Month: March 2008

Categories
News

Mayor Willie Herenton to Resign, Effective July 31st

At mid-afternoon on Thursday, all of downtown Memphis was suddenly beset with a rumor — quickly confirmed by word of a resignation letter signed by Mayor Willie Herenton and addressed to city CAO Keith McGhee — that Memphis’ fifth-term mayor, elected again only last October, intended to resign, effective July 31.

As the news began to sink in, even close associates of the mayor were puzzled. One of the closest, Shelby County Commissioner Sidney Chism, confided, however, that Herenton had recently discussed with him a desire to serve in two non-mayoral offices — those of Memphis City Schools superintendent and 9th District congressman.

“I surely didn’t expect anything to happen this soon,” said Chism, a political adviser and confidante of Herenton’s for two decades. “And I don’t know anything for sure. But he talked to me about doing both those things just after he got reelected.” As to why the mayor, who served a lengthy term as schools superintendent in the 1970s and 1980s, would be interested in returning to that job (now held by interim superintendent Dan Ward), Chism said only, “Well, you know, education’s always been closest to his heart.”

As the rumor of Herenton’s departure was spreading Thursday, speculation about the superintendency had been circulated right along with it. But that Herenton might be interested in running for the congressional seat now held by Democrat Steve Cohen was something of a bombshell. “Well, he talked to me about it,” said Chism, who repeated, “I just didn’t think he’d be doing anything else quite this soon.”

But Chism made one thing clear, confirming a suspicion that many observers had speculated on. “He didn’t really want to serve again as mayor for a fifth term, and, if people had just let him alone, he wouldn’t have run. But, as it was, he just wanted to prove none of those folks could beat him.” Herenton defeated former City Council member Carol Chumney and former MLGW president Herman Morris in a hotly cntested three-way race last fall.

And there was other speculation, as well. The Commercial Appeal, in a brief item, suggested to its readers that a federal grand jury looking into Herenton’s relationship to an unnamed city contractor may have served subpoenas at MATA’s offices.

Rumors of various legal problems have dogged the mayor for several years, but nothing has yet materialized as certain.

More to come on this story as details emerge.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

The Wharton Hypothesis

CREDIT: jb

Let’s face it: All of us in the news business got taken by surprise — none more than me, I’ll confess. But, after we’d had a chance to reflect on the meaning of Mayor Willie Herenton’s astonishing decision to resign on July 31, all of it began to make a satisfactory ex post facto sense.

So maybe the wanna-be-superintendent-again theory seems shaky (even though the mayor’s people were pushing it, and there’s no doubting he has ideas for shaking up the school system). And maybe the idea of Herenton’ running for Congress — another possibility floated by Shelby County Commissioner Sidney Chism, his longtime confidant — seems a bit of stretch. That doesn’t necessarily mean that an imminent legal issue is the only alternative explanation.

For several months, from the very onset of last year’s city mayor’s race onward, there was beaucoup speculation in political and even lay circles about the prospect of some kind of hand-off from Herenton to his friend and counterpart, Shelby County Mayor A C Wharton. Most of us took that sort of talk seriously, but most of us, too, were probably looking down the line, to 2009 or 2010, when Herenton would be at — or just past — mid-term and Wharton would be finishing up his business and his agenda in the county.

But why not now? Especially since the special election to replace Herenton is apparently set for November, coinciding with the presidential election, it won’t cost the taxpayers any more money. (More grief is another issue.) Both mayors have talked openly and avidly this year about the urgency of consolidation, and the decline of housing values — with its concomitant gutting of property tax receipts — will intensify cost-conscious arguments for joining the two governments.

So November is as handy a hand-off time as any other, if something like that is in the offing. As for the various conspiracy theories of some logistical shuffling that would cause a de facto consolidation of city and county, that mechanism wouldn’t seem to be readily apparent. (Which is not to say it isn’t being thought about.)

