- (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.

- Republican priorities at the state legislature 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 two Republican state legislators.

Brent Taylor, state senator, thanks for being here again.

- Thank you.

- And Mark White, state House representative, thank you for being here again.

Along with Bill Dries, reporter with the Daily Memphian.

We'll talk about a lot of things tonight.

And get to as much as we can.

The session has started.

I should note to everyone, we had Democrat Raumesh Akbari on the show 3 or 4 weeks ago.

You can get that at wkno.org.

And we've also been covering all kinds of perspectives and priorities from different parties and individuals up at the legislature in the Daily Memphian, and will continue to do so as the session goes forward here on the show.

But we appreciate you all being here.

One of the highest priorities, for both of you, has been education and certainly, Mark White, for a long time now.

You all were unable to reconcile two bills last year for a takeover of Memphis Shelby County Schools, putting some sort of board above the elected board.

A forensic audit was approved, though, at the end of last session, and you guys recently got an update on that.

About $6 million has been spent with an outside a firm.

So, Mark White, tell where are we in terms of getting the bills reconciled.

And do you think a takeover of Memphis Shelby County schools will happen from the legislature this year?

- I really do.

And after we got preliminary indication of what, on the forensic audit, I think it's highly necessary.

We, the bills right now, we passed the bill, the takeover or the board of managers, as you mentioned, in the House last April.

It sat there, not concurred with the Senate version, which Senator Taylor will tell you about.

And now we're waiting to bring them back out of committee so that we can do a conference committee.

And we hope to do that in the next, within the next four weeks.

- So, yeah, the Senate version was a much weaker version of the House bill.

And where the House bill put in place a board of managers, as you said, Eric, would be kind of above the elected board in making decisions.

The Senate version was more of an advisory board that would just simply advise the elected board.

But the elected board would be, would have the latitude to either accept the recommendations from the advisory board or not.

And what we have seen from some of the preliminary information out of the audit, the Senate bill will not fix our school system.

The House version will.

And so I think there's been this momentum shift toward, from senators, toward the House version, because it is what I think what's needed to fix the school system in Memphis.

- Some legislators, not the whole legislature, was updated by the audit firm on what they were finding.

What did they find?

- What they found is as bad as you could think it could be.

It's worse.

- But that when you and I talked a little bit earlier before the show, I can think of a lot of horrible things.

My mind can go to all kinds of places.

Yours might go, people listening.

I mean, can you be more specific?

I mean, because this is it's a huge tax burden for, you know, locals like us.

It's the tax burden at the state.

There's a lot of, you know, 90,000 students.

I mean, what is the worst thing going on?

Are we talking criminal activities?

What?

- Well, there's a potential for everything that I think is going to be found in that report.

And they will issue a interim report before we leave session in time for us to reconcile these two bills.

But their work is still ongoing.

And the reason we don't want to share specifics is because the work is ongoing.

And if those in the school system that are responsible for providing the records know where the issues are, they could begin to, you know, shift-- - Have they not been forthcoming?

- No, they have not, have been forthcoming.

They have not.

- Let's compare to this, this is right at a $2 billion corporation in our community.

If you want to make it private.

Fourteen thousand employees, sixty-five hundred teachers.

It's the largest district in the state.

The state gives right at $900 million to the, and the taxpayers in Shelby County $500 million.

So right at that, and here's the problem.

What we're finding right now through the preliminaries is that when you have that kind of organization or corporation, there is no record trail.

There's no, there's mismanagement of all the data and the records and the contracts.

It's just not there.

And so, there's no accountability at this point.

- Bill Dries?

- So there's a board of managers, people from here in Memphis and Shelby County who are appointed by the leaders of the legislature and the governor, and we have an elected school board.

So how do the managers interact with the school board?

- Well, Houston, Texas is a good model to look at and how we, and we've modeled the House bill after what's going on in Texas.

And basically what they did there is the board of managers had all of the authority in terms of contracting and setting policy.

Pretty much all the functions of the elected board were shifted to the board of managers, and the elected board was basically sidelined.

And the board of managers will go in, fix the school system and then hand it back to the elected board.

