Tag: Chancellor Jim Kyle

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Allan Wade: Fast Man With a Phrase

Allan Wade, the veteran lawyer who represents the Memphis City Council, among other clients, is a glib talker, both in the courtroom and out, as he indicated once again in a hearing Tuesday in the courtroom of Chancellor Jim Kyle and afterward.

Allan Wade

The hearing concerned a request by several plaintiffs attempting to halt the council’s proposed use of city funds to launch a “public information” campaign in favor of three referenda on the November 6th ballot. Wade argued vigorously against the suit and was gratified when the Chancellor went on to rule that the issue was not “ripe” for judgment.

Wade was explaining as much to a reporter in the hallway of the Courthouse after the hearing when John Marek, also a lawyer and one of the plaintiffs, passed by, muttering something about “corruption.” Wade instantly shifted gears, responding “Kiss my ass,” and then continuing with his exegesis of what he saw as the relevant legal issues in the case.

The outburst was a reminder of another reported incident in the council chambers when, after a meeting, several attendees expressed criticism of an action taken by Wade in his role as attorney for the council. One of them, Theron Bond, said Wade responded with a profane threat, and another, Carlos Ochoa, who was attempting to make a video of the exchange, said Wade called him a “punk.”

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Kyle Passes On Issue of Council Funding of Public Funds for Referenda Campaign

CREDIT: JB

JB

Kyle listening to arguments in case

After a four-day hesitation, during which time a palpable optimism flared among opponents of the three city council-supported referenda, Chancellor Jim Kyle reverted to form on Monday, ruling, as he had on an earlier request to excise the referenda from the ballot, that, as he said both times, the issue of the council’s use of public funds (estimated in the range of $30,000 to $40,000) to “educate” voters was not “ripe” for judgment.

Although Kyle acknowledged that the plaintiffs — three individuals and the Save IRV organization — had standing (a point that attorneys for city had contested), he suggested again, as he had on October 11th, that the rights or wrongs of the matter could best be adjudicated in the wake of an actual election, or at least at a time when specific consequences, as against potential ones (“mays” and “maybes,” he called them), could be alleged.

Plaintiffs Erika Sugarmon, John Marek, and Sam Goff had all presented themselves as past candidates for political office who intended to run in the city election of 2019 and would face improper obstacles favoring incumbent opponents should Ranked Choice Voting (aka Instant Runoff Voting) not be instituted, as provisionally planned by the Election Commission but as opposed in a council-sponsored referendum.

Kyle was not impressed by the plaintiffs’ argument, suggesting that he had no intention of granting either side what he referred to ironically as “a fair advantage.”

City council attorney Allan Wade, referring to Ranked Choice Voting as “a failed experiment,” expressed satisfaction with the ruling and claimed to reporters, as he had in the hearing, that the council had the right to use taxpayer funds to “influence” or “educate” voters (he used both verbs at different times) and that Mayor Jim Strickland was legally bound as city administrator to assist in executing the strategy, which opponents had likened to the council’s putting “a thumb on the scale.”

Bryce Ashby, attorney for the plaintiffs, said his side still maintained hope that the mayor could exercise independent authority by declining to sign papers that would put into action a public-information campaign as envisioned by the council. Deidre Malone, of Malone Advertising and Media Group, has confirmed that she has been approached by the council about assisting in an organized media campaign in favor of the anti-IRV referenda and two others on the ballot.

Strickland has made no public statement on the controversy.

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Emergency Hearing to Halt Council Media Campaign on Referenda

UPDATE: Chancellor Kyle issued a temporary injunction against spending of public money, pending an opportunity for him to study the parties’ respective briefs. He will reconvene the case on Tuesday at 10 a.m. DETAILS TO COME

An emergency hearing has been set for 4 p.m. Friday in the courtroom of Chancellor Jim Kyle to hear a request by a group of plaintiffs for a temporary restraining order and injunction against the expenditure of $30,000 to 40,000 in taxpayer funds by the Memphis City Council to advocate publicly for the passage of three referenda on the November 6th ballot.

By a vote of 5 to 3, the council passed a previously unannounced add-on resolution by Councilman/County Commissioner Edmund Ford Jr. on Tuesday to provide the sum for “a public information campaign concerning the referenda” to explain their “potential benefits to the citizens of Memphis.” After passage, the council hastily voted for a “same-night minutes” process to safely embed the vote in the permanent record.

The referenda, which have been and remain controversial, ask voters to nullify previous actions approved by the city’s electorate — including a two-term limit for mayor and council members, which would be increased to three terms, and the repeal of a prior referendum calling for instant runoff voting (IRV). Another referendum proposes to nullify the district-runoff provisions of a 1993 court decree.

