Month: May 2015

The Memphis Light Gas & Water [MLGW] board approved the purchase of more than 1 million smart meters over the next five years for $240 million. But the purchase will require a vote of approval from the Memphis City Council.

Smart meters are electronic devices utility companies can use to measure electrical, water, and natural gas use in a home or business. The meters can also transmit that information back to the utility without having a human physically read the meter.

MLGW installed about 1,000 smart meters here in a three-year pilot project that ended in 2012. The utility then bought about 60,000 in 2013 for about $14.1 million. Those meters are now installed at about 24,000 homes.

The meters brought controversy in 2013 from some MLGW customers who thought the meters could cause health hazards, increases in utility bills, fires, and hacks. Council member Joe Brown said the meters were like “communism.”

MLGW wants to purchase 1.14 million smart meters and install them at a rate of about 50,000 meters every four months. The installation would be complete in 2020.

But first, the MLGW board of commissioners has to give its final approval on May 20 and then the project goes to the city council for a vote.

Council members Brown and Janis Fullilove led the opposition to the smart meters back in 2013 and could be opponents of the new proposed purchase. In fact, a discussion on opting out of smart meter installation was on the council’s agenda Tuesday.

But should the purchase get all the votes its needs, telecommunications infrastructure must be installed on existing utility poles. After that, MLGW will select which areas will get the meters and then notify selected customers 30 days in advance of the installation. Opt-out information instructions are included in that letter.  

The Memphis City Council budget committee approved $7,000 in next year’s budget for lunches for council members and council staff during Tuesday council meetings.

The move was part of the budget hearings that got underway at Memphis City Hall Tuesday. The hearings are a time for council members to weigh in on the mayor’s proposed budget and make changes. The changes (like the money for lunches) are proposed in the budget hearings but they aren’t permanent. They won’t become final until the council passes the full budget, which isn’t expected to happen for more than a month.

Lunches were cut from the council’s current budget, a move to show the council was being frugal in the face of big cuts they made to the city’s pension and retiree health care plans. But council member and current mayoral candidate Harold Collins said he wants them back next year. He said the idea came from council chairman Myron Lowery.

“With all due respect, I recognize we’re up here, typically all day and I recognize we’re trying to save money,” Collins said. “But what happens is we go through the day…and I even went to the chair (Lowery) and said, listen, bill us an hour for lunch and he wouldn’t do it because of the schedule.”

Collins furthered his rationale by noting some council member take medication and that the council has to “think of our staff.”

The council’s proposed budget for next year is about $1.5 million, which is about $66,000 lower than the current budget. Still, the new budget added $40,000 for travel for council members and about $10,000 for them to attend seminars next year.

Council budget chairman and mayoral candidate Jim Strickland said “not surprisingly” he opposed the increases for lunches and travel.

“$40,000 for travel and $10,000 for seminars and $7,000 for lunch – that’s a firefighter, that’s a police officer,” Strickland said. “Firefighters work 24 hours and we don’t pay for their lunches. They bring their own and make arrangements for themselves. Every working person in America has to bring their lunch or arrange for their lunch. I think it’s wrong to use taxpayer money to buy (council members’) lunch.”

Halbert said Strickland’s comparisons did not ring true. She noted council salaries have been cut “two or three times” since she was elected but council administrator Lisa Geater said salaries have only been cut once in that time. Halbert said making council staff get their own lunch on Tuesday is an “undue burden” that is “just ridiculous.”

“I know we are trying to show that we are being frugal and trying to be responsible with our spending but this is such a trivial issue,” Halbert said. “Our staff is not able to leave for lunch many times because of the schedule. If we can allocate money for outside services or professionals services we may or may not need, certainly this is not something worth us even haggling over.”

Adding lunches to the budget got a positive recommendation from the committee. Council members Berlin Boyd, Collins, and Halbert voted in favor of it. Council members Strickland and Kemp Conrad voted against it. It was the same vote for the council’s overall budget.

Colvin

A Cordova man has been indicted in the theft of the glasses once worn by Sir Elton John.

Matthew Colvin, 26, was charged Monday with theft of property over $1,000. He could face up to four years in prison, if convicted.

Colvin was a museum visitor when he allegedly stole the glasses from a museum display case. The glasses were returned last week. He was identified by fingerprints found on the case and later admitted to taking the glasses, valued at $2,031.25.

