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Editorial Opinion

Tennessee Report Cards

Ours is an age when “outcome-based” is increasingly attached to public-policy initiatives and testing of various sorts is very much in vogue, not only in education but as a measure of success or failure in other ways as well.

This week, Tennesseans can consult brand-new studies to see how the state is doing in K-12 public education and how it could be doing in health care.

First, a freshly released Rutgers University study, entitled “National Report,” grades the 50 states on the extent of their financial commitment to public education. At a time when officials of the Haslam administration and the governor himself cite various other studies as proof of the success of their education initiatives, the Rutgers report tells another story.

While the report awards Tennessee a “B” for the equity of its fund distribution — i.e., in giving poor districts a fair share of the financial pie — it gives the state a flat-out “F” in determining the size of the funding pie itself. 

In measuring teacher compensation against pay for other vocations in the labor market, for example, the report has this to say: “Wages are least competitive in Missouri, North Carolina, Arizona, Georgia, Tennessee, and Virginia, where teachers make around 30 percent less. Wage competitiveness worsens as teachers advance in their career.”

Keeping in mind that the ability of Tennessee’s teachers to change their economic lot for the better was undermined by the General Assembly’s abolition of their collective-bargaining rights in 2011, a long-term improvement would seem to be disproportionately dependent on the good will of state political authorities.  

On the issue of health care, a couple of reports issued during the past week by the White House eschew the course of fault-finding with Tennessee per se in favor of underscoring what the state is giving up by its failure to participate fully in the benefits of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

What the White House makes clear in a “Fact Sheet” released this week is that Tennessee — despite itself, frankly — is reaping enormous advantages already from the ACA. These include the reduction of insurance premiums for participating Tennesseans, the elimination of out-of-pocket expenses for a variety of testing and screening procedures, the prohibition of “pre-existing illness” restrictions, and the elimination of the infamous “donut hole,” whereby Medicare prescription benefits disappeared at a certain level.

That and more constitute the high side. But what the two White House reports also make clear is that, by declining to follow through on Haslam’s proposed “Insure Tennessee” program, the General Assembly has doomed the state to an annual loss of $1.77 million in ACA Medicaid funding for health care, and to the relegation of 180,000 uninsured Tennesseans to the kind of emergency-room care that has proved ruinously expensive to the state’s over-burdened hospitals. 

The White House issued no grades as such for Tennessee state government’s performance in providing health-care opportunities on its own or in taking advantage of those provided by the federal government, but it seems clear that, at best, the state has earned an Incomplete and, at worst, another “F.”

Failing grades in education and health care? Those are unacceptable report cards.

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Editorial Opinion

The County Commission’s Squandered Consensus

The line between politics and government is sometimes indistinct, blurred and all but nonexistent. All things considered, that’s a good thing. And it’s possible to make the case that, in a marathon 10-hour budget/committee session held on Wednesday, May 20th, the Shelby County Commission merged the two functions seamlessly.

Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell

In that session, the 13 members of the commission appeared to be as much on the same page as it’s possible to be for a body that represents often conflicting inner-city and outer-suburb interests and the ideologically divergent attitudes of the two major political parties. That meeting had begun with testimony before the commission by two representatives of the Greater Memphis Area Chamber of Commerce, who laid out in unvarnished terms the county’s catch-22 predicament: one of dwindling revenue streams and increasing demand for services, coupled with population shifts and an awareness of the stiffening economic competition from adjacent political jurisdictions.

Maybe it was that cold-shower, smell-the-coffee start that did it, but, whatever the reason, the commissioners went on to function in as fully synchronized a manner as they, or any other group of disparate individuals could hope to achieve — proceeding efficiently and harmoniously through a normal committee load, through a systematic and patient interview session with a dozen applicants to fill a Judicial Commission vacancy, and finally into the demanding process of weighing the ramifications of a $1.1 billion budget and parsing through the competing demands of various county divisions for a share of what the administration of County Mayor Mark Luttrell presented as a likely $6 million surplus.