But A C as a candidate in the special election? Given the fact that the other prospects mentioned so far — former City Council member Carol Chumney and former MLGW head Herman Morris — are retreads, there is no reason to suppose that the same local movers and shakers who did their best to bring about a Wharton candidacy last year wouldn’t try again this year. The county mayor can evangelize for consolidation inside one government tent as well as in another, and even Willie Herenton acknowledges that A C Wharton is a better potential salesman for the idea than he is.

Maybe, in short, that’s what all this is about — and not a summons from the prosecutor or a yen for swapping one set of governmental silks for another.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Q&A: Donald Johanson

Anthropologist Donald Johanson will talk about evolution and finding “Lucy” at Rhodes College at 7 p.m. in the auditorium of the Bryan Center on Tuesday, March 25th.

Lucy — the name was borrowed from the Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” which expedition members played over and over in celebration after “her” discovery — is one of the oldest and best-preserved skeletons of a walking-erect human ancestor. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Johanson is director of the Institute for the Study of Human Origins at Arizona State University. — by John Branston

Flyer: What can Memphis expect from the man who discovered Lucy?

Johanson: They can expect a presentation on the importance of Lucy, not only in my life but in our understanding of some of the early stages of the origins of humans. Since the discovery in 1974, Lucy has become the touchstone by which the average person enters into an understanding of human evolution.

People should also expect to hear a little about how we go about running expeditions like this.

What is Lucy’s importance?

Lucy sits on the family tree at an interesting point between our more primitive apelike ancestors and our first glimpse at creatures walking fully upright, and she is probably the last common ancestor to later branches, including the one that led to modern humans.

So the earth is not 6,000 years old?

That’s right. Lucy is 3.2 million years old, and that is really well documented in geological dating.

Are you ever picketed when you give talks?

No, I never have been.

You’re coming to the heart of the Bible Belt. Do you do a lot of lectures in the South?

I’ve lectured all around Georgia and always had an appreciative audience.

Are you surprised at the ongoing debate about evolution and creation?

It’s not surprising. Different people have various views of how the world got to be the way it is. Some focus on a belief-system brand of religion without scientific substance. Others are more scientific.

As anthropologist Ashley Montagu said, “Science has proof without certainty and religion has certainty without proof.” From the scientific point of view, we have to look within the framework of evolution. And there are people who accept both explanations — that whatever or whoever the creator was, evolution was his/her way of bringing about humans.

Is it true that you had low S.A.T. scores in high school?

I did not do well on the tests. I thought they were not culture-free, and I said, “I am not going to study for this.” My high school guidance counselor in Chicago said I should go to trade school and study electronics.

Categories
News The Fly-By

What They Said

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

About “The Rant” and the religious requirements demanded of presidential candidates:

“Who friggin’ cares what the Bible says, which every Christian interprets differently anyway? Anyone who believes the Bible is literally true is literally deluded.” — Packrat

About Shara Clark’s “Up a Tree,” concerning the Memphis Zoo’s chainsawing of Overton Park trees to make way for a new exhibit:

“Is anyone really surprised? Memphis is one of the most backward cities in this country when it comes to conservation and ecological thinking. … Once you tear down a forest you can’t just rebuild it. Replacing a real habitat with a fake habitat that represents a real habitat? How insanely stupid. And how typical of Memphis.” — mtnbikingchik

About “New Day at the Shelter” by Bianca Phillips, who reported that the former Albuquerque animal shelter director is coming to Memphis:

“An animal services director with shelter experience. Yay. Now if we could just get the city to hire a library services director with library experience.” — B

Comment of the week

About “Council May Re-establish Animal Shelter Board”:

“This is an excellent idea, except for the mayor-appointed part. How can we be sure that he won’t just appoint his gardener and driver to the positions?” — Friday

About the Lester Street killings (“Police Charge Victim’s Brother with Six Murders” by John Branston):

“There is an important life lesson to be learned from this incident. When your brother has already murdered someone, you should avoid arguing with him at all costs.” — Mon_Kie

To share your thoughts, comments, concerns, and — maybe — get published, visit memphisflyer.com.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

How Much Change?

