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Memphis is a mythic city. It took flight and invented modern global commerce. Its drinking water is the best in the country. Its entrepreneurs changed the way Americans traveled, stayed while on the road, and shopped. And its fusion of cultures brought together outsiders from the cotton fields and the farms to create music that became the soundtrack for the world.
British historian Peter Hall, in his tome, Cities in Civilization, told the history of Western civilization in the stories of 17 cities. Memphis was one of them. He wrote: “What the Memphis story finally shows is that the music of an underclass could literally become the music of the world … this was truly a revolution in attitudes and in behavior, as profound as anything that has happened in Western society in the last two hundred years.”
In addition to its mythic history, Memphis also has its share of actual myths — in sports, business, and even public policy. One of the latter is the belief that Memphis stands alone among major cities without a consolidated city-county government.
Many years ago, a leading CEO was speaking to Leadership Memphis about consolidating Memphis and Shelby County governments and said our community was being left behind by Nashville, Indianapolis, Dallas, Houston, Charlotte, and Atlanta because we are not consolidated. Thing is, only two of those cities are actually consolidated, but the belief was so strong that everyone else had merged governments no one corrected him.
It’s not like Memphis and Shelby County aren’t consolidated for lack of trying. Three times we have voted. Three times it failed — 1962, 1971, 2010 — and when a business group flirted with it in 2021, it never gained serious traction.
The failures don’t make Memphis unique. Consolidation has been rejected two times in Chattanooga, three times in Knoxville, and 19 of 22 times overall in Tennessee. Of the 50 largest U.S. cities, only nine have approved consolidated government since 1900 and the vast majority of all cities have the same city and county structure that we have here.
In addition, for every successful consolidation like Nashville, there is a New Orleans, and it’s obvious that cities can be successful with all kinds of government structures.
Often, it’s a crisis that triggers consolidation. In Nashville, it failed in 1958 but was on the ballot again four years later when the crisis was aggressive annexation by the city of suburban residential property and creation of a wheel tax on all cars using the city’s streets. Suburban desires to have sewers and fire protection and the strong support by the head of county government ultimately led to 56.8 percent support at the polls.
It is often said in Memphis that consolidation is why Nashville became a boom town; however, the city’s burst of growth did not take place until 30 years after the governments were merged.
Another oft-heard pro-merger campaign argument and one heard here is that the existing local government structure is unable to support the economic development vision needed by the community, and that consolidation is also a way to reduce urban turbulence, create a unified community, and have municipal services funded by a more equitable tax burden.
Successful consolidation campaign leaders caution against pitching consolidation on the premise of saving money, and this was not done in the 2010 effort here. As The Wall Street Journal pointed out: “A number of studies — and evidence from past consolidations — suggest mergers rarely save money, and in many cases, they end up raising costs” because savings are often offset by the absence of scale economies and the averaging up of wages and service standards.
When the smoke clears, about three out of every four consolidation votes in the United States go down in flames. It becomes even more challenging here because state law requires that it must be approved by voters inside Memphis in one tally and in a separate tally by voters outside Memphis. It has never passed outside of Memphis, and even inside Memphis, it has failed once and eked by in 2010. It’s hard to imagine what would lead voters outside Memphis to change their opinion about consolidation. After all, it was to get away from the city that led them to move away in the first place, and they see consolidation as giving Memphis power over them again.
In addition, for every successful consolidation like Nashville, there is a New Orleans, and it’s obvious that cities can be successful with all kinds of government structures. There’s the city council–city manager form of government. It has a political head — the mayor — but a professional manager who runs the day-to-day operations of the city. Think San Antonio, Dallas, Austin, and Charlotte.
Then there’s the two-tiered federated government model, most notably in Miami-Dade County. The lower tier delivers typical city services funded by city taxes while the upper tier delivers countywide services funded by county taxes like the airport, libraries, healthcare, and emergency services. There are even places with a “weak mayor” and commission form of government like the one Memphis abolished in 1968. Portland, Oregon, had this structure until 2022.
Then too, there is the potential of a local government that is specifically defined for our community. It could rationalize the division of labor for Memphis and Shelby County governments. Services that are traditionally municipal — police and fire, for example — are placed under city government. Meanwhile, regional services — libraries, healthcare, and public transit — would be defined as services of Shelby County government, which becomes the de facto regional government funded by its larger tax base.
In the absence of consolidating government, maybe answers could be found in a government modernization commission that puts all options on the table. If cities succeed with all kinds of governments, it underscores the obvious: In the end, what really matters most is quality of leadership.
Tom Jones is the principal of Smart City Consulting, which specializes in strategic communications, public policy development, and strategic planning. He tends the 20-year-old Smart City Memphis blog and is an author with experience in local government. He can be reached at tjones@smartcityconsulting.com