Colvin is being held in the Shelby County Jail on $25,000 bond. He was extradited Monday from DeSoto County, Miss. Police caught Colvin and recovered the stolen goods in front of a house in Southaven.

Plough Foundation

Carpenter

Deficiencies in the city’s public records process stem from inefficient processes, a lack of understanding of open records laws by citizens and city employees, and “a growing distrust between the public records staff at various levels of city government and the local media,” according to a new report.

In 2009, Memphis Mayor A C Wharton issued an executive order to make city government more transparent, “based on the understanding that the city of Memphis belongs to the public and to achieve the open government we desire and the public deserves.” 

In March, Wharton asked Mike Carpenter, executive director of the Plough Foundation, to conduct an independent study of the city’s public records system. In an April 30 letter to the mayor, Carpenter said that “a healthy tension between government and the media is expected and beneficial. However, when that ‘push and pull’ becomes an authentic tug of war, citizens and the processes suffer.”

Carpenter’s report lays out several recommendations based on interviews with city staff, local news reporters and editors (including some from the Memphis Flyer), Shelby County staff, and some non-profit organizations focused on transparency in government.

In a year, the report found an average of 645 records requests were filed for city documents. The most was for documents from the Memphis Police Department (207), followed by Law Division (136), Memphis Animal Shelter (104), Public Works (43), and the Memphis Fire Department (41).

On average, these requests were filled within 8.7 business days. The mayor’s media division scored the worst, with an average of 25.5 days to fill a records request. The Citizen’s Hotline scored the best at 4.1 days to fill a request.

Here are some highlights of Carpenter’s recommendations to the mayor:

1. Move public records responsibility from the law division to the executive division.
“The reassigning of the responsibility would underscore the imperative to have the process driven by the mayor and chief administrative officer. It would address the fatigue and frustration expressed by staff of the Law Division, which was evident from my interviews, and allow the city’s attorneys to focus on contracts, lawsuits and policies and avoid potential conflicts arising out of public records litigation.”

2. Appoint a Public Records Ombudsman to oversee the process and resolve disputes.
“To adequately insure the seriousness of purpose in making government open and transparent, a single individual needs to bear day-to-day responsibility for the success of the process and the compliance of the individuals charged with carrying out the process.”

3. Appoint a Public Records Oversight Committee
“The specific role of the Oversight Committee would be to discuss the efficacy of the existing processes, raise concerns and discuss potential solutions and seek to resolve conflicts that might otherwise lead to litigation.
“The committee would be comprised of the Chief Information Officer, City Attorney, a Records Custodian from a City Division, a member of the City Council, a representative of print media, a representative of broadcast media and two private citizens.”

4. Reassign all records custodians
“All current custodians should be relieved of their public records duties and those duties reassigned to new staff within each department or division. The value to this recommendation is a fresh start with individuals who have a renewed sense of purpose.“

5. Don’t charge for labor costs 
“…maintaining an open and transparent government comes with a cost and labor associated is just the price of doing business. Equally compelling is that taxpayers have essentially already paid for the labor through their property and sales taxes that fund the salaries of city government employees.
“The fact that some use the services of public records staff more frequently than others is basically no different than one taxpayer who uses Poplar Avenue daily and another who never uses that route. Both must pay for the maintenance of this important City thoroughfare.”

6. Upgrade public records technology
This includes upgrading the city’s email system, and launching a data portal, separate for the city’s website.

7. Institue new policies at the Memphis Police Department
Make all police indecent reports available within 48 hours. Make public all Internal Affairs investigations. Involve the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation [TBI] only as a last resort (TBI is exempt from public disclosure of records). Figure out how to release body camera footage, once it’s available.

Make recommendations in the report apply to MPD.

“…in regard to public records, MPD should go beyond what the law requires and set a standard of transparency for the rest of city government.

“In this day of Ferguson, Baltimore, Tulsa and many, many other incidents of alleged police misconduct, MPD must hold itself to the highest standards of transparency to demonstrate the honesty and integrity with which the vast majority of officers operate.

“Therefore, it is critical that MPD be subjected to the same recommendations outlined throughout this report as permitted by law.”

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On a related side note, a request for the arrest record for Larry Ron Bowen (the Arkansas truck driver arrested for swapping a tractor trailer load of lunch meat for crack) has been open for a week now.

The city website says requests are typically filled within five business days but could take longer depending on request volume.

Until then, we wait.