222-1200 That's the Shelby County Election Commission.

We have no real specific rules today with the candidates, which I appreciate other than I've asked them to degree humanly possible, allow each other to talk and finish their sentences.

And we'll kind of go back and forth.

Bill and I will be asking questions.

We'll try to get through as much as we can in 25 minutes, which means that we won't get through everything that we need to, we do have the potential to go long on audio at the end and add maybe 5, 10 minutes with any excuse me, questions we don't get to.

We did the same with the two main candidates for Shelby County District Attorney, Amy Weirich and Steve Mulroy a couple weeks ago.

Those audio versions are available on WKNO on The Daily Memphian site, iTunes, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast as this one will be and again, the DA race one is as well.

Let me start with a big picture question to you both.

And I'm gonna start with you Mayor Harris on this, the position of Shelby County Mayor, I mean, it is the county.

I think that a lot of people in the years I've been doing this in Behind The Headlines and news locally, have a sense that the county mayor, sits at the seat at the top of all these arms of government, almost like they liken it, even if they don't think about it to the president, right?

The president's over the Department of Defense, Department of Education, the Justice Department, and so on.

In reality, the county is made up.

There's a county mayor.

There are all these municipalities, seven of them from Memphis to Lakeland with their own City Councilors or boards of selectmen.

There's a very independent board of school system, the Memphis Shelby County School system with its own board and its own superintendent, the sheriff and his deputies who do a lot of the policing of unincorporated Shelby County participate in other policing throughout the county, the staff, the jail, the courts are totally independent right?

Of the city, the county and in fact, even the local elected officials in the local courts by and large are subject to laws set by the state.

And so what really can the county mayor do?

What do you have explicit authority over that you learned of in your last four years?

And again, I'll ask it much more quickly, but I'll have the same question to Worth.

- So thanks for having me.

And you're exactly right that early voting has started.

This is an important election with really important issues on the table.

And so I encourage everybody to get out to vote.

I have been in elected office for the last 11 years State Senate, City Council, and now it as the current County Mayor, and I have always been the guy that's tried to help working families navigate challenges, and that's regardless of where those challenges sit.

So I think you're right, Eric, Bill, councilmember that power on the county side is dispersed among a variety of different actors.

But nonetheless, I believe the county mayor has the ability to get things done, which I have.

And I think the county mayor has the ability to lead a discussion on issues that are critically important to working families.

And so for me, I've been leading a discussion on issues like livable wages.

I think my opponent and I disagree very starkly around livable wages.

I believe that there is dignity in work.

I believe that everyone that goes out and works every day hard should get a fair pays work.

And I know that my opponent, when offered an opportunity to require that businesses that receive corporate handouts be required to pay a livable wage, he refused to support a livable wage for those businesses.

Let me say one more thing, Eric.

- Yeah, sure.

- And in fact, not only that, he also said that this is the worst idea, the living wage idea, this is the worst idea he's seen in six years.

It's a shocking state of affairs that we're in and you need someone like me in office that understands these challenges, understands gas prices understands what working families need.

- Let's say, and I'm gonna let Morgan reply, but what as county mayor have you done?

I mean, there's talking about it.

There is giving speeches about it.

I'm not dismissing those, but in terms of what you can do as county mayor in terms of a livable wage, what have you been able to do?

- Well, obviously I have been the leading driver of the living wage discussion in this community.

- Okay.

- And so I have led on the county side, requiring that all of our employees get a livable wage.

Our livable wage is now $16 an hour, which is not a enough, but it is higher than most organizations in town.

In addition to that, I've led the way with respect to paid family leave, because I know that's a challenge of working families.

- We'll come back.

- Well you asked the question.

- No, no, no, that's fine.

That's fine.

I wanna get you in first and we'll come back to you.

- And in all through that, I still didn't hear a lot of answers to the questions.

I heard leading on discussion, but not really action, or maybe there's been action, but it's internally at the Shelby County Government and not something that applied to the over 930,000 people that lived in Shelby County.

And the first part of the answer was they're unbelievably inaccurate, or just misconstrued in terms of my position and what I've talked about in terms of having a competitive marketplace in Shelby County, where there are jobs available for people.

And if there are jobs available and there are opportunities available, that's in the best interest of the worker, as they have different options in the marketplace.

That drives salaries up for that work and in order to do that, you have to have jobs available all up and down the economic ladder rung and that's what I've been fighting for for six years.