But the reason, Bill, that's so important to do it that way is that what we'll find in this audit is that the problems are so deep, so systemic that an elected board who is busy making political decisions is incapable of turning this around.

And it will take a board of managers removed from politics to make the tough decisions it's going to take to turn the school system around, and that they will actually, I think, be discussion of whether just to start from the ground and rebuild an entire new school system to try to get this thing turned around.

And quite frankly, an elected board who is trying to, who is posturing politically and trying to move to the next level, the County Commission or the legislature, are incapable of making the tough decisions that are going to be necessary to turn the system around.

- And these are, as we mentioned, these are people in Shelby County.

And running a school system, you got curriculum, academics, you got facilities.

You've got all the things it takes the accounting.

And so that the board of managers that we're picking, and we're already talking to these people to get them in place immediately, experts in security experts in facilities, experts in accounting, experts in curriculum.

And then they would take and make decisions that had to be made to turn the system around.

- So, the school board that is in place now is about to make a decision on whether Roderick Richmond continues as the permanent superintendent of the school system.

If they make that decision before you vote on this, what happens if your bill passes and a board of managers comes in?

- Well, I think at this point the school board and the superintendent can make whatever decisions they want.

It's immaterial to what we're going to do in the legislature.

And at this point they're as irrelevant as a nutrition chart on a bag of ice.

So if they want to make him superintendent, that's fine.

But this board of managers, when they if we approve this bill, when they come in, they will be in charge of turning the school system around, irrespective of what decisions they make in terms of a superintendent.

- So if they decide to, they could remove the superintendent, even if the superintendent has a contract with the school system.

- That is correct.

- Yeah.

- And that contract would then be the third in five years that gets paid out to a, if the board said we're going to part company with Mr.

Richmond.

I mean, Joris Ray was paid out.

Marie Feagins was paid out.

And then potentially Roderick Richmond would be paid out?

- And you just made the case, part of the case, for why this is necessary that the legislature allow for a local take over the school system.

- We also have school board elections coming up, as you both know.

What would you say to someone who's pulled a petition, says, "I think I want to try to be elected to the school board."

- I would encourage that, because at some point, the board of managers will get the system either rebuilt or turned around, and it will eventually be handed back over to the elected board.

So, look, we're not discouraging anyone from running for office or running for the school board, because ultimately, when it's correct, it will be handed back over to them to keep the ship moving in the right direction.

- But how long is it gonna take for a turnaround?

- When the legislation's in place, I think for three years the board of managers stay in place with, at the discretion of the commissioner of education, the state to say we're not there yet.

We're going to stay in this another 1 or 2 years.

The elected school board, to Senator Taylor's point, we want a very, very, very strong elected school board because they're going to be critical in working with this board of board of managers.

Hopefully they will work with them and not be putting things out that would that would not be in agreement.

So we want a strongly elected school board, because we do want to eventually turn this back over to the management of the board.

- But you just said the board is practically irrelevant during this time that the board of managers is correcting the deficiencies in the system they will be more of an advisory role to the board of managers.

But once the board of managers completes their work, and they will be under a timeline to do so, the corrected or rebuilt school system will then be handed back over to the elected board.

Let me just speak to that.

- But that could be three years, and the school board's a four-year term.

- Well this is something that's taken 20 years to go to ****.

So it is important that we do what we can to turn the system around, because these kids that are dependent on the school system are hanging in there like a hair in a biscuit to for somebody to do something.

And when you are graduating people that only 25% can read at grade level.

We cannot make Memphis matter by making Memphis prosperous when we have a school system that is turning out people who can't even read at grade level.

- And this is the bottom line of why we're doing this, the amount of workforce and economic activities coming to our city, and we're only pulling out one out of four who are approaching proficiency, 25% out of a 90 to 100,000 student school system, that they spend K-12, 13 years of their life, and they can't even get a decent job in the workforce.

That between crime and lack of education for our citizens is, would kill your city, is killing our city.

- We're midway through show.

We could do multiple shows, and we'll talk more about this.

But let me clean up a couple things.

I may have misspoken on Marie Feagins being paid out.

