Tag: City Council

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Opinion

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

Two things are troubling about the selection of Henry Hooper to replace Rickey Peete on the Memphis City Council:

First, the IRS assessed nearly $400,000 in tax liens against Hooper between 2000 and 2005. Second, Hooper didn’t volunteer this information and explain it to the council, and members didn’t ask him about it.

Hooper, agent/owner of State Farm Insurance and Finance Agency and a former United States Secret Service agent, was chosen to replace Peete for the remainder of the term that expires at the end of this year. It’s not clear yet whether Hooper will be a candidate in the October election.

Peete resigned shortly before pleading guilty in federal court last week to bribery charges. It is the second time Peete has been convicted of bribery in the performance of his public duties. He was indicted in December along with Councilman Edmund Ford. Ford has pleaded not guilty and is still on the council. Ford’s unpaid MLGW bills have drawn federal scrutiny and taken up hours of council time.

If there was ever a time for full disclosure of potentially embarrassing money matters, this is it. With Memphis at the center of the Tennessee Waltz, Main Street Sweeper, and MLGW investigations, this is no time for don’t ask/don’t tell. Hooper, who ran for sheriff in 2002 and the Shelby County Commission in 1994, is no virgin. The City Council, which is rewriting its ethics code, well …

The IRS assessed Hooper for $109,958 in taxes, interest, and penalties for 1998, $99,755 for 1999, $73,138 for 2000, and $113,112 for 2001. The assessments were in 2004 and 2005. The notice of a federal tax lien reads as follows:

“We have made a demand for payment of this liability, but it remains unpaid. Therefore, there is a lien in favor of the United States on all property and rights to property belonging to this taxpayer for the amount of these taxes.”

In an interview Tuesday, Hooper said the civil dispute involves a business trust and deductions which the IRS did not allow. He said he has hired an attorney and taken the case to tax court in Cincinnati. He said the investigation began when the IRS looked into an illegal offshore trust in which he was not involved, but the same people who set up that trust also set up his trust. He is hopeful of a settlement.

“Our trust was not illegal, but they were not going to let us deduct everything we wanted to,” he said.

He said he wasn’t trying to hide anything from the City Council.

“I was not under any legal obligation to go into a personal tax matter,” he said. “There has never been any question of my integrity at any time in my life. Now it becomes a question because somebody is trying to discredit me.”

He said the tax lien is “totally different from” Ford’s overdue utility bills because his tax issue is in court and there are no charges of favoritism.

On the resume Hooper submitted to the council, he lists his federal employment including the Secret Service for 24 years, six years with the Green Berets, and 22 years as an insurance agent and businessman. That was enough for council members. Jack Sammons said he learned of the tax lien after Hooper was chosen, but “it wouldn’t have bothered me” because it is not unusual for businesses to have IRS disputes that drag on for several years. “It’s sort of refreshing to be dealing with someone who has enough business to have a tax challenge,” he said.

Councilman Carol Chumney, however, said the tax lien should have been disclosed and “would have influenced my vote.”

The Secret Service, until 2003, was, like the IRS, a division of the U.S. Treasury. Hooper said he worked with IRS agents during his career.

Memphis politics is a forgiving business. Once you’re in the club, it’s a new day. It wasn’t only the voters in his district and his colleagues who embraced and forgave Peete. He was chairman of the board of the Center City Commission for five years and also served on the board of the Riverfront Development Corporation.

After pleading guilty last week, Peete stopped to shake hands and make a brief statement in front of the news cameras. Then he grinned and waved and climbed into an SUV. If you weren’t listening, it was hard to tell if he won or lost.

That was Rickey Peete. Henry Hooper is no Rickey Peete. He should take pains to make that clear.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Q&A: Henry Hooper II

Vietnam veteran and former Green Beret Henry Hooper II, 68, is a retired Secret Service agent who now has a career in insurance sales. Hooper has owned his State Farm Insurance and Finance agency for the past 22 years. He spends Saturdays tutoring at Guthrie Elementary School and other days spoiling his four grandchildren. Now, he’s stepped up to fill Rickey Peete’s position in the Memphis City Council.