And going back to your question, 'cause it never got answered about the authorities and the responsibilities of the Shelby County Mayor's Office.

They are awesome.

They're in the number one way in order for the Shelby County Mayor to get things done is to be a relationship builder, to be able to work across those different systems that you talked about, whether it's other elected officials, whether it's the city government, City of Memphis government, the suburban governments, or the state government, those relationships over the last four years have not been fostered.

And that's why you can't point to a lot of action that has happened over the last four years.

In fact, those relationships, I would argue those bridges have been burned in a large way through different issues that have occurred.

Whether we talk about the pandemic, whether we talk about economic development, whether we talk about public safety, each of those issues, which are important, maybe the most important issues that we're talking about in this election, haven't been accomplished.

They haven't been tackled.

There's been a lot of apathy.

- I cut you off, but I wanna get Councilman Morgan in, finish your thought.

You started talking about family leave and so on.

- Well family leave and childcare.

I mean, I think you, you just see a flash point right there.

Councilmember Morgan doubled down on his support for jobs with poverty wages.

He had an opportunity to require the businesses that received corporate handouts and tax breaks, pay the workers a livable wage.

And he was a voice in opposition.

And he said, quote, "The livable wage idea is the worst idea I've heard in six years."

That is doubling down on poverty wages.

I think that is completely disconnected from where the vast majority of working families in Memphis and Shelby County sit.

And so I think that voters have a difference there that they should consider as they go to the polls.

- And are you talking also about a vote?

I'm gonna let you respond.

- A vote.

- Okay.

- And his advocacy, his advocacy was for poverty wages.

- Let's let him respond and then you keep going.

- And he said, quote, "This is the worst idea."

- Okay.

- Speaking of livable wages, "That I seen in six years."

- Yeah.

I think the issue you're talking about was something that was introduced by Martavius Jones.

If I recall correctly on the Council, in terms of the specifics of that, I don't think that's a quote of mine 'cause I don't use that vernacular very often, if at all.

It's almost hard to know where to start because so many of the premises of the statements that you just made were completely wrong in terms of the basic understanding of how our economic incentives work.

There's not some pile of money that's sitting around that can be redistributed to communities.

These are all backend incentives.

And if companies choose not to come here, we get zero.

We get nothing.

So you get concerned about the barriers you put in place and the more you make it harder for people to say yes to Memphis, the harder you make it for people to say yes to Shelby County, we get nothing.

We can look at the poverty levels in Shelby County.

Look at the incentives we've given the corporations.

And the reason we talk about these incentives, the reason we talk about corporations, 'cause the best way to end poverty is to provide a job.

One of the best ways to lower crime is to provide a job for that kid.

So they don't pick up a gun.

That's why this is so important.

That's why you fight to have a strong economy and a strong economy, the best way we can do that is to recruit people here rather than to put up barriers and hurdles and say that you're not welcome.

- The proposal that that Councilman Jones made, I think was to establish a minimum wage for qualifying, for PILOTs and other incentives.

And there was a lot of talk about it.

Ultimately the proposal did not succeed before the City Council.

So should there be some kind of minimum wage that is set in order to get those incentives?

- It'd be better due to a backend bonus rather than an upfront hurdle.

And so they know if they can provide jobs at a certain level at a certain pay scale that they will get a break or a tax incentive that may last longer or may be deeper than one we would've provided beforehand.

But if they aren't in this workforce, if they aren't in this marketplace already to make them guarantee that on the front end, introduces uncertainty into the deal and with that uncertainty, it makes it a lot easier for them to go to Nashville or to Charlotte or Atlanta.

- Mayor, should there be a minimum wage set in order to qualify for PILOTs and those kind of incentives for economic development?

- Absolutely.

- Okay, so we have a basic fundamental difference here.

How, Councilman, how do wages get raised then to an acceptable level?

- Through competition and we see wages going up now in the marketplace because we have a need for labor.

For years, politicians been out there talking about jobs, jobs, jobs.

Now it's workforce, the jobs are out there and available and we don't have the workforce that adequate to supply them and that's driving wages up.

We're having a tough time getting people back to work unless wages go up.

And so it is about having options and opportunities in our local economy for those workers to pick from.

And when they have options, their leverage at the bargaining table with those employers goes up, which means wages go up.

