AC Worton for Mayor

Mayor Wharton's special brand of leadership is built on his commitment to listening to you and answering your questions.  If you have a question that you would like forwarded to him for his response, please submit it here.  His answer will be posted within 48 hours.

Q: Why are you running for city mayor?

A: I am running for Memphis Mayor because I love this city and its people.  It’s why I accepted the job to lead the public defender’s office, and that’s why I ran for Shelby County mayor.  While I am proud of the achievements in county government, the county mayor’s impact on Memphis is largely indirect, and I believe that as city mayor, with direct authority over services, I can help our people build a brighter future for Memphis.

Q: What are your thoughts on the other candidates?

A: I am not running against anyone.  I am running for something – a new agenda for a new era.  I am running on my record of results-oriented leadership and effective leadership.  Mayor Herenton leaves City of Memphis financially strong, with an improved downtown, and transformed public housing, and I can build on this foundation to create a new direction for our city and a renewed confidence in ourselves.

Q: What is your campaign about?

A: It’s about people.  We have done a good job in this community of creating the physical infrastructure that our city needs, but now it’s time to do the same with our most precious resource – our people.  We have to make the investments that give our people skills for the good-paying jobs of the new economy.  We have to invest in families so they can move into the economic mainstream.  We have to invest in neighborhoods so people stay in Memphis and we attract people back to our city.  We have to invest in our children’s education so they can compete – and our city can compete – for the right kinds of jobs in the future.

Q: What have you done for children as county mayor?

A: I have concentrated on the lives and futures of children every day I have been in office.   I reject the pervasive attitude that writes off tens of thousands of our children as problems.   A community that does not invest in its children is a community without a future.  I have created new programs to improve the earliest years of our children’s lives when so much of their personality and their capacity to learn are determined.  I established an Office on Youth and Families so that the impact on children is calculated for every decision and program.  I created a campaign to reduce the rates of children who die at birth, to give them books monthly after they are born, and to give them chances to start life strong and healthy.  Also, I chaired a state committee to give students a better chance of keeping lottery scholarships, and I am leading a program to develop a plan to get more of our children into the line to receive college degrees.

Q: What about Head Start?

A: We are one of the few communities that expanded Head Start.  At a time when its future was threatened by management problems, I took decisive action to make sure that this important program was not lost to the children of Memphis.  In addition, I worked with Memphis City Schools Superintendent Kriner Cash to make sure our district and our Head Start program cooperate to give children a helping hand as they begin their education.

Q: What have you done to make Memphis safe?

A: As county mayor, I do not have any direct responsibilities for law enforcement.  Politically, some might see this as a reason to stay out of the issue of neighborhood and community safety, but even without a police force under my supervision, I just could not do this.  This crisis is too serious for any of us to sit on the sidelines, so I led the creation of our city’s first comprehensive, inter-agency crime-fighting program, Operation Safe Community.  Meanwhile, I have led the fight to toughen state laws for possession of illegal guns, and with the Mayors Against Illegal Guns coalition led by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, I am actively supporting federal legislation that gives local leaders more ways to get illegal guns out of the hands of criminals.
One of the best tools for dealing with crime is not a jail cell or a squad car or pepper spray; the best crime prevention tool is a good job.  That’s why I have fought for industry and opportunity in Memphis, but also worked to  equip citizens with the skills to take advantage of the opportunities that do exist.  Programs I have led and supported are making Memphis safer, but there is much more to do.  As Memphis mayor, with direct control over our city’s crime prevention programs, we can make tremendous strides, and we can attack the roots of crime as I have done by setting up programs to fight childhood poverty, to keep teenaged, non-violent first offenders out of the criminal justice system, and to break the vicious cycle that leads to repeat offenders in our jails will continue.

Q: How do we create better jobs and a stronger economy?

A: First and foremost, we have to invest in the most important asset that we have – our people.  We have to train our workers for the good-paying jobs of the future.  That’s why I pushed for tax incentives for companies willing to create jobs in target industries and to locate inside Memphis.  Most of all, we have to keep our children at home.  Too many are leaving to work in other cities.  That’s why I worked to help students keep lottery scholarships as they settled into college life and why I am working now on a Memphis Talent Dividend project that will get all hands on deck – working on this issue from early childhood programs to community colleges to universities.  Like every Memphian, I want my city to be a place where my children can live and work.  This is a priority for me, because if we increase the percentage of people with college degrees by just one percent, we add $1 billion in economic impact to our community.  It’s a goal that we have to hit.

Q: Why does smart growth matter to Memphians?

A: Smart growth matters to Memphians more than anyone, because they largely have paid the costs of sprawl.  Over the past 30 years, it has been Memphians who have paid for the new roads and schools outside of Memphis.  It is the same sprawl that led Shelby County Government to the brink of bankruptcy before I implemented a serious plan to manage expenses, cut jobs, and to reduce the county debt.  With the new Unified Development Code that we have written, smart growth principles will guide development and zoning in the future.  That means that Memphis neighborhoods will be given incentives to remain healthy and vibrant and developers will be given incentives to invest in Memphis neighborhoods and to help make them successful.