— Cherie Heiberg

Flyer: Why did you decide to try for the seat on the City Council?

Hooper: I thought I needed to step forth and maybe add — I don’t want to say — integrity to the council, because it’s certainly there. It’s just that we’ve had some ups and downs with a few people. It’s time to make a change, start getting people [with] the ability to work and do [their] job responsibly and make decisions based on the information received and what’s in the best interest of [their] constituency and the city of Memphis.

Can you tell us anything about your time with the Secret Service?

I was in the Memphis office and primarily involved in the investigation of U.S. securities, government checks, counterfeit money, transfers of funds through the Internet, and so on. I worked for what I felt was the greatest investigative agency in the world.

why did you start an insurance business?

I was interested in the business. There comes a time in everyone’s life when you want to make a change. I had a family to think about. Coming from a single-parent household, I understood the impact of having a dad around.

What do you plan to do as councilman?

I just want to do the right thing. That’s who I am, that’s what I do. If you have the abilities, you should step forward and do what’s necessary to try and make a difference.

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News The Fly-By

Check-Out Time

Beale Street worker Reginald Matthews, 37, walks to the downtown Cossitt Library from his job every day. “I use the computer a lot,” he says. “I read my USA Today. It’s so quiet. It’s a relief from the rest of downtown.”

But the Cossitt Library is one of five branches listed for closure in a recent study.

At a committee meeting last week, members of the Memphis City Council heard a presentation on the $700,000 efficiency study conducted by Deloitte Consulting. The 189-page study suggested changes to the Fire and Police departments, including hiring more civilians to work at the Memphis Police Department and firing more than 200 city firefighters.

What wasn’t mentioned in the presentation was the study’s suggestion to close five Memphis Public Library and Information Center branches — Cossitt, Levi, Gaston Park, Highland, and Poplar-White Station — a suggestion that has drawn criticism in local media.

Linda Crump, a retired school librarian who often brings her grandchildren to various branches, calls the suggestion “a bad idea.”

“[The five branches are] all in high use, especially Poplar-White Station,” she says. “Libraries, swimming pools, and community centers keep neighborhoods going.”

According to the study, the library closures could save the city $1.1 million, most of which would come from salaries and benefits. The study proposes allocating the savings back to the library system.

The study suggests that the five branches should be closed due to their lack of physical space and their proximity to other library branches. All five are smaller than 15,000 square feet, the amount of space the study says is necessary to provide a full range of services. With the exception of Poplar-White Station, all fall more than 5,000 square feet below the standard.

Toni Holmon-Turner, public relations representative from the mayor’s office, says that the branches might not be closed. “These [closures] were recommended by a private organization. Just because it’s in the study doesn’t mean it will take place,” she says.

Robert Lipscomb, the city’s chief financial officer, concurs. “You could have a school closing and a library closing, and you could close the community center in the same area and you don’t want that. … We have to make sure they don’t go out at the same time. We need to look at everything within the context of what we’ve got.”

For Matthews, that is good news. After Cossitt, the next nearest library branch is Cornelia Crenshaw on Vance, a two-mile walk from Beale. “[Mayor Willie Herenton] wants to build a new stadium and we only have one football team. I’d rather have a library than a stadium,” he says.

The City Council is expected to make a decision on the study June 19th.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Sign Up?

Billboards are made to be seen. But some outdoor advertisers might not be happy with the Memphis City Council setting its sights on the signs.

The City Council is currently reviewing its billboard and sign ordinance, especially as it relates to

electronic signs. In a recent report to the council, consultant Eric Kelly said that it was “absolutely essential” that a new sign ordinance address full-motion electronic billboards.

“They may say full-motion videos are allowable anyplace in the city, but you need to decide because otherwise it’s going to turn up randomly,” Kelly said. “One might go in front of an apartment complex and keep people up all night. They’ll be asking, how did this happen?”

Already in Memphis, several electronic billboards have been erected, with at least one full motion sign — depicting the spinning reels of a winning slot machine — off Bill Morris Parkway.