So we have to be aggressive and pull out all the stops to recruit jobs here, 'cause that's better for the worker.

- Mayor, do you think that a public entities raising the pay to a certain level has an effect on raising wages in the private sector?

Does the private sector look at what county government is paying?

What city government is paying, even the bonuses that they're offering and say, "We need to do that."

- Absolutely.

There's communication in both directions.

And so when we on the county side start talking about paid parental leave as we have and as we've implemented, when we start talking about $16 per hour, then other organizations in town will have to raise their floor in order to compete with us.

We're a major organization and we can drive a debate that has impact on other organizations in town.

In fact, you see that since I've been in office, these are the major discussions.

Every issue that I have brought to the floor has been a major discussion now among all entities around town, from transit to livable wages to childcare to paid parental leave.

So there's no doubt about it.

We can drive a discussion and it can go the opposite way if you don't have someone like me in office.

And so we've seen that right?

When I was on the City Council, the business community drove, some parts of the business community, not all, I don't wanna cast, paint too broadly, but some parts of the business community said, "We can't have pensions.

We can't have benefits for our fire and police."

It was the gravest and most disastrous decision that we've made as a community to cut the benefits of our police and fire.

We saw what happened after that.

And that was the business community, we remember, right?

I'm the only person that can speak honestly about it because I'm the only person that's independent and courageous and will stand on truth for working families every day and in every moment.

But we remember what happened.

The business community said, "You've gotta be more like us and eliminate the pension and benefits of public employees."

And we did it and it was a disaster.

And we saw an exodus of police and fire from that moment on and we have never recovered from that.

I fought hard against it when I was on the Memphis City Council, I fight hard for public employee benefits and pay because I know that it helps all boats to rise.

And so we've got to do something about this argument that we'll take anything, we'll take poverty wages, and that we have to give away money to these big companies.

And we can't do anything about it.

I mean, they had a hotel thing that just came up.

I don't know how he voted, but I can guess he voted to give them millions of dollars.

I'm sure he didn't say anything about wages.

- Explain the vote.

- Listen, listen.

- Explain the millions dollars that was given 'cause that's not accurate.

- Let's get your response, we've got about 14 minutes.

- No, no.

Go ahead and explain, because I don't think he understands the incentive package that was offered.

I don't think you understand.

- This is on the Hyatt Hotel downtown - Yeah.

- Carlisle Group.

- That there's no cash up front.

- The TDZ, I believe, fund.

- Yeah, go ahead, explain what was in the vote.

'Cause you can't.

- Listen.

What is happening here is the city of Memphis will serve as a backstop.

In other words, if that investment fails, the city of Memphis will make those investors good.

So the city of Memphis, as far as its books are concerned, it's gonna have to set aside taxpayer money for a private investment.

Now that can be good in certain instances, but only rarely and only when there is a huge public interest at stake, and only when you hold the folks receiving taxpayer dollars or guarantees, as the case may be, accountable.

Worth, Worth, Worth, with all due respect, with all due respect, you had an opportunity to speak up.

- Let's start with you, where did you vote on that?

Where did you vote on that issue?

- Yeah, so you weigh all the benefit that comes for a major project like that.

The wages, the jobs, the increased taxes, the hotel, motel, the increased sales tax, and just the benefit to having that in the community as a partner to our convention center.

And then on the other side, you do take in account, the risk, you take an account what's being given up and you carry, so it was about how much debt to carry on the books for the city of Memphis, how much risk.

Every dollar of revenue that that project generates, reduces that risk over time.

So as that project's successful, the risk goes down and it's intended to be refinanced after 10 years to even take us out of the deal.

And the question is we approved it for 50%, everything was good.

Do we approve it for a hundred percent?

Is there something in between?

Is there something that could be worked out in terms of a guarantee payment?

And that's what the administration, and we gave it to the administration to work through and then bring back to the Council.

- And Mayor Strickland says that in its current form at 100%, it is a danger to the city's finances going forward.

It is a considerable problem that could arise in financing, other projects and the whole gamut of city projects.

- Yeah and you have a difference.

And I think there's a question of uncertainty rather than a certainty that it's a bad deal.

And so I understand if people want to take more time, if they're not as familiar with a bond fact sheet or structuring analysis and way they read and assess risk, but you also have to assess the risk of what if we don't get this done?

What's next in the pipeline from Memphis or Shelby County?