Few of us need to be reminded that “change” is the watchword of the day in politics and government. At one time or another, the word has been uttered manifesto-style by virtually every candidate running for president this year — including all three surviving hopefuls: John McCain, Hillary Clinton,

and, notably, Barack Obama.

And change in the most literal sense is under active consideration in both city and county government. After conducting a series of public forums, the citizen members of an elected City Charter Commission are in the final stages of preparing their recommendations for the ballot — either in August or November — and the Shelby County Commission, which held its own public meetings, is already signing off on its recommendations for a referendum to be held in August.

The County Commission’s most significant task is to provide charter definitions for five county offices that had been regarded as spoken for in the state constitution until a judicial finding last year in Knox County declared otherwise. Those positions are sheriff, trustee, assessor, county clerk, and register. By now every conceivable variation on each of the positions has been debated in public, in private, and in between. Some, like commissioners Steve Mulroy and Deidre Malone, felt that the aim of good government would be best served if some or all of the officials holding these jobs were appointed. Most of the other commissioners seem to have believed, just as strongly, that the affected officials should continue to be elected. In this regard, popular opinion seems to have been on the side of election and has apparently carried the day so far.

In morning deliberations Monday, commissioners reached agreement on one office — that of sheriff. By super-majority vote (requiring nine votes of 13 for passage), the commission agreed to put on the August ballot a provision to elect the sheriff, to limit any given sheriff to three four-year terms, and to establish in the county charter a definition of duties consistent with those previously assumed to be his under state law.

It could well be that some of the other four positions still being deliberated as of this writing — notably those of register and county clerk — may be deemed suitable for appointment rather than election. If so, those jobs will not be affected by a provision that a groundswell of the public has insisted upon: term limits.

What people seem to be demanding is a limitation of two four-year terms for any officeholder of one of the affected jobs. The County Commission, however, exercised its discretion Monday to allow a third four-year term for the sheriff. The same latitude may or may not be extended to other positions, but it was granted Monday after commissioners Mike Carpenter and Mike Ritz, among others, made the case for the value of longevity in positions more than usually needful of experience.

To use the cliché: The system seems to be working and no doubt will be seen to, as well, when the City Charter Commission (which also has responded to the public call for term limits) finishes its task.

The changes that voters will be asked to approve may not seem as radical as those which some in the community have demanded. Indeed, at this point they seem moderate on their face, but where the public will has expressed itself, they have incorporated that will.

Categories
Opinion

The Milk Drinker

On at least a half-dozen occasions, voters could have done worse than choosing Lamar Alexander. And usually they did.

The Republican senator came by the Flyer’s office Tuesday for a chat. We don’t get a lot of U.S. senators dropping in, and when we do it is because of our reputation for political coverage built and nurtured for 17 years by my colleague Jackson Baker.

This column is no hymn to Lamar Alexander, who barely knows me from Adam. I have followed and occasionally written about his career for nearly 30 years, usually from afar. It seems to me to illustrate the possibilities and limitations of being a political moderate with a great resume at a time when John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama are all trying to appeal to moderates and independent voters.

History will be kind to Lamar Alexander. In hindsight, has anyone ever looked better in comparison to the people he replaced and the people who replaced him? And in a week when the news was dominated by Eliot Spitzer, Dickie Scruggs, Bear Stearns, prostitutes, affairs, bribes, identity politics, bailouts, and charges of racism, has moderation and the straight-and-narrow path ever had more appeal?

Raised by school teachers in East Tennessee, Alexander, an Eagle Scout, graduated with high honors from Vanderbilt, where he was a Sigma Chi and known as a “milk drinker.” Two of his fraternity brothers, John Gill and Hickman Ewing, became federal prosecutors. Alexander was editor of the Law Review at New York University and took a job in President Richard Nixon’s White House.