By the end of the day, the commission had seemed to reach a consensus on the important issues, literally splitting the difference on disputed sums and even agreeing on an innovative way of handling the vexing matter of grants to non-profits by placing careful limits on the fiscal size of that pie and assigning all the commissioners equal pieces of it to distribute within their districts. As one member observed, the outcome seemed to be one of the “unintended consequences” of the single-member redistricting formula adopted after the census of 2010. Unintended, but welcome.

By the end of that session, the members of the commission seemed to have bonded into a bona fide unit, exchanging compliments and achieving a state which they — and we, observing it — saw as a veritable kumbaya of unified purpose.

That was then. But the 12-day break effected by the Memorial Day weekend between that meeting and the public session on Monday seems to have undermined all that unity. The full commission meeting of this week, partially chronicled in “Politics,” p. 12, was one nasty squabble, virtually from beginning to end — from a surprise decision, early on, to forgo picking a Judicial Commissioner (though most of the applicants had cleared away time to be in the audience) to overt back-biting and ideological name-calling that exploded the coherence of the May 20th session and resurrected all the partisan divisions and personal rivalries that had seemingly been put aside.

The commission has only until July 1st, the beginning of a new fiscal year, to regain its squandered consensus. We’re crossing our fingers.

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Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said (June 4, 2015) …

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About Toby Sells’ story, “‘Old Bridge’ Could Close for Up to Nine Months” …

Cue the Benny Hill theme music.

CL Mullins

I am curious to see how tractor-trailer drivers moving westbound on Crump toward the bridge will feel about having to navigate a roundabout to access I-55 northbound. That should be fun.

Leftwing Cracker

Now that is scary-looking, even with no traffic around! Truckers are experienced drivers, but most Memphians are not familiar with roundabouts. You should see the people driving straight across the one by Target and PetSmart out at Poplar and I-240!

Linda

Memphis drivers can’t deal with straight roads of more than one lane. Give them two lanes and they will inevitably end up in the wrong one to make their turn, at which point they will stop both or more lanes of traffic or just endanger the lives of everyone by making their turn anyway, traffic be damned. And if a road happens not to have enough lanes to suit their purposes, they make their own.

Watching the roundabout on TDOT cameras should prove to be an entertaining pastime.

Jeff

About Tim Sampson’s last Rant …

Say it ain’t so! Please don’t reduce The Rant to once a month. It is the only thing worth reading in your paper. Tim Sampson and Randy Haspel are brilliant comics who help to expose the brain-dead beliefs of right-wing crazies and the coming takeover of America by the Koch brothers and other power-mad Republican scum. Remember, just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean the Republicans are not out to get you!

Russell Pryor

Editor’s Note: Tim and Randy will each write once a month in our new “Last Word” column. They will be joined on alternate weeks by Jen Clarke and Susan Wilson. Clarke’s first column debuts in this issue.

About Wendi C. Thomas’ Truth Be Told column, “Good Moves” …

If these young ladies survive the gauntlet that society has set up for their youth, they should make deadly competition for their more affluent age-group members. If they’re on a level field of competition.

JR Golden

About Bianca Phillips’ story “Bus Riders Union Asks for Improvements to North Terminal” …

As a user of the North End Terminal for my daily commute, I agree it could use some improvements. I have never used the restrooms, but the waiting areas are filthy, with litter especially evident outside. I once observed a bus driver toss litter from their window onto the pickup area.

There is rampant cigarette smoking in the parking lot and the seating areas, often directly under the “No Smoking” signs. As for the security guards, I have seen only exemplary treatment of riders by them. Yes, they bark at people walking in the bus lanes, but that makes perfect sense to me from a safety standpoint.

Some riders are not great examples of humanity, but most riders I interact with are friendly and polite. That goes for most of the drivers and other staff. Given the time constraints drivers operate under, especially when dealing with less-than-considerate riders and unpredictable traffic, I am generally impressed with their professionalism.

Hodag

About the ongoing battle over the Greensward in Overton Park …

I was at the Memphis Zoo on Memorial Day. The Greensward (aka, a huge field of weeds) area used by the zoo had not one soul enjoying this precious piece of future parking. This is an absolute joke. The leftists hate that people drive and park to see caged animals. They should be honest about what’s really eating them.

Ohknow

Ohknow, your hatred for things green and your love of all things caged is so over-the-top stereotypical as to be suspicious. What is your real agenda, comrade?