She's also suing for some money that she believes is due.

So I may have misspoken there.

I want to clean that up.

Two, is there a trigger in the bill that says this is the point, these are the thresholds at which the board, the advisory board goes away?

Or is that the legislature coming back and saying we're good?

- It's in the bill, three years.

- It's in, three years.

Okay.

Clarify again, who's appointing the members of the board?

- We are.

That's what we're doing right now with working with educational groups in town - But the legislature will?

- Well, it will be the governor and the speaker of the House and speaker of the Senate will be the, we've seen the legislation that they will point three each.

- Okay.

- But we're going to give them the names and the recommendations.

- Okay.

And then last one, back to the audit report.

When will the final report be done, and/or an interim report?

- This is a year-long audit.

Six million, was a year-long audit.

We're now in six months.

But what we hope to by the beginning of March, we'll have enough information to make decisions.

- Okay.

Again, we could talk about that, and again we'll be covering it and we'll be talking to these folks and other folks as we go forward with this.

But let me switch to, task force and you, Senator Taylor, and John Gillespie, colleague of Mark White's in the House, put forward a bill that essentially I think you're concerned that DA Mulroy, will either, you know, not pursue to the fullest extent you would like people who have been arrested or charged under both the Memphis Safe Task Force and then Operation Viper, which was back in what, the spring summer and was a task force of federal and local and state officials, you know, going after what they would say is kind of the worst of the worst people.

In felony cases, the bill would require DA to report plea agreements if they lower offenses, if they dismiss these charges or they declined to prosecute Is there evidence that's happening now?

- Well, we want to ensure that it's not happening.

And I you know, I will say that for two years I've been saying that DA Mulroy is not prosecuting to the fullest extent of the law.

You know, he has often said that that punishment should be swift, certain, but not necessarily severe.

My kids would have really enjoyed that mindset when they were at home and I was disciplining them.

As long as it was swift and certain and it wasn't severe, they really wouldn't have cared too much about spankings.

But, we are working on that bill now.

One thing I will agree with with DA Mulroy on, I think the bill as it is written is probably too broad.

We need to narrow that focus and on just the most serious crimes that if he should, downgrade those charges that those get reported to the to the U.S.

attorney and to the DA conference.

- Shouldn't there just be more transparency overall in what the task force is doing?

I mean, wouldn't that just take care of it?

I mean, we've had to dissect, you know, daily reports and read the tea leaves and FOIA and even then it's incomplete of how many people are being picked up.

Charged with what, and by what agency.

I mean, I think a whole lot of people on many sides of the issue of the task force and the many elements of the task force want more transparency.

If there was transparency and this person was charged by this group, arrested here and is in this court, then you wouldn't need this law.

You would be able to look into the court records and say, boy, there's a pattern of DA Mulroy doing X, Y, or Z and other people, judges, doing X, Y, and Z. We don't have that right now.

- Well, obviously we all want transparency.

But transparency in the law enforcement side does not necessarily provide the transparency you need on the prosecution side.

And what happens is, if you go back and read the comptroller's report that he did on the Shelby County justice system, they said it was incredibly difficult to follow a case from arrest all the way through to adjudication because the records are kept different at different stages of the crime-- - We've had all kinds of people, Democrat, Republican, all kinds of people from the criminal justice system saying that it seems like that is the answer to this, not the targeting of just task force or Operation Viper.

I don't know.

That's just me.

Did you want to chime in on this, Mark?

Not your bill, but I'll bring in Bill then.

- Is this going to be another dashboard then?

Because I think part of the problem is every entity that wants to look at the system and within the system, their solution to this becomes, well, I want my own dashboard.

- Yeah.

- This is, Bill, this is not a dashboard.

This is merely a reporting mechanism that the DA already does in some cases.

For example, any case involving firearms is automatically reported to the US Attorney's Office for them to make a decision whether or not they want to prosecute it at the federal level.

When I talk to the DA conference about this bill, they said, look, this is just merely a reporting mechanism.

We already do this in a lot of cases, and they had no real issue with the bill.

So this is not a dashboard.

