The words “key members of the Memphis City Council” set off a storm during a council committee meeting Tuesday that had some council members questioning the legitimacy of a decision by Memphis Mayor A C Wharton and accused him of playing favorites with certain council members.
The mayor announced on Friday a move to allow the working spouses of city employees to remain on the city’s health insurance plan through 2015. Working spouses were cut from the health plan if they could get insurance through their employer.
It was part of a controversial series of changes to the city’s health plan. The controversy over benefits began when the council approved Wharton’s budget in June. The council moved to reverse some of their decisions in a vote last month.
That vote apparently included leaving the “spousal carveout,” as it is called in Memphis City Hall parlance, intact.
But a Friday news release from Wharton’s office announced he’d reversed that decision. The release said allowing the 1,200 spouses to remain in the plan would cost the city $7 million but that the city would recuperate some of the funds by charging the spouses $100 to remain on the plan. That’s up from $50 last year.
But Wharton’s release said the move was “endorsed by key member of the Memphis City Council.” Some council members came to Tuesday’s meeting wanting to know who those “key” members were and why they were not contacted on the matter.
The discussion was opened by council member Janis Fullilove who prefaced her query saying she hoped it was “not out of line.”
“I was embarrassed and livid,” Fullilove began, noting she was not contacted by the administration on the matter. “How do you have ‘key members’ when there are 13 on the council?”
City chief administrative officer George Little explained that the administration held talks with council members Jim Strickland, the council chairman, and Shea Flinn, the chairman of the council’s personnel committee. Little said the two “seemed to be the appropriate individuals as far as consulting on the language.”
As for as making the change at all, Little said the administration had the authority to make the change without express permission of the council. That’s because the council had approved the funding and the rights to make plan design changes overall. The move came as an executive action.
Council member Lee Harris said that he has come to believe the action was likely above board but that it smacks of illegitimacy.”
The original plan design changes were meant to save millions of dollars for the city to put toward the huge hole in the city’s pension fund. The changes were set to save $23 million this year.
The savings will still be there, Little said, as the city has now offered employees and retirees more cost-saving choices for their health care needs, like a new free clinic for them.
“Well, first, (the administration) says we have to get your permission to do this,” Harris said. “Then, later, they say we don’t need you at all. We can call two people and call it a day.”
Harris asked Little if the mayor was now firm on his changes to the health plan and Little said he was.
But the discussion opened an old wound for some council members.
Wanda Halbert has frequently made claims that certain council members and certain areas of Memphis get preferential treatment over others. She’s long claimed (and brought up numerous times about variety of topics) that the Overton Square parking garage and the drainage basin for Lick Creek built under it, were built because the structure is in Midtown and the project was pushed by Strickland and Flinn.
When she brought up the project again on Tuesday, Flinn gave a fiery retort.
“I find it personally offensive that the idea that I am walking around and the administration is throwing information at me. That’s not the case at all, not on Overton Square and not on the spousal carveout” Flinn said. “I bust my ass at this job and go out of my way, on nights and weekends, collecting information and I schedule meetings with (the Wharton administration). This idea that there are favorite nations, it’s not the truth and I wish it would stop.”
Fullilove took the opportunity tell Flinn that she thinks he has had “privilege all of your life” and that she was not mad at him about that. But she said she thought Flinn does have special privileges with the administration and she does not.
“Have I been dissed by this administration? Yes, I have,” Fullilove said. “I called the mayor four times and has he responded? Nope. It’s obvious that he doesn’t care about what I want to talk about. And people ask me why I criticize him like I do.”
In another action, the council pushed a final vote on pension reform to sometime after their next meeting on October 21.