Mia S. Kite

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Editorial Opinion

B.B. King, the Maestro

CREDIT: Randy Miramontez | Dreamstime.com

Randy Miramontez | Dreamstime.com

B.B. King

For all that has been written about Memphis as a popular-music foundry, as the major originating point of blues and rockabilly and soul and so much else that the world now takes for granted, there is one aspect of the city’s endemic sound that is often overlooked, even in otherwise reasonable and authoritative accounts. 

That has to do with the elements of precision and control that underlie all the city’s characteristic musical products. From the tightly energized backing given to Elvis Presley’s earliest Sun recordings by Scotty Moore’s electric guitar and Bill Black’s bass to the massed harmonics of the Memphis Horns over at Stax/Volt, our city’s musical exemplars would pioneer in all the ways in which the raw and elemental stuff of life can be captured live and contained. That, if you will, is “the Memphis sound.”

No one represents this defining characteristic better than B.B. King, the maestro of the blues guitar, who died last week at age 89 and rightly received plaudits and eulogies from all over the globe. What distinguished B.B.’s playing was his unique single-string style, in which notes were played one at a time, rather than in ensemble or chord form, and each note sang its own song of sadness or joy or playfulness or indefinable longing. Each note — held or clipped, bent or played straight, isolated or in sequence — was an infinite universe of meaning.

Though B.B. King was no academic scholar, his knowledge of musical properties was profound and arose both from the gigs he did and from his path-finding service in the late ’40s and early ’50s as a disc jockey on Memphis’ WDIA-AM, the nation’s first all-black radio station. 

It was as a performer, though, that he was best known and will remain so, through recordings that will be played as long as there are means to hear them and places on earth where people are free to do so. B.B. King was not just a musical maestro, he was an emissary of civilization itself. God willing, he is one thrill that will never be gone.

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Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said (May 21, 2015) …

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

On Bianca Phillips’ post, “Citizens Make Demands of Memphis Zoo in Petition” …

The Greensward is for ass parking only.

Scott Banbury

A responsible approach to growth at the zoo would have called for appropriate actions to handle the additional vehicular traffic generated by the building of additional exhibits. That reasonable course has not been followed. Instead, the zoo has become the playground for well-heeled donors who are perfectly happy to donate funds to build new exhibits but who ignore the problems caused by additional traffic generated by those exhibits.

The alignment of parking spots in the current zoo parking facility does not utilize the space for maximum efficiency. The plan to reconfigure the current parking lot will have a positive effect. That effort is long overdue. Additional parking is necessary.

The construction of a parking facility alongside the North Parkway entrance to the zoo, across from Rhodes College, is a possible solution. When the city vacates the current maintenance facility on East Parkway, a parking facility, either a surface lot or a garage, which would serve all attractions at the park, could be constructed.

The only thing missing from a possible solution is the dedication of zoo leaders, city leaders, and zoo donors to work for a solution that does not involve the continuing destruction of the Greensward. The current situation is unsustainable. Sustainability is one of the key goals expressed by the organizations that guide and accredit zoos and aquariums. The experience offered to visitors could be enhanced by providing parking, which preserves the Greensward. If the zoo is to be faithful to the mission to conserve, it must seek a course that differs from the one that has been taken for decades. The zoo, and the leaders thereof, must learn the art of being neighborly.

Enrico Dagastino

On Toby Sells’ Fly-By story, “Multi-millionaire’s The Kitchen restaurant promises healthy food, leads to healthy debate” …

Well, Kimbal, we can always go on a diet, skip a third helping, but ugly goes to the bone (are we seeing a theme here?).

CL Mullins

Please note that Musk is not denigrating Memphis, the author of the [The Medium] blog post is. And, really, how many people have seen that? Is The Medium a big thing?

The only thing that Musk says is that line about opening in other, larger cities, if not for the social aspect. And that’s just good business. What’s wrong with that?

