Month: April 2010

• JB
• Pellicciotti (left) and Thomas during showdown

County mayoral candidate Otis Jackson, who is now serving as General Sessions Court clerk, got a scare last week, but one which, ironically, resulted in his getting a pass this week.

Commissioner Mike Ritz, something of a self-appointed fiscal watchdog on the county legislative body, pressed a relentless interrogation of Jackson last week, on the basis that the latest county audit had revealed the clerk’s books to have been seriously “unreconciled.” That word, and its variants, got a strenuous workout during a committee hearing which revealed mismatching account entries dating back several years.

In the end, it was decided that several of the problems were attributable to a dysfunctional computer system installed under the previous clerk, Chris Turner, who was defeated by Jackson in 2008. But the most serious shortcoming involved a matter of some $3 million directly traceable to Jackson’s administration that remained (that word again) “unreconciled.”

Jackson was not under suspicion of malfeasance, but, still, the discrepancy in his books, coupled with Ritz’s previous accusations that the clerk had spent prodigally on dining occasions for his staffers, threatened to put his mayoral campaign (already of the dark-horse variety) in crisis mode.

Two things occurred to, er, reconcile Jackson’s situation. One, he was able to submit a supplemental report adjuged by the county auditing team to have properly resolved the discrepancies. Two, in the meantime interim county commissioner John Pellicciotti, who was appointed last year to fill a vacancy in District 4, Position 3, levied a motion to censure three clerks — Jackson, Chancery Court clerk Dewun Settle, and Probate Court clerk Chris Thomas — for what county audits and “management letters” had revealed to be persistent problems in reconciling their books.

Inasmuch as Thomas is now a candidate for the commission’s District 4, Position 1 seat — the same seat being sought by Pellicciotti, who is switching tracks because he had promised, upon his appointment, now to seek reelection for the Position 3 seat — his colleagues were sufficiently diffident as not to offer him a second.

But his motion, with all its potential political volatility, returned to the full commission’s regular public meeting, and, when Commissioner J.W. Gibson, who hadn’t been at last week’s committee hearing, seconded the motion, Pellicciotti was given a platform to make his point against Thomas. Clerk Settle had meanwhile been excused from blame, and Jackson, too, having already undergone his ordeal, was now off the hook — at the behest of Ritz, no less, who, perhaps seeing a dilemma that cut both ways, partisan-wise, professed a desire to “get [it] behind us and move on.”

Thomas, speaking to the commission in his defense, offered an apology “that my opponent is doing this to y’all” and observed that, as several commissioners already had, “this is political.” He pointed out that he had corrected the indicated fault — a failure to resolve his ledger precisely on a monthly, as against an annual, basis — and lamented, “This is exactly why…y’all don’t want to appoint someone to fill out a term that says they are not going to run, and then they run.”

(He would pass out copies of his own charge — that Pellicciotti should return the money, some $110 month in county funds, that paid for the interim commissioner’s recent public hearings on consolidation, on grounds that Pellicciotti had used the occasions for his own campaigning, something Pellicciotti would staunchly deny.)

In the end, votes were held on the Jackson and Thomas matters. Jackson was exonerated by a 13-0 vote, with Pellicciotti himself concurring, and Thomas, too, saw his censure charge defeated. That one went 12-0, with Pellicciotti recusing himself.

On the surface, then, it appeared that Thomas was victorious, but Pellicciotti, who probably entered the race as an underdog, got a bully pulpit to display himself as a self-declared and single-handed reformer. Speaking to reporters later one, he would condemn an “old boys’ network” that “the people who have been there too long are tied into.”

He went on, “Nobody is willing to call each other out. We have got to hold these people responsible…We [meaning himself] will continue to hold people accountable. We will not put up with people not managing the people’s money appropriately. We are past the time of just ‘trusting’ politicians.”

And, finally: “We’ve got to get rid of these guys who are been in office forever.” [Thomas had boasted his 16 prior years of service as clerk.] “We need young people who can tell us that’s not right.”

• JB
• Wamp and Gibbons after CJC tour

Republican gubernatorial candidate Zach Wamp came to Memphis on Monday for a round of activities beginning with a tour of the Criminal Justice Center at 201 Poplar in the company of District Attorney General Bill Gibbons and Sheriff Mark Luttrell.

Thereafter he stood on the 3rd St. side of the CJC with Gibbons, and, while he couldn’t at this point claim the endorsement of Gibbons, his former opponent for the GOP nomination, Wamp did what he did to lay the groundwork for such serendipity, including a virtual declaration of honorary home-boy status.

“Memphis matters,” Wamp declared. “It matters to the future of Tennessee. Just because I didn’t grow up in Memphis doesn’t mean I won’t be fully committed to Memphis.” The Chattanooga congressman expressed a wish for “a long overdue Memphis Renaissance” and pledged himself to that end.

He promised that, if nominated, the first place he would come would be Memphis. Ditto with his initial destination as soon as he got inaugurated as governor. And he vowed, too, that, once installed as governor, he would devote “most of my time” to the concerns of Shelby County.

“As Memphis goes, so goes Tennessee,” Wamp said.

Asked if an endorsement by Gibbons might be in the cards, Wamp said, “There’s 96 days to go [until the gubernatorial primary], plenty of time for that. I hope that that’s the case later on. It’s for him to consider. I didn’t ask for that yet.”

Meanwhile, he praised Gibbons’ now folded campaign as something that had made him “a better candidate” himself and promised to support Gibbons’ goals. He said he considered Operation Safe Community to be a model. “I’ll continue to try to win General Gibbons’ support,” he said.

Wamp said he was still committed to full support for the Med, but hedged modestly when asked if he intended to sign a specific pledge sought of all gubernatorial candidates by the Shelby County Commission. The commission wants all candidates to commit themselves to rout all federal funds generated by indigent care at the Med back to the Med itself.

“I still haven’t seen it,” Wamp said of the pledge, but indicated he was still committed to sign it.

Wamp expressed support of the burgeoning state sovereignty movement but unequivocally distanced himself from the rhetoric of “states’ rights,” which, he said, smacked of “segregation and going backwards.” He said his recent vow to resist federal health-care legislation by meeting the federal government “at the state line” was metaphorical, not literal.

“I am a fighter. I’m a nice guy and a compassionate guy, but I also from time to time will stand up and fight,” said Wamp, who characterized the new federal health-care act as a “billion-dollar mandate that we can’t afford” and something that was worth fighting. “Fighting may be in a court of law, fighting may be at the ballot box,” he said.

Wamp is battling Knoxville mayor Bill Haslam and state Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey of Blouneville for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. The winner of that contest will oppose Jackson businessman Mike McWherter, a Democrat, in the fall.