The idea is that if DA Mulroy is actually prosecuting cases to the fullest extent of the law, then he should not mind disclosing when he downgrades a case, and just disclosing that to the U.S.

attorney to give them an opportunity to pick that case up if it's a federal nexus, or report that to the DA conference.

So this is all about just reporting.

And obviously, if an enterprising reporter at a publication like the Daily Memphian wanted to pull those reports and do a report, which sometimes I wonder whether or not y'all would do that, you would have the opportunity at least to do it.

- Well, let me just interrupt, then we'll go back to Bill.

We have complained, I have complained, it is very hard to get to a lot of the answers because of all the problems in the court system.

I mean, this is at juvenile court.

We'd love to have more transparency when years ago we put together how many cases actually went to trial.

It took multiple reporters weeks and weeks and weeks just to figure out how many criminal cases actually went to trial.

So I will push back a little.

We'd love more transparency to do more work on this stuff, but the system is not set up for that.

- If y'all are interested in transparency, then y'all should have been transparent when DA Mulroy sent a letter the TBI literally restricting the investigation into Tammy Sawyer's meltdown on the courthouse steps, y'all refused to report about that.

So if you want transparency-- - We covered the Tammy Sawyer incident.

- You did not report on the letter that DA Mulroy sent to the TBI where he - That's possible.

- Literally restricted - That may be true.

- What the TBI could do and who they could interview.

I put the letter on social media - Can he restrict the TBI?

- No one from the Daily Memphian was willing to report on it.

- Look, we have 30- Let me let me just say, there's lots of stuff we don't get to.

We are the biggest newsroom in the region by two.

We have about 37, 38, 39 reporters.

Twenty years ago, the Commercial Appeal had 250 people in their newsroom.

So there's a lot of stuff we don't get to, involving Democrats, Republicans, independents, politics, not politics.

It is not a, I know I read your posts, you and I have talked about this.

There is not some concerted effort to protect certain politicians.

I have the texts to assure you that Democrats, Republicans, independents, tell me, why did you why did you say this or not this?

It's less about a conspiracy or protection.

It's much more about we do have limited resources despite having the biggest newsroom in the area.

- You have enough resources, Eric, that you could about a funeral home in Collierville changing its name, but you don't have the resources to report that DA Mulroy literally restricted the TBI from doing their investigation.

- Go ahead.

- I was just going to say that I want to tie this together.

We're talking about education and crime.

I lived in Memphis since ‘66, 1966, 60 years.

We are an amazing, great city with a great heritage.

But the last 20 years we started doing this with crime and with education going down and our city and our communities suffered.

Now, if you watch, I like to ask our audience, if you if you've watched Governor Lee's State of the State last Monday night, he spent 25% of his speech praising the turnaround in Memphis being low crime and things that are turning around.

That is such great news for our community and what Senator Taylor and I are working on very, very hard is to make sure that this city is accountable, education, crime and that we move in the right direction.

- If the bill passes, and there is this notice if the DA has done a plea deal on a case, is there anything that can be done to reverse that?

- No.

The DA has discretion to prosecute, to use his resources to prosecute the cases.

He thinks he has the best shot at getting a conviction.

So this is not about undoing some decision that DA Mulroy makes.

It's just about disclosing when he uses that discretion.

It's not about trying to undo that discretion.

The courts have been very protective of DAs and judges using their discretion in criminal cases.

So we're not looking to alter that.

We're just looking to disclose it.

So when he does exercise the discretion that he just reports that.

And if he has nothing to fear in that exercise of discretion, he should not fear reporting that to the US attorney or the DA conference.

- Five minutes in show, let me move to immigration.

The Republican leadership put forward in the state legislature a number of bills.

I don't know how involved you all are with him, but just they include license tests, driver's license tests should be English only.

It's a misdemeanor to stay in Tennessee after deportation date.

Targets out of state commercial driver's licenses for non-permanent legal status.

And it pressures local governments to comply with immigration rules.

Those are all been proposed.

Nothing has been passed or signed at this point.

I guess broadly speaking I'll go to you, Mark White.

I mean, do we want more legal immigrants in Memphis?

- Legal?