Frankly, I’m really excited about The Kitchen. I wish he would open other locations before waiting for Crosstown.

nobody

On Tim Sampson’s May 14th Rant …

I read with some vexation Tim Sampson’s “Rant” about Pamela Geller and her “Draw Mohammed” event. Well, at least, it started out that way before he digressed about being kidnapped in Peru, but I digress. Seems Tim thinks that Pamela Geller is nuts for doing it. While, yeah, probably. That’s okay, Tim, you don’t have to date her, and, no, Tim, the media has not just focused on the attackers — she has been in for her fair share of abuse. And, yes, I’m sure she did it just to be provocative and is such a nasty person that as you pointed out, they won’t even let her in the United Kingdom. She may even go out of her way to step on ants for all I know. Having said all this, so what?

Let’s look at the larger issue. If you draw the wrong cartoon or maybe I should say the right cartoon about the wrong person, someone may very well kill you or at least try to kill you because you offended their religious sensibilities. And your rant is about Pamela Geller? What’s wrong with this picture? Where’s your perspective? What about free speech? Remember the first amendment of our constitution where we get to say, write, and draw things even if it is offensive? They don’t have that in the United Kingdom. Just saying.

So, Tim, the next time you want to rant about something, try ranting about the mindset that thinks it’s okay to kill artists if you don’t like what they draw. No one should die for a cartoon.

Bill Runyan

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Scenes from Barbecue Fest

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Editorial Opinion

“Truthers” Win One

Anyone who knows anything at all about the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., knows that controversy regarding possible conspiracies in these deaths, particularly those of JFK and Dr. King, rages on and presumably will do so until the end of time. Other aspects of our national history are subject to the same skeptical instinct — notably the catastrophic attacks on the World Trade Center buildings in New York and the Pentagon in our nation’s capital.

A breed of conspiracy theorists who have won the sobriquet “truthers” (whether so dubbed by themselves or by their critics is uncertain) continues to maintain that the co-conspirators in the September 11th attacks include not just the young jihadist fanatics who hijacked the planes but previously unsuspected individuals and governments (including our own) supposedly on our side of the world’s various dividing lines.

The truther instinct is generally distrusted within the mainstream of American thought, as are the various conspiracy theorists on the assassination watch.

But Seymour Hersh, the enterprising Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has unearthed any number of previously hushed-up scandals — including the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib — has struck again, and this time at the core of what had been generally unquestioned, the account of how heroic Navy seals had stormed the Pakistan hideaway of al-Qaeda chieftain Osama bin Laden in 2011 and in the course of a gunfight brought down that international villain, whose body was then — to placate the opinion of world Muslims — given a proper Islamic burial at sea.

Hersh has published a comprehensive article (in the London Review of Books) that debunks all that. And, while not everybody has accepted his version of events, his track record as an authoritative final arbiter of the historical record speaks for itself.

In Hersh’s account, bin Laden was not inhabiting a hideaway; he was lodged in a prison as a captive of the Pakistani government, which was waiting for an appropriate moment to trade him for American moolah ($25 million is what the Pakistanis got, according to Hersh). Other apspects of Hersh’s version: The Seals were escorted into bin Laden’s place of confinement by the Pakistanis; there was no firefight; and bin Laden, who by that time was a sick old man with virtually no control of any ongoing terrorist activity, offered no resistance but was shot to pieces by automatic weapons.

Further, the “courier” whose discovery supposedly led the CIA to discover bin Laden’s whereabouts never existed, and the story of the valiant storming tale told by President Obama to a grateful nation was an improvisation, concocted for immediate political effect to replace a previously arranged cover story that would have had bin Laden shot during a combat raid somewhere in the mountainous wilderness area of Pakistan.

There is more to Hersh’s account, and all of it, like this sample, so thoroughly discredits the accepted explanations we had taken for granted as to cast grave doubt, by implication, on all of the other official explanations challenged for all these years by conspiracy theorists. We may have to apologize to all those truthers we have consistently mocked.

And that’s only the beginning.

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said … (May 14, 2015)

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About Toby Sells’ post, “Man Indicted in Theft of Elton John’s Glasses” …

What a stupid thing to go to jail for.

OakTree

“So,” his new friends ask, “whattya in for?”

“I stole Elton John’s glasses.”

crackoamerican

“You’re my tiny dancer now, bitch.”