“There are a number of things to be alarmed about in my opinion,” said council chair Tom Marshall at a recent committee meeting. “I don’t think it’s appropriate to watch video while you’re driving down the street.”

More than likely, some electronic signage will be allowed, but the council could choose to limit the size, brightness, and locations of the billboards. Marshall indicated that he felt there is a place for some electronic signage.

“I was outraged at first,” he said. “Then I thought, this looks better than what was there.”

Electronic signs with changeable copy — the type consumers might see advertising paper towels at area Walgreens — are considered safer and more attractive than their traditional counterparts, which require an employee to change the sign by hand.

“That may, however, open the door to scrolling and other rapidly changing signs,” Kelly’s study noted.

Currently, the ordinance doesn’t address motion on signage. “All the ordinance says now is that signs can’t flash,” Kelly said. “Whether this applies to video, it’s not clear.”

Full-motion billboards might have a place in Memphis the same way they are used in Times Square or the Vegas strip. “Personally, I’d love to see 12 of these signs on Beale Street,” Kelly said. “They build excitement and vitality in an area.”

The billboard report also suggested that the City Council review its rules on political signs and real estate signs, especially those erected off-premises by developers.

Currently, political signs cannot be put up more than 90 days before an election and cannot be placed on utility poles or in public rights-of-way. However, time limits for political signage have been deemed unconstitutional. The ordinance does not allow for political signage not related to an election, such as signs supporting a living wage or the war in Iraq.

“People ought to be able to express their opinions,” Kelly said. “I don’t think either the city or the county is enforcing it, but it’s weird to have an ordinance on the books you’re not enforcing.”

Legal issues could also arise with real estate signs that direct drivers to new housing developments. Typically, non-commercial signs have more freedom than commercial signs.

“Once you allow commercial signs in the rights-of-way, you have to allow noncommercial signs in the rights-of-way,” Kelly said. “It’s going to be some weird group that tests the ordinance.”

In Missouri, that group was the Ku Klux Klan. Though the state attempted to bar the KKK from participating in its “adopt a highway” program and erecting a related sign, the court rejected the effort as unconstitutional.

Traditionally, the council has taken a strong position on signage, only allowing new billboards to be erected along interstates and highways. Smaller signs on utility poles and in medians are also not allowed. Existing billboards on city streets have been grandfathered in under the ordinance, but if they fall down, they are not allowed to be rebuilt. And the council hasn’t determined yet if those existing signs can be converted to electronic billboards.

But Memphis isn’t the only city struggling with its sign ordinance.

Kelly is probably more known to Memphians as the consultant who gave the City Council the dirty details on area strip clubs in a $38,000 study.

“When you look at sex businesses in Memphis, it’s worse here than in other places,” he said. “But with signage, Memphis is in the same boat as everybody else.”

Categories
Editorial Opinion

A Changing Council

When last year’s county elections ended with eight new members taking office in the 13-member Shelby County Commission, hopes were high that the body might avail itself of the opportunity to start anew, casting aside the partisan divisions of the past and working in unaccustomed harmony. A breath of fresh air, as it were.

Then came the exhalation — and some disillusionment — as personal and political agendas made for what was arguably tougher going than before. A cynic might look at it this way: Some on the commission are running for county mayor or other higher office down the line, while others are hoping to expand their power base on the commission itself or in the community at large — or maybe just working on their resumes.

Whatever the case, the partisan divides have reasserted themselves, for better or for worse. An example of the former, in our judgment, was the recent passage of living-wage legislation, more or less a party-line affair, with Democrats in control. An example of the latter was the pell-mell rush to establish a second Juvenile Court judgeship — an end justifiable in itself, we think, but one that has often progressed without benefit of ordinary protocols or simple civilities.

In some ways, it would appear, the turnover of the commission’s members has made for minimal continuity and a bumpy transition indeed. A tip of the hat here to commission chairman Joe Ford, whose work ethic and generally acknowledged sense of fairness have kept the body more or less on course and less quarrelsome than it might be.

All of this is relevant to new developments on the Memphis City Council, which last week saw two more members — the legally beleaguered Rickey Peete and another council veteran, E.C. Jones — announce that they would not seek reelection this year. That makes six dropouts so far, and it ain’t over yet.