What's coming down the road?

How are we gonna get these major projects accomplished?

We've already seen others pull out in terms of Loews Hotel or the previous owners of 100 North Main or the hotel in Adams Street.

We've got some things in the pipeline, but there is a lot of uncertainty in the market with what's going on with inflation, what's going on with the bond market.

And it's gonna be difficult.

It is more difficult than it should be for us to build projects of this quality in size in Memphis.

And that's what I mean when it it's okay to pull out the stops and be aggressive on this issue, on other issues we're facing our community like crime as well.

- Mayor, do we need more convention center rooms?

Are the incentives worth it in terms of getting that block of rooms for the convention center in which the city invested $200 million to renovate?

- We need more tourism and we need more tourism investment and we could possibly need more rooms.

The question is, who do you have as the spokesperson for the community, for working families, right?

The folks that are lobbying for this hotel or this tax break or that tax break, they've got plenty of lobbyists.

They make plenty of calls and plenty of presentations, but who's gonna speak up for working families that want to make sure their tax dollars are put to good use?

And that there's some requirements in place that help and support their family?

Requirements like a livable wage, Worth, that's small potato stuff, but we don't have anyone other than yours truly, Martavius and a few others, as you mentioned, Martavius on the Council, Martavius Jones and a few others that are willing to speak up for families in town.

So that's my issue is, it is frustrating to see folks in elected office, like what you've just heard here today, talk about all this gobbledygook and the millions of dollars that they're willing to guarantee or front for private investment, without having the same sort of vigor around how they're gonna help people get livable wage jobs and help feed themselves and their family.

- Yeah.

I take issue with his position that he's fighting for working families.

I wouldn't concede that on two fronts.

One, I think if you're fighting for working families, that means you're fighting for jobs in this community, good paying jobs.

We, again, I'll go back to it, we measure poverty in two things, number of household dependents and household income.

That income has to be provided by a job.

And we can have great opportunities for working families in Memphis, but you have to have a mayor that's proactive in going out and trying to recruit these businesses to be here or the businesses that are already here, having relationships with them and trying to grow them and increase the amount that they're willing to invest here rather than invest in other communities.

And then the second point that I would take issue with that is that it is a very divisive way to look at politics in our communities where you're saying, I am fighting for this group of people that are different than this group of people that are different than this group of people.

We have over 930,000 people in Shelby County, and they all deserve to be represented.

They all deserve to have great county services and a county mayor that's fighting for them, not trying to pit one group against another for the sake of politics.

- But don't you both have priorities?

I mean, don't you have to set priorities in governing?

- Yes, and the priorities in my administration are public safety and a strong economy which affect, again, all 930,000 people in this Shelby County.

- Priorities, I think, beyond the livable wage and so on.

- Yeah.

So livable wage obviously is a priority.

I've talked about that at length.

In addition to that criminal justice reform, trying to guard against mass incarceration is another priority.

I know that my opponent, I've been told that he has invested in private prisons.

So Tennessee has.

- You mean now a personal level.

- Personal level he's invested significant resources in private prison operations.

And so that's a point of disagreement.

I mean, that's something the public is gonna have to consider when they go to the polls is that I'm for criminal justice reform and I wanna see fewer people that are on the road to prison and more people on the road to recovery, rehabilitation, and in line to be able to take care of themselves and their family.

And here we have an individual that makes a decision according what he disclosed, to invest in private prison operations, which again, exposes the possibility.

Let me finish one sentence, exposes the possibility of making a profit off our residents going to prison.

I think it's a profound situation we're in.

- Okay, we got about five minutes left and we'll just stay on crime to the end of what we've got.

- Yeah, this is an example of kind of gotcha politics that sounds good in a headline, but in reality is just not the case.

So there's look, and this is actually a really good example of transparency, where I put a measure in front of the City Council to make sure that investments from City Council members are disclosed on their City Council pages, easier for the public to see, rather than be tucked away on the Tennessee website.

And on there, I've got things that I invest in privately.

I've got managed accounts that people invest on behalf of me.

So I disclose more than I am required to.

And one of those managed accounts, which I don't have hands on, they did invest in, I believe private prison.

There's somebody that saw that online, brought it to my attention, asked me about it.

I called them that day and said, "Hey, that's not something I want to be invested in."

- I wanna you know, let's get to crime strategy.

- And it was just such a non-issue.