You know, I had a company for 30 years in Memphis, and we really depended upon those who came into our community that that were legal.

It's the illegal.

All the issues that were going across in our nation right now, whether in Minneapolis or others, is because we have let 15 million come in that we don't know who they are.

And so we've got, and it's hurting our schools, our teachers.

I've met with a English language teacher the other day.

It's driving them to work so hard that they they've got so many kids coming to the classroom that speak other language, and they're hurting their ability to conduct classes.

- We've had a lot of people on that show, in the Daily Memphian from all kinds of political backgrounds about Memphis Safe Task Force.

And I would say the overwhelming theme, Democrat, Republican, independent, people I don't know what their background is, that “I'm not quite sure what the National Guard is doing."

Again, I'm generalizing, very supportive.

I mean, both mayors, the Democrats of the federal and state, you know, THP being on the highways, US marshals, ATF, all of that where they're going after the worst of the worst.

And that has been broadly supported.

And then ICE is kind of all over the place.

For each of you, do you feel like-- I mean, there are definitely documented moments.

It's hard to get to them because people don't want to talk because they're nervous.

Where people in the legal process who are doing everything right, who are going to check ins at the court, are getting picked up in the Memphis area and taken away, is that what we want?

- Well, we want illegal aliens that are here to be picked up by ICE and deported.

- Even if they're going through the process?

- If they're here illegally, ICE has a responsibility and obligation to remove them from the community.

What I found interesting is, Eric, you went through that whole list of things, all of which are targeted toward illegal immigration.

And then you then you posed the question, what do we do, do we really want to do that to legal immigrants?

No, that's not happening.

- No, that's not what I meant.

And I apologize if I was like, I apologize.

I didn't mean it that way.

I mean, those things are going to happen or not happen.

I'm just trying to sort of create.

It's like the task force.

The task force is not one thing, right?

They're elements, ICE is very different than what U.S.

Marshals were doing.

Very different from National Guard, very different than Tennessee Highway Patrol.

So if I wasn't clear, it wasn't that.

I just am curious.

Those things are happening, these targeting of illegal immigrants, they're these gray areas, I guess is what I'm trying to get at, these people who are going to their check ins as they're in the asylum process, or all these different, really complicated processes who seem to be getting swept up in things that are meant to target purely illegal aliens.

That's what I was trying to get at.

And maybe I did that poorly.

- And if that's the case and they are legal immigrants, then they won't be deported.

And what we have seen happen in Minnesota is different than what we're seeing here locally, simply because Mayor Young has been the adult in the room and has made sure that that we don't have a climate where we have these social justice warriors out trying to impede law enforcement.

- But Mayor Young says we don't have an immigration problem here.

Do we?

- Quite frankly, I believe he's wrong.

I believe we do have an immigration problem, because any illegal alien that is here that is working takes a job away from a Memphian.

Any home that they rent, they're increasing the rent because we have a shortage of housing.

And so if you got people who shouldn't even be here trying to rent homes, then it raises the cost for Memphians.

- Is it that simple, though?

Because you can be undocumented in this country but allowed to seek asylum through a legal process.

- Well, first of all, I don't even - You've got 20 seconds.

- Yeah, I don't even know what undocumented means.

And there is an asylum process, but part of that asylum process is you have to stop and seek asylum in the first country you come to, and they're not doing that.

They're coming through multiple countries to get to the United States.

And the illegal migration is putting a tax burden on the citizens of Tennessee as well as Memphis.

That's why when you have the inflow that we've had through the previous administration, that's why we're suffering what we're suffering now.

Congress for 40 years hasn't done anything about migration.

- We will talk more about these issues.

We can do whole shows on everything we talked about today.

We'll be writing about it in the Daily Memphian.

We may get guest columns from these guys expressing their opinions more and others.

So, we appreciate it.

Thank you both for being here.

Thank you, Bill.

Thank you for joining us.

If you missed any of the show today, you can get the full episode online at wkno.org, at the Daily Memphian or YouTube.

Or you can download the full podcasts of the show, which includes more conversation about the takeover and the audit wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks very much.

And we'll see you next week.

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