The strong likelihood exists, in fact, that, by the time the 2007 election season is over, the council will have experienced a shakeup in its membership at least as complete as the one the commission has undergone.

This could be good news or bad news, depending on who the replacements are. We are inclined to be optimistic, in that city voters are likely to be motivated much more by reaction to real or alleged scandals, some of them quite fresh, than were county voters last year.

Indeed, since a full month and a half remain before the filing deadline for city office, the opportunity for a full and systematic regeneration would seem to be at hand. One of the persistent refrains during last year’s 9th District congressional campaigns was a general lament at the presence of so many worthy candidates, many of them new and promising faces, in a race that could finally have only one winner.

It was argued at the time that some of these candidates were putting the cart before the horse and that their talents and fresh approaches were more sorely needed at the local level. What seemed true then is even more compelling now. The City Council, like the County Commission before it, is in for significant change. We’d like to see an enlarged field of prospects — similar in size and variety and enthusiasm, say, to the one that answered the call last year for election to the Charter Commission.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Showdown Time

CREDIT: Gallagher Photo: Jackson Baker

As the Shelby County Commission voted Monday to hold interviews with potential candidates for interim state representative in House District 89 on Monday, April 2, with a vote on the interim member scheduled on April 9, contests were developing on the Democratic side of the aisle — both for the interim position and for the right to serve as permanent member via a subsequent special election.

Two Democrats were being talked up, as of Monday, to serve as interim state representative — activists David Holt and Mary Wilder. Holt was the subject of something of a draft movement among local progressive bloggers, while Wilder was being pushed by longtime activist/broker David Upton.

The real surprise is that, in the looming special election primary, Democrat Kevin Gallagher is losing ground among erstwhile supporters. Gallagher had been considered a tacit consensus choice and a virtual shoo-in after yielding to former District 89 representative Beverly Marrero in the District 30 state Senate special election, which she won.

Since that understanding was reached, however, Gallagher, who served most recently as campaign manager for 9th District congressman Steve Cohen, has alienated many of his former backers — both through acts of omission (some considered him too remote a presence during Marrero’s special election race with Republican Larry Parrish) and acts of commission (he has had a series of awkward personal encounters with members of his support base).

Rapidly gaining support for the permanent seat among Democrats is another longtime activist, Jeannie Richardson — who has picked up backing (some of it silent for now) with both Upton, her original sponsor, and with members of the blogging community who don’t normally see eye to eye with Upton.

All of this was occurring on the eve of another important vote among Democrats — that for local Democratic chairman, to take place next Saturday during a party convention. The two leading candidates are lawyer Jay Bailey and minister Keith Norman.

What amounted to the first one-on-one encounter between Bailey and Norman took place Monday night at the Pickering Center in Germantown through the auspices of the Germantown Democratic Club.

Gallagher Photo: Jackson Baker

Both candidates acquitted themselves well overall, and each made a point of bestowing praise — or at least friendship and respect — on the other. But each wielded a rhetorical two-edged sword in the process.

Norman, for example, was able tacitly to benefit from discussion of an anti-Bailey campaign mailer, even while deploring it. The mailer — a hefty collection of photocopied court records concerning disciplinary actions taken (or initiated) against lawyer Bailey — had, as everybody present knew, been sent at considerable expense to each voting delegate at Saturday’s forthcoming party convention.

In his opening remarks, Bailey had left no mystery as to who the sender of the packets had been.

“I’m proud of being a professional. I’m proud of being one of the people in this community who went through some things but was able to stand up and see my way through it … . I will not allow my character to be assassinated by innuendo by someone sending out an anonymous packet who was too afraid to put their name to it. I’ll tell you who it was. It was Richard Fields.”

Fields, a frequent adversary, had failed to explain that most of the actions against him had been dismissed, said Bailey. He acknowledged having had a drug problem a decade ago that was at the heart of a suspension imposed on him at the time, but denounced Fields’ packet as the kind of “mudslinging” that had cost other Democrats elections in the past — “eight judicial races and four clerk’s races.”

