Month: April 2010

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• New WIN director Desi Franklin

The city’s Workforce Investment Network, an often troubled agency charged with retraining workers in obsolescent positions and with helping companies structure their work forces, has a new executive director — Memphis attorney Desi Franklin.

Mayor A C Wharton named Franklin to the position on Tuesday after, as he put it, spending “quite a bit of time combing the profiles and qualifications of candidates to find the best possible fit for this critical role.”

Beginning May 10, Franklin will take leave of her longtime partnership at the Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell, & Berkowitz law firm, where she has dealt with corporate clients undergoing transitions of various kinds.

Franklin, who was recently returned to the position of vice chair of the Shelby County Democratic Party, is no stronger to controversy and challenge, having immersed herself in the task of restructuring the party in the wake of the Tennessee Waltz scandal of 2005, which had decimated the local Democratic leadership.

Franklin has been tapped for numerous executive leadership positions over the years, and is currently chairman-elect of the annual Memphis in May Festival.

Her task at WIN will be a special challenge, both for Franklin and for Wharton. Under former mayor Willie Herenton, the agency was often charged by state authorities with aimlessness and inaction, and in 2007 it was embarrassingly required to return to the state a half million dollars in unspent federal funds.

Altogether the state had withheld some $11 million in federal funding from the agency since November of 2008 in response to what state authorities regarded as the agency’s failure to turn in accurate financial information or to prepare a satisfactory plan of action.

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• Ramsey (right) with Bartlett mayor Keith McDonald

Some two weeks after his gubernatorial-campaign rival Zach Wamp did it, so did Ron Ramsey on Tuesday. The state’s Republican lieutenant governor, taking a break from his legislative duties, paid what seems on its way to becoming an obligatory visit to District Attorney General Bill Gibbons of Memphis.

As 3rd District congressman Wamp had done before him, Ramsey toured the facilities of the Criminal Justice Center in the company of Gibbons and Sheriff Mark Luttrell (“it was a real eye-opener,” Ramsey said of the experience), then sat down to talk a little turkey with Gibbons, who had been a GOP candidate for governor himself before dropping his campaign in March.

Wamp had made no secret of his desire to earn Gibbons’ endorsement for his own campaign. Nor did Ramsey on Tuesday. “We talked about the subject,” he conceded. “Bill and I have been friends for a dozen years.” The Shelby D.A. had made it fairly obvious, said Ramsey, that he intended, at least for the time being, to keep a distance from active involvement in other people’s campaigns.

A third Republican candidate, Knoxville mayor Bill Haslam, has also made frequent visits to Shelby County, though he has not yet scheduled a set-piece meeting with ex-rival Gibbons.

Meanwhile, Gibbons wasn’t the only recipient of a courtesy call from Ramsey on Tuesday. The lieutenant governor and state Senate Speaker from Blountville also made the sounds of suburban mayors in east Shelby County, talking with mayors Stan Joyner of Collierville, Sharon Goldsworthy of Germantown, and Keith McDonald of Bartlett.

“I’m obviously running for governor, and Shelby County is going to be very important in the election,” Ramsey said frankly. “One of seven people in the state live in Shelby County.”