In the wake of Watergate, he lost the 1974 Tennessee governor’s race to Democrat Ray Blanton, who proceeded to make a mess of things and provide plenty of fodder for Gill and Ewing for the next 15 years. Wearing his famous checkered flannel shirt and walking across the state, Alexander beat Jake Butcher in the 1978 gubernatorial election and, in a dramatic palace coup, took office three days early in 1979 when it was feared that Blanton was about to issue wholesale pardons to state prisoners. Both Butcher and Blanton would later go to prison.

Meanwhile, “Lamar!” served eight years as governor, pushing incentives for Japanese car companies to come to Tennessee, calling for merit pay for teachers, and befriending, among others, Memphis City Schools superintendent Willie Herenton, Grahamwood Elementary School principal Margaret Taylor, and writers Alex Haley (author of Roots) and Peter Jenkins (author of A Walk Across America and other travel books).

I watched his campaign in East Tennessee in 1982. One night we were at a high school homecoming football game. It was cold and very wet. Alexander and the queen were alone in the rain at a far corner of the field while the marching band and master of ceremonies droned on and on. He never covered his head or left that girl’s side.

He was no dilettante. After he left the governor’s office, he took several months off, grew a beard, and moved with his family to Australia. Then he wrote a book about it.

He came home and was president of the University of Tennessee from 1988 to 1991. His successors included J. Wade Gilley, who resigned in 2001 over an affair with a subordinate, and John Shumaker, who resigned in 2003 over financial misspending.

Alexander was U.S. secretary of education from 1991 to 1993 and had the sense to leave the no-win job before such federal brainstorms as No Child Left Behind. Back in Tennessee, voters elected Republican Don Sundquist as governor in 1994. In 1996, Alexander ran for president, but he couldn’t beat Pat Buchanan and Bob Dole in New Hampshire and lost the nomination to Dole, who lost to Bill Clinton.

Alexander won a Senate seat in 2002, beating conservative Ed Bryant in the primary and Democrat Bob Clement in the general. In 2005, he failed to become Republican whip by one vote, losing to Trent Lott, who later resigned.

Richard Nixon, Ray Blanton, Jake Butcher, Don Sundquist, Bob Dole, Pat Buchanan, Wade Gilley, John Shumaker, Trent Lott — are you detecting a pattern here? I am. We should all have such foils.

Lamar Alexander: piano player, milk drinker, Sigma Chi, straight arrow, family man, moderate, university president, presidential candidate, senator. Been there, done that. The modern presidency is probably closed to such people. I’m not sure that’s good.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

On Campus. On Point.

University of Memphis supporters had every right to be optimistic early last week about their dreams finally coming true for an on-campus football stadium.

A feasibility study commissioned by the University of Memphis and conducted by the nationally respected Heery Group had just landed on the desk of athletic director R.C. Johnson. The study found a responsible financial basis for constructing a $125 million stadium with 40,000 seats — expandable to 60,000 seats for special blue-chip events like the Southern Heritage Classic and the annual Liberty Bowl game.

The report stated that such a structure could be funded by stadium-generated revenues alone, in tandem with revenue from the sale of naming rights, from student fees, and from a donor campaign. The study is also comprehensive enough to make provisions for the construction of an alternative, scaled-down stadium, in the cost range of $70 million, to be funded from similar sources.

The Heery Group suggested six excellent — and available — sites for an on-campus stadium, discovered 9,000 potential parking spaces (versus 7,000 at the rival Fairgrounds site), and certified enough funding sources and extant support groups to convincingly refute the sarcastic slogan circulated by opponents: “No Room. No Parking. No Money.”

These conclusions were very similar to those arrived at by the HOK architects group, which, in a study commissioned by the city of Memphis, shocked everyone by stating that city and university leaders should build a new stadium at the University of Memphis rather than attempting to build or renovate at the Fairgrounds.

But Johnson, U of M president Shirley Raines, and other powers-that-be astonished football fans and friends of the university by responding with a flat rejection, sans benefit of analysis or public discussion.