The reference was to Fields’ practice, begun last year, of distributing open letters making the case against various candidates for office.

During his own remarks, Norman expressed solidarity with Bailey on the point, wondering “where the money came from” for Fields’ mailer. “If you haven’t won lawsuits, you don’t have that kind of money.”

Jackson Baker

Norman and Bailey made nice (sort of) Monday night.

In an apparent reference to Fields’ first campaign letter, sent out last year concerning the backgrounds of several judicial candidates, Norman said he knew “the party was in trouble” when he saw it, and he cited the fact as one of the inspirations for his ultimate decision to seek the chairmanship.

“I knew nothing about this stuff,” Norman said about the current mailer. “I don’t care what Jay Bailey did 10 years ago.” Without mentioning Fields by name, he criticized “someone who had the audacity and nerve” to put it out, “maybe trying to make me look bad.”

In the course of disclaiming any intention of being judgmental about opponent Bailey, Norman, pastor of First Baptist Church on Broad, went so far as to lament the recent firing of an assistant minister at Bellevue Baptist Church for an act of child molestation — “something that was done 34 years ago.”

Of Fields’ mailer, Norman said, “I won’t stand for it” and noted that he and Bailey had discussed preparing a formal joint response, but he added pointedly, “Because it was against Jay, I wanted him to address the issues. That hasn’t happened yet.”

The two candidates agreed that unity across factional lines was a high priority for the party and that the high incidence of corruption among elected officials, many of them Democrats, was a major problem, but they seemed to differ about the degree of loyalty owed by the party chairman or the party as a whole to candidates running as Democrats.

“There are times that we have to make difficult decisions about whether to support particular Democrats,” Norman said, speaking of those with ethics issues. “We can’t go around co-signing everybody’s loan. We’re tearing our credibility down.”

While agreeing that candidates with conflicted personal situations ought to be counseled “either to work their way through it or to work themselves out of the race,” Bailey laid greater stress on unconditional loyalty to a formal Democratic ticket, once selected by the electorate in a primary. He also urged strong support of issues important to organized labor, a traditional Democratic constituency.

As evidence of his ability to cross factional lines and improve the fortunes of the Democratic Party, Norman cited both his pastoral history and his former career in the business world doing “turnarounds” of sagging commercial properties.

He noted the examples of East St. Louis, Illinois, and Gary, Indiana — two municipalities blighted by economic distress and civic corruption. “Memphis is about 25 light years away from that,” Norman warned somberly.

Democrats will choose between the two candidates on Saturday at Airways Junior High, site of the preliminary party caucus four weeks ago.

It remains to be seen whether the field of candidates is complete for the Memphis mayoral election. Various names are still being talked up, and one of them, despite his conditional disclaimer of last week, is Shelby County mayor A C Wharton, who backhandedly acknowledged this week that he is still being hot-boxed to run for city mayor by members of the business community, according to reports.

“I won’t kiss and tell” was Wharton’s somewhat cryptic response. The county mayor has said he won’t run against incumbent mayor Willie Herenton. The implication was that if Herenton ceased being a candidate for any reason, Wharton himself might very well take the plunge.

Roll Call, a Washington, D.C., insiders’ publication, published an article last week about Representative Steve Cohen’s relatively high-profile tenure in office so far and speculated on the kind of opposition he might face in a 2008 reelection bid.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, the article mentioned as likely opponents several of the leading candidates against Cohen in last year’s election — Jake Ford, Julian Bolton, Ron Redwing, Ed Stanton, and others.

Perhaps the most frequently mentioned of likely adversaries, also cited in the Roll Call piece, is Nikki Tinker, the Pinnacle Airlines lawyer who was runner-up to Cohen in last year’s Democratic primary. Tinker is making the political rounds and was one of the attendees at Monday night’s forum for Democratic chairmanship candidates.

Tinker declined to comment “right now” on her intentions.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Q&A: Denise Parkinson, City Council candidate

If the core can learn from the edge — as business leader and public intellectual John Seely Brown attests — grassroots activist Denise Parkinson may be just the educator for the Memphis City Council.

One of the founders of the Save Libertyland! and