Finney Calls for New Leadership at Mayoral Forum
Posted Mar 17, 2015
This afternoon, former State Senator Lowe Finney spoke at the second Jackson Mayoral Forum at Union University. These forums are designed to inform the Union community of the major issues facing the city and the plans that the major candidates have to solve the problems facing Jackson.
Finney began by talking about his background in politics. He is a nephew of former Governor Ned McWherter and grew up always talking about politics. He knew that he wanted to be involved in politics but was not sure when he would run. Then in 2006, the Democratic State Senator, Don McLeary, switched parties over concerns that the Democratic Party was not taking serious the ethical problems surrounding Senator John Ford. When no one stepped up to run against McLeary, Finney ran and won the state senate seat in a close race.
Finney believes that policies should reflect the needs of the people. He gave two examples of how he tried to do this in the state legislature. First, he co-sponsored the Helping Heroes Act that provided scholarship money to returning national guardsmen from Iraq and Afghanistan after hearing that their age made them ineligible for Hope Scholarships funded by the Tennessee lottery. Second, the Choices Act led Tennessee to spend its money better for long term care. Previously, TennCare spent about 90% of its money on long term care in nursing homes when patients preferred other options. By giving people other, more affordable options, his law saved the state money over the long term.
Now, he is running for Mayor of Jackson because he sees problems in Jackson and no one is trying to solve them. He talked about incomplete sidewalks which means that there are sidewalks that don’t go anywhere. He talked about kids playing basketball at Alexander Elementary School and then walking home in the dark. He mentioned that three shootings occurred within a mile from his house and in one shootout an infant and mother were shot. When citizens complained about the crime, the city leadership told them that sometimes bad things happen. These things led him to decide to run.
Moving forward, he believes the biggest problem facing Jackson is that there are no plans to solve our problems. We see the city of Jackson double in population each day as people come to work in Jackson but Finney asks why don’t they want to live here? The main problems are crime and schools. First, Jackson is the second most violent city in the state and third most violent city of its size in the nation according to FBI statistics. Moreover for three years in a row, Jackson has seen double digit murders. There are 740 violent crimes last year for an average of 2 a day. Murfreesboro has twice the population but less crime. Finney asks, “Why are we different?”
Second, our schools need to improve to bring more people and more industry to Jackson. Many people who work in Jackson will not live in Jackson because the schools are poor and they cannot afford private school. Moreover industry is leery of relocating to Jackson because they do not want to bring people to a city with bad schools. While Finney realizes that the city has little control over education policy, he thinks that the city can be a better partner with the school system. He favors providing down payments for new teachers to buy a house and forgiving it if they stay for a certain amount of time. This program may help Jackson recruit better teachers.
They key to solving a lot of our problems are creating plans to solve them. If mayor, he says he will work to make our neighborhoods clean, safe, and nice looking. He will reduce crime by creating a 5 year plan to reduce gang violence. He will create a plan to reduce juvenile crime. And he will create metrics to measure progress and to change policies as needed. He also wants to make city government more accessible to citizens. He wants to create neighborhood associations throughout the city that will assess needs and tell the city what needs to be done. This idea has worked well in Indianapolis and he wants to bring it here. He will also hold two town hall meetings in each council district every year to make sure that citizens have a voice in government. Next, he believes that we should not wait for industry to come to Jackson but go out looking for industry and actively recruit them to come to Jackson. Finally, he believes the city must do more to invest in development because the last major development (Jackson Walk and the Lift) were financed by West Tennessee Health Care and that is unlikely to happen again.