Now a firestorm of incendiary rumors is blazing away in water-cooler conversations around town, on the internet, and on radio talk shows. What, people wonder, are the real reasons university and city leaders are squeamishly opposed to locating a football stadium on campus — and a demonstrably viable one at that?

Their resistance contrasts starkly with the way city and county leaders in politics, business, and the media jockey with each other in stepping up to fund a $250 million arena for the abject NBA Grizzlies to replace a now mothballed $100 million Pyramid, or to pump for a $70 million arena (awash in red ink) for the baseball Redbirds, or to provide a $3 million direct subsidy for beleaguered LeMoyne-Owen College.

That last item is germane. LeMoyne-Owen is a historical treasure and arsenal of local identity that for cultural reasons alone should be restructured and saved. But, looking at the ethnic facts of life, only 500 African-American students are enrolled there versus 7,500 black students at the University of Memphis.

Indeed, the combined African-American enrollments of Tennessee State, Jackson State, and LeMoyne-Owen do not add up to that of the University of Memphis, which is an unrivaled laboratory for racial co-existence and cooperation, factors that could only be augmented by the close communal reality of an on-campus stadium.

Nothing illustrates the social importance of the University of Memphis to our metro area more than the massive publicity and national adulation currently being given our top-ranked basketball team and its charismatic and visionary coach, John Calipari. The team brings us together and showcases us to the world like nothing else — and despite the handicap of not being physically based at the institution it represents.

But the FedExForum, the basketball Tigers’ venue, is at least located at the second-best site: downtown. Overall, Memphis sports history has been marked by poorly located and ill-conceived athletic facilities built with everyone in mind except the entity that is the principal tenant and revenue source for them all — the University of Memphis.

Raines, Johnson, and their associates at the university are in a position to atone. Now is the time to open up the desk drawer, pull out that feasibility study, and give it the real consideration they opted to forgo last week.

The university’s official slogan is “Dreamers. Thinkers. Doers.” Now is the time for the university’s leaders to rethink the situation and prove it.
Harold Byrd is president of the Bank of Bartlett and a well-known University of Memphis booster.

Categories
News

Flyer Poll: Should Our Law-Enforcement Agencies Be Consolidated?

The City Council’s public safety committee took the first step toward
possible law enforcement consolidation Tuesday.

The committee approved a resolution brought to them by County
Commissioner Mike Carpenter to create the Memphis and Shelby County
Public Safety Commission. Under a proposal by Carpenter, that
seven-member commission would last only three years and would be
responsible for facilitating talks between the Memphis Police Department
and the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office.

“Whether you’re a proponent of merging the two law-enforcement agencies
or whether you’re an opponent of merging the two law enforcement agencies, this doesn’t do it,” Carpenter said.

Neither side can be forced to agree to anything, but both the sheriff’s
office and the police department have said they are willing to consider
functional consolidation of specific tasks.

Do you think law-enforcement agencies in Shelby County should be consolidated?

more at twiigs.com…

Categories
News

ArtsMemphis Web Finalists

What do Wild Bill’s, Ballet Memphis, and the West Clinic have in common?

They are all featured in films from ArtsMemphis’ “Our Vibe. Our City On Film” contest. Posted at www.artsmemphis.org, the contest’s 12 semi-finalist films each showcase a particular aspect of the Memphis arts scene, from music to movies to sculpture to dance.

“Memphis is a vibrant arts community unlike any other and world-renowned for its ‘vibe,'” ArtsMemphis CEO Susan Schadt said in a statement. “We hoped that the short films would showcase and highlight some of these facets and we weren’t disappointed.”

The public is invited to view the films online and vote on their favorites.

In an awards ceremony on April 30th, the top five films will be screened and winners announced. First prize is $2,000 and an entry into October’s Indie Memphis Film Festival. Second prize is $750 and third prize is $500.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Five Years Ago …

Happy Anniversary.