Dave Clancy

About Jen Clarke’s Viewpoint, “Sit! Stay!” urging Griz fans to stay to the end of games …

As a season ticket holder, I don’t think crowds leaving early is that big of an issue. The bigger issue is the late arrivers. The arena isn’t full until almost the 2nd quarter.

Clyde

I couldn’t disagree more. The Grizzlies, like every other NBA team, are a business. We enter into a business contract when we pay to enter FedExForum; they don’t let me in to be nice. Because I’m paying for their entertainment, I’m free to leave whenever I’m satisfactorily entertained. It has nothing to do with the Griz’s “due” or doing them “the honor.”

Daniel

I concur with the author. Daniel, do us all a favor and let someone else have your ticket — someone like a real Griz fan.

Grizz>Daniel

About Les Smith’s column, “Lives That Matter” …

Freddie Gray’s prior record is irrelevant. Nobody deserves to die for making eye contact with the police and running away. And that is what happened to Freddie Gray.

Our society does not rise and fall based on how we treat the best of us. It rises and falls on how we treat the least of us.

B

About Toby Sells’ post, “MLGW Approves $240 Million Smart Meter Purchase” …

MLGW is trying to sound benevolent and caring but there is an ulterior motive: Once they have the majority of homes converted, you will start seeing MLGW charge different rates depending on the time of day. As it is now, they can only see how much usage you have each month. But the smart meter will show your usage all day every day. Be prepared to pay more for energy usage between the hours of 3 to 10 p.m. (for example). Sure they will try to justify this by having cheaper usage after midnight, but who is going to do all their daily chores after midnight? This is nothing more than a money grab by MLGW.

FireFox

We used the smart meters in Southern California, before I moved to Memphis. After the meters were installed, everyone I know, including me, had lower utility bills. I think this is a great idea.

Memphian

If they try to install one on my home, I will put up a refraction metal sheet plate against the wall, so that the meter will send all my info to a neighbor’s meter, giving me no reading at all.

Chris.Riley

The sooner they do this the better. I don’t like having to put my dogs in the house so someone can intrude in the sovereign nation that is my backyard. Both my dogs are of Moorish ancestry.

Smitty1961

And where is MLGW getting the money for all these? The United Nations, of course! This is an Illuminati plot.

Jeff

About Toby Sells’ post, “Memphis City Council Wants Lunch” …

Adjust the schedule and allow an hour for lunch for everyone. Taxpayers should not be paying for council members/staff lunches. And cut the travel allowance in half. Sign up for webinars instead of hitting the road.

It disgusts me that these issues are coming up again when this city’s budget is so tight. Most council members have a full-time job in addition to the part-time pay they get for sitting on the council — part-time pay that is more than what a lot of their constituents make in a year.

Pamela Cate

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said (May 7, 2015) …

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About Jackson Baker’s post, “Haslam Caves, Signs Legislation Nullifying Local Option on Guns in Parks” …

Jeff, I wonder how those of us too frail (say over 70 and harmlessly gardening in the front yard) or in a hurry (those of us attempting to protect ourselves from an abusive ex-paramour) or any number of other types of people (the poor) would feel about such a barrier to “the great equalizer”? 

I’m thinking that their right to own and carry a loaded handgun, if they so wish, trumps the need for extensive, lengthy, and expensive training. Perhaps you shouldn’t abuse them and they won’t shoot you.

Ichabod McCrane

Icky, I never said grandpa can’t buy a gun and pack it in the saddlebag of his Little Rascal as he putts around his own garden. Just that if he wants to pack it to the park and, perchance, whip it out with his feeble, quavering hand to shoot any random sumbitch within within range because he doesn’t have the strength to aim, he’s SOL. 

He should have taken classes and gotten certified when he wasn’t so feeble. Maybe the training would have kept him in better shape and he wouldn’t be so feeble today. But I have no problem with him packing in his own garden. 

Jeff

About Bruce VanWyngarden’s Letter from the Editor, “In Spring” …

In 10 years, we won’t recognize the Midtown we know today. New arrivals will indeed come to discover her charms. The biggest risk to that growth is that newcomers and developers will bring a suburban aesthetic with them (including conservative politics, pleated shorts, boat shoes, and a lack of interest in art).