- And put that out and you've responded.

I mean, what is.

- Can I say one thing?

When we're talking about crime in our community.

- Let's come back to that in the audio portion.

We'll add on we can debate that some more, but with just a few minutes left, I mean, you talked about ending mass incarceration, you talked about rehabilitation.

Just this week, the tragic killing.

I mean, they're all tragic, but the tragic killing of Reverend Autura Eason Williams in a carjacking in her driveway by a 15 year old, what can you as county mayor do about that tragic, awful, terrible situation of a 15 year old killing someone as they're trying to carjack them?

- So I am devastated, we all are, and saddened by what we read about the killing of Minister Eason Williams.

And so we've got to have a comprehensive approach to public safety, and that's gotta include the law enforcement and prosecution approach.

That's the high profile area and under my administration, we see the highest budgets for our sheriff, the highest compliment for our sheriff and a variety of programs to make sure they have everything in place in order to execute their responsibilities.

In addition to that, we've gotta make sure there's meaningful opportunity for those who are returning citizens on the reentry side and meaningful opportunity for youth.

But I just gotta say to this last point that this is a non-issue, these are issues, right?

The fact that my opponent says that the livable wage idea is the worst idea he's seen in six years is an issue.

And that he can't remember that from October of last year.

- Let's stay on crime.

- No, no.

- Let's stay on crime.

We can come back in the audio 'cause we gotta get some.

- Okay, let finish on crime, Eric, if it's all right.

To say that it's not an issue and that you don't know about investing in a private prison operation in Tennessee, right?

A prominent Tennessee company that.

- That's the definition of a managed account.

- Okay.

- I don't think most people can understand not knowing-- - And that's why you're trying to abuse the issue and to confuse it by playing on the people who don't understand that.

- I don't understand that.

- Let's go back to the incident.

I mean, this is just a incident of many of a killing of a community leader, and a beloved community leader, but all lives value in their street.

What needs to be done at the county level?

- Yeah.

- What can the county mayor do to try to reduce crime?

- A lot, and any part of that work is gonna be in those relationships with the state, with the sheriff, with the DA's office, with juvenile court and making sure that they have the resources provided for them in order to get the job done.

We've got too many kids with too many guns right now and making bad decisions.

One of the most important things, whether you believe, on the scale of whether it should be rehabilitation or more people need to be locked up and held up longer, the first step to all of that is accountability.

And so we've got over 32,000 outstanding warrants in Shelby County for people that have been indicted of crimes, but haven't been brought in yet.

And we saw this juvenile, alleged, had committed murder, went out, committed another car jacking that night and then was caught in that second vehicle.

This is somebody that was gonna continue to victimize and terrorize our community if they are not held accountable.

And that is the responsibility of the municipal police departments, of the sheriff's department in order to bring those people in and then into the justice system, through the DA's office in juvenile court.

- When you say again, just, we've got 30 seconds here and then we're gonna go to do some audio and clean up some of these other things and address them.

So we've got some more time that we'll get to in a second.

But when you say reducing mass incarceration, and then you think about this alleged killer and 15 years old, right?

I mean, you're a parent, I'm a parent.

is that a situation where someone can be rehabilitated and shouldn't be incarcerated?

Kind of take that into the personal and to some of these specific incidents.

- So as a county official, I'm not gonna get into a specific case.

- Fair enough, fair enough.

- But I will say generally with respect to carjackers or convicted rapists or convicted murderers, I wanna see more prison time.

I want see them in prison longer.

There's no doubt about that.

- Did you support truth in sentencing?

- Here's the issue with the truth in sentencing.

And again, I don't know if you support it or not.

Did you support it?

- Wait, let's do this.

Let's do this.

- Yes, absolutely.

- We're out of time.

We're out of time.

Hang on.

We really, people wanna really hear you.

We're gonna talk about truth in sentencing.

We're gonna talk about more of this stuff.

You can get the audio add-on to the show, wherever you get your podcast.

You can go to The Daily Memphian site, WKNO, we'll talk for another 5, 10 minutes and get some of these things answered.

I'm sorry to cut you guys off.

I do appreciate you guys doing it this way without a whole lot of rules.

Thank you, Bill.

Next week, tune into the show.

We've got the CEO of MISO who is bidding to take over the power supply to MLGW.

Thanks very much again.

Download the audio and we'll finish up these questions.

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