Are Local Democrats About to Raise Your Taxes?

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

From the Principal Toyota Studios, it's Morning in Memphis with Todd Starnes.

Todd Starnes (0:08)

And it is so good to be back with you guys. Hello, everybody, welcome. Welcome back to the Mighty 990 It is 55 degrees at Memphis International Airport where I just returned from. I got back into the Bluff City in the wee hours of the morning, and it is great to be back home after spending 10 days on the road, promoting the book, and doing some big book engagements. And I want to thank all you guys for the kind words and notes that you share with me along the way over the past 10 days. But I am staying put for at least a little while, and we have got a lot going on today, a very busy day across the Mid-South. As a matter of fact, there is a huge gathering of elected officials in Collierville today. A number of congressmen, congresswomen from around the nation gathering to be with our congressman, David Kustoff, as he is holding a field hearing. And we're going to talk to the congressman a little bit later on. He'll be calling in to the show in just a few moments. Also, Steve Gill is here to weigh in on politics across the Mid-South and the state of Tennessee as the ninth congressional district race and the fifth district race are now becoming huge national races. Democrats are pouring millions and millions of dollars into the congressional campaign of Justin Pearson. They think they've got a chance to knock off Senator, State Senator Brent Taylor in that newly redrawn district. So we're going to be touching base with Steve Gill to get his take on that. Also, the contentious gubernatorial race. And there is growing concern on the Republican side of the aisle about the campaign of David Hadley, who is the independent running. Mr. Hadley, an incredibly successful millionaire, a businessman from East Tennessee.

He had a few problems in the early years of his life, back in the 1990s. And by that, I mean, he's a convicted felon who just got his voting rights restored. And the Blackburn campaign is making a lot of political hay about that out on the campaign trail. That being said, that was, what, 35, almost 40 years ago. And since then, David Hadley has become an upstanding businessman who employs many, many, many Tennesseans in his company. So the question is, will he draw enough votes away from Marsha Blackburn to allow Jerry Greene to take the governorship? That's ultimately the big question here.

There's doubt that Hadley could win outright, but he could prevent Marsha Blackburn from winning. So we'll get into all of that with Steve Gill in just a few moments. You know, one of the things I, one of the stories that caught my attention as we were getting ready for the show, this dire warning that came from the Shelby County, the brand new Shelby County Assessor of Property, Javier Bailey Sr. And he spoke at a press conference last week and laid all of this out. And there are a lot of news nuggets that were not covered by the local media that we need to be really concerned about because the bottom line here, this whole press conference, and it was called the State of the County Tax Base, the whole point of that press conference and this summit that he wants to hold is to eventually raise our taxes. I mean, that's where all of this is heading, bottom line. But I appreciate Mr. Bailey at least coming out and acknowledging, holy cow, we got a problem. It turns out all of those beautiful high rises that are in downtown, most of them are empty. They're vacant. And when you go downtown, and somebody posted this on our KWAM Facebook page just the other day, they said they decided to pretend they were a tourist, and they went downtown, they wanted to walk around, and they were just stunned at how few people there were. It was literally a ghost town. And I've done the same thing after sometimes after the national show. I'll just drive downtown and walk around, maybe grab a meal at a restaurant down there. And there's hardly anybody on the streets of downtown Memphis, which is a big problem, because that is also one of the big tourist draws. So the assessor said that the vacancy rate is right now at about 16.7% overall, and in Class B properties, about 17.4%.

That's a big, big problem. And we're talking about towers, like the Raymond James Tower and 100 North Main. And Mr. Bailey said, the skyline for Shelby County has gone dark. By the way, it's also bad on the hotel side, where he said a lot of hotels are shutting down, and that's another big problem. But it's also a bigger problem for you, the taxpayers, because taxpayers of Memphis and Shelby County, guess what, you own the dilapidated Sheraton Hotel that City Hall decided to purchase with $22 million of your tax money. So just a heads up here, I don't want you to be surprised when all of these Democrats who rule Memphis come back to you and say, we're going to have to raise your property taxes again. So because that very well could happen. By the way, Mr. Bailey said, one of the other big factors here was the relocation of Memphis in May. And that caused millions and millions of dollars to be siphoned away from downtown and into other parts of the city. But he said, and I want to read this from the Daily Memphian piece, a hiatus and restructuring of the Beale Street Music Festival and the relocation of the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest stripped millions of dollars in direct tourist spending from downtown.