Midtown has always meant artists (not developer-created fake “arts districts”), writers, filmmakers, left-wing politics, strong coffee, gay people, health nuts, trendsetters, serious readers, etc.

I can see why the suburban kids want in, but rather than change us, could they please adapt?

PB

About Tim Sampson’s Rant …

What does the Tennessee State Constitution say that our taxes are legally allowed to be used for? None of those projects.

CHG

What does the Constitution say about my penis? But y’all are sure involved in its use. Obviously, the Constitution is what we make it, having made it in the first place.

crackoamerican

About Wendi Thomas’ cover story, “Cuba, Si!” …

It was great to read about Thomas’ trip to Cuba. It is always a pleasure to see how liberals are drawn to the mystique of Castro’s brand of communism. If only the mean, old, imperialistic United States had not imposed trade embargoes, Cuba would be a booming, robust country.

Granted, the people of Cuba are a wonderful people, but if you take off the rose-colored glasses, you will see that they live under the yoke of communism, where there is no freedom. Thomas’ guided tour was just that, a guided tour. She saw only what they wanted her to see.

James Kline

About the new downtown “trolleys” …

As a 20-year resident of downtown Memphis, I have recently almost been hit by the “new trolleys” twice. When I mentioned this to a couple of long-term downtowners, all reported similar encounters. We all knew to listen for the noisy rumble of the real trolleys, and these silent, no-noise hybrid engine models are a threat to all. Can we at least get some good old-fashioned combustion engine models until the state takes over and restores our beloved trolleys? In years past, the only threat posed by the trolleys were all the tourists trying to take photos. I have yet to witness a tourist taking a shot of the “rubber wheels.”

Charles Deaton

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Koch Fight

As the Flyer reported back in February, members of the Tennessee General Assembly who had expressed either support for or open-mindedness toward Governor Bill Haslam’s “Insure Tennessee” proposal for Medicaid

expansion were being targeted in their home districts by savage attack ads sponsored by a group calling itself Americans for Prosperity (AFP). During the special session called by Haslam, AFP members, clad in red T-shirts, roamed the hallways of Legislative Plaza with placards attacking the governor’s proposal and crowded into hearing rooms, taking up all but a few available seats.

All legislators felt the heat from this sea of red in Nashville and from the paid inflammatory assaults on their reputations back home, but it was Republicans, members of the governor’s own party, who were subject to the most pressure.

During the special session, Jimmie Eldridge and Ed Jackson, two legislators from Jackson, site of Jackson-Madison County General Hospital, were firm and unrelenting backers of “Insure Tennessee,” which they saw as beneficial to their hospital and to their area at large. Ads appeared in the Jackson area accusing them of “betrayal,” and coupling their likenesses with that of President Obama, thereby exploiting latent political tensions and doubtless racial ones as well.

There is little doubt that the attack ads were paid for out of the same AFP pot that in recent years has intervened with prodigious outpourings of money and resources in general elections and in GOP primary races pitting Tea Party types against Republican regulars, especially relative moderates. That same AFP pot of gold has unstintingly financed efforts, nationally and in every conceivable locality, to discredit climate change, net neutrality, right-to-vote campaigns, teachers’ unions, and workers’ rights in general, to enumerate but a partial sampling of the AFP enemies’ list.

And who is AFP? It is a mask, little more than a synonym for right-wing industrialists David and Charles Koch, the financiers of this and several other propaganda organizations generically (and accurately) referred to as “Astro-Turf” (meaning artificially simulated facsimiles of genuine grass-roots groups).

In Tennessee as elsewhere, the Kochs have pitted their immense fortunes against indigenous local movements that have the slightest look of progressivism or relevance to ordinary Americans. They are enabled to do so by the shameful 2010 Citizens United decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, which effectively nullified the already insufficient safeguards of the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform.

The interests of the Kochs of AFP are not indigenous and civic-minded; they are self-serving and predatory. Combatting their deleterious effects on the Democratic process is not easy, but it can be done — as it was in Tennessee last year, when three state Supreme Court Justices survived an organized attempt to oust them that was largely financed by the Kochs.

Defeating the judicial purge required a coordinated and systematic — and expensive — effort on the part of numerous professional and civic groups across the state. And with new statewide elections coming up next year, it will need to be repeated.