The request for injunction alleges that the expenditure of public funds for such a one-sided propaganda campaign would constitute “distinct and palpable injury” upon the “general citizenry.”

The plaintiffs also allege that the council’s action lacked proper mayoral authorization or opportunity to veto and that state law does not authorize the use of public funds to advertise on behalf of either side of a ballot referendum. The request for declaratory judgment further states that emergency judicial action is needed to forestall the proposed advertising campaign because voting on the aforesaid referenda is already under way.

Plaintiffs are Erika Sugarmon, John Marek, Sam Goff, and Save IRV, Inc.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

County Commission, Chairman Ford Cut a Deal on Power-Sharing (Finally)

CREDIT: JB

JB

Attorney Krelstein and Justin Ford confer just prior to chairman Ford’s agreeing to deal with plaintiffs

It took a while, both in the long run (two and a half months since the standoff began, in the immediate wake of the August 7 election) and in the short term (two hours of mind-bending intricacy at Monday’s climactic public meeting), but the Shelby County Commission’s power struggle finally ended — or seemed to — with a win-win solution.

Both of the warring party-line-plus-one factions were claiming victory, in any case — the one composed of six Democrats and one Republican (Steve Basar), and the one containing five Republicans and one Democrat (Justin Ford).

The solution involved a willingness by the D-Plus-Ones to give up their ongoing Chancery Court lawsuit against chairman Ford (for his seemingly high-handed control of what could be placed on the Commission agenda) in return for the R-Plus-Ones’ agreement to drop their appeal of an adverse decision by Chancellor Jim Kyle, coupled with Ford’s acceptance of majority rule in determining agenda items.

Ford and his Republican allies claimed victory because they had fended off what Republicans Heidi Shafer and Terry Roland saw as an effort by the D-Plus-Ones to “overthrow” Ford’s chairmanship. The Democratic coalition — whose ad hoc leaders were newbie Van Turner and the veteran Walter Bailey — claimed victory because they had forced Ford to yield on his arbitrary control of the agenda.

Virtually lost sight of in the two-sided celebration (which followed an exhausting and repetitious squabble settled evidently in an off-to-the-side chat by competing lawyers Turner and Ron Krelstein) was the origin of the dispute, in the chairmanship election held on September 8 by a freshly elected Commission with six new members.

The GOP’s Basar, who had been vice-chair in 2013-14, had expected to be elected chairman and was shocked when the majority of Republicans opted instead for the candidacy of Roland, switching to Democrat Ford when the Millington Republican seemed obviously about to fall short.

Ford was ultimately elected on the basis of his own vote and that of the Commission’s six Republicans (including the stunned Basar, who would shortly have a change of mind). Bailey, the Commission’s senior Democrat, was meanwhile outraged by his second-place finish to Ford, whose long-term chumminess with Republicans and openness to their agenda were no secret.

At the Commission’s next meeting, on September 22, Bailey and five other Democrats, along with Basar, voted together to block the committee appointments made by Ford. Eventually, weeks later, Ford would get his way on the committee matter, but in the meantime the battle had shifted to the matter of an agenda item which Basar kept proposing and Ford kept rejecting.

That agenda item, which proposed a rules change allowing agenda items to be added on the basis of simple majority votes and not by a 2/3 super-majority, became the basis of a Democratic coalition lawsuit against Ford’s alleged violations of Commission rules via his persistent rejections.

Two weeks ago Chancellor Kyle declined to rule outright on the suit, finding instead that the Commission had no rules because it had adopted none for the new body and directing Commissioners to adopt new rules or to re-adopt the body’s former rules.

Hence a motion for an amended rules package presented as an add-on by Basar on Monday, igniting another round of the ongoing factional dispute — partly tedious, partly fascinating — and going over all of the same old issues dividing the body.

As indicated in a prior post on this site, the amended rules package contained new clauses calling for the majority-rule principle and essentially removing the chairman from any control over agenda items. Deleted from the package, on a finding by County Attorney Marcy Ingram that it conflicted with the county charter, was a clause declaring that the chairman served “at the will and pleasure of the Commission.”

[pdf-1]

When the deal finally came sometime after 6:00 p.m. on Monday, the two sides had agreed (on a motion by Ford!) to refer the rules matter to the next meeting of the general government committee, resolved to drop their respective legal actions, and to do the trade-off indicated in Paragraph Three above: Ford can feel secure in his chairmanship, though he has had to sacrifice the power over the agenda which he had previously claimed and employed.

Either both sides won, or both sides lost. The question now becomes: Do the two party-line-plus-one coalitions continue to cohere, or do they break apart, a major part of their raison-d’etre having dissolved?