Q: Is Sustainable Shelby about smart growth?

A: Sustainable Shelby is the community-wide process that I began to develop our first plan to make our community sustainable.  It’s about smart growth and it’s about encouraging the kind of decisions that makes thriving neighborhoods, that protects our natural environment, that makes us more energy-efficient, and that cares more about people than cars.  If we can reduce the average daily mileage driven by only one mile a day, it would save us $232 million a year.  Sustainable Shelby is our plan to create a healthier city and people and to address the problems of hollowed out neighborhoods, car-centered planning, sprawl, and damage to the environment.

Q: What have you done to make government more efficient?

A: My administration took a totally new look at the way county government conducted the public’s business.  We eliminated non-vital services that we could no longer afford, we reduced our workforce over time by several hundred people, and we shrunk the administration’s percentage of the county budget.  In addition, I asked national experts to examine county government from top to bottom to find ways to make it more efficient and to cut costs.  We set out to implement every one of them and they have resulted in millions of dollars in savings.  In addition, I have worked hard to eliminate duplication of city and county services.  It is not fair for Memphians to pay twice for some public services, and my administration has worked to address this.  The overall success of this new business approach is seen in the fact that I have recommended only one tax increase during my terms as mayor.

Q: What about the school construction that was driving up Shelby County’s budget?

A: The demand for new schools resulted from county government’s long-time funding of sprawl.  When I was elected, we took a new look at the process in light of my commitment to smart growth.   In the end, I succeeded in my goal of making sure school construction decisions were not merely political decisions.  Instead, we set up a new process so that all requests were evaluated by a blue-ribbon group, the Needs Assessment Committee.  This marked the first time in the history of this county that requests for new schools were examined in exhaustive detail, and because of it, city and county school districts joined together to build the new high school in southeast Shelby County.  The impact of this new approach can be seen in Shelby County’s debt payments which went down this year for the first time in recent memory.

Q: What did it mean to you to be the first African-American county mayor?

A: In the city where Dr. King took his last breath, it showed me that our community had matured past much of the bitterness that unfortunately defined us 40 years ago.  It showed me that we had progressed far along the course of harmony and unity across all boundaries. Although we aren’t there yet, the idea that people of Shelby County judged me, in Dr. King’s words, for the “content of my character” basically established us as forerunner to the kind of change that resulted in Barack Obama being elected as our president.  I am also proud to say that I have used that same litmus test about character in naming the first African-Americans as chief administrative officer, head of roads and bridges, director of community services, and head of human resources. I am also proud to have appointed the first women in an equal number of high appointed offices.

Q: What’s your position on tax reform?

A: During my entire time as mayor, I have aggressively lobbied the Tennessee Legislature for the right for our community to consider ways to fund public services without relying more and more on the regressive property and sales taxes that are our local governments’ main sources of funds.  It is not fair or acceptable that the less a family earns in Memphis, the greater percentage of their earnings that it pays in taxes.  I will continue to fight for changes that take the burden off people who can least afford to pay it and that make our tax system more equitable.

Q: What would you do to get the public more involved in their government?

A: If the public isn’t involved, it’s not because they don’t want to be.  They’re not involved because government doesn’t give them a chance to have a meaningful voice and don’t make the best use of new technology to connect with them.  Citizen engagement has been a central principle of my terms in office, and it’s why I involved so many of our citizens in discussions and in processes to set priorities.  Our people deserve the right and the respect to get involved in the government that they are paying for, and I’ll continue to emphasize this, just as I did when I set up the first computerized notification of vacancies on county boards to people who’d like to serve.  I am committed to expanding new opportunities for citizens to get involved and have a voice.

Q: What would be the first thing you would do as Memphis Mayor?

A: I would send the emphatic message that my administration is focused on people.  I would do this with an executive order creating a cabinet level office that deals with human capital and talent development.  It would be responsible for making sure all of city government is involved in creating the kind of talented workers that we need to compete in the future.  It would deal with the developing of our children’s skills, it would work to keep our children here after they graduate, and it would deal with attracting talented people who want to help us move Memphis ahead.  The single most important measurement of whether a city is succeeding is whether its people have the skills and the education to compete in the today’s highly competitive global economy.  It is unacceptable that one-third of our labor force is not working or is not looking for a job.  We have to help them get the skills they need to make a living and support their families.  This is my #1 priority.  It is also the most important goal for Memphis’ future, and we have to get it done.  And we will.

Q: And what would be your second priority?

A: To create a culture of service and innovation in city government.  Some people say it’s the equivalent of trying to change a tire on a car going 60 miles an hour.  But other cities are creating citizen-centered city governments, and we can too.  It’s not just the public that suffers from the present system; so do the dedicated public employees.  They are handicapped by a system that discourages new ideas, new thinking, and new approaches.  That will change.

Q: How should you be judged as mayor?

A: By measurable results that show that we are attacking our problems and making progress.  But in addition, by showing the people of Memphis the unprecedented progress that can be made when we all are together behind a common vision and moving in the same direction.