TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Julia Wilburn on Jan 22, 2024

The city of Memphis reports that it spent nearly $50,000 for 15 employees to travel to Puerto Rico in July with the intent of recruiting for hard-to-fill jobs, like police officers. The trip did not result in a single applicant. The Daily Memphian reports that the employees — representatives of the public works, parks and police departments — spent hundreds of taxpayer dollars on meals, thousands on flights, more than $500 on tips and $13,566.06 on rooms at the Sheraton Hotel & Casino in San Juan. There was a $14,348.32 catering bill at the hotel for a job fair that 300 people attended. “It was a strategy used by some other cities — Louisville, Dallas and Baltimore — to recruit bilingual employees. It was not successful for us,” the city said in a statement.