The newly constituted Memphis city council, sworn in on
January 1st, has barely begun to operate, but already there’s a
major difference of opinion between several new members and chairman Scott
McCormick, on one side, and holdover members Joe Brown and Barbara Swearengen
Ware, on the other.
The dispute, spelled out in correspondence between
McCormick and Brown, involves the chairman’s ruling that only members of the
several council committees will be allowed to participate actively and vote
during meetings of the committees. This is a change from longstanding council
custom, and councilman Brown has put his displeasure into writing.
In the most recent of two letters to McCormick, delivered
on Monday, Brown insists “our rules do not give the Chairman the right to
deprive any member of this body the opportunity to discuss an item before any of
the standing committees.” Brown notes that the Shelby County Commission allows
all members of the commission to attend any committee meeting and participate
and vote, whether they belong to the committee in question or not.
Brown also contends that limiting participation to
committee members violates the spirit of the state Sunshine Law.
Exercising the traditional power of new chairmen to
establish protocols for conducting business, McCormick imposed the
closed-committee rule in order to streamline meetings and, in a previous
response to Brown, had cited similar rules in effect for committee meetings in
the Tennessee General Assembly and in both chambers of the United States
Congress.
Among those supporting McCormick’s ruling and his
reasoning, including a reluctance to make all committees de facto committees of
the whole, are new members Shea Flinn and Jim Strickland.. “It’s a question of
time management,” said Flinn, who made a point of excluding several members,
including Brown, from active participation in last week’s meeting of the
council’s Personnel Committee, which Flinn heads.
“There was some awkwardness, ” Flinn acknowledged. One
moment came when Mayor Herenton, in addressing the committee, made a direct
reference to new councilman Bill Boyd, who was not a member of the Personnel
Committee but was attending its meeting. Another came from Brown’s insistence
that he be included in a post-lunch roll call of the committee, but a point of
order from member Wanda Halbert, deferring any action on the matter, was
approved.
“I support Scott’s ruling,” said Strickland, who announced
his own intention to observe it in meetings of the council’s Parks Committee,
which he heads. Strickland noted that Brown and other members would have the
opportunity in public meetings of the full council to discuss any matter which
came before any of the council committees.
“It’s not as if the committees can bottle up issues, as
committees in the legislature and in Congress can,” Strickland said.. “We don’t
have any screening procedures like that. Everything we talk about will show up
before the full council.”
Brown has indicated he will ask council attorney Allen Wade
to look into the matter when the council reconvenes next Tuesday.
–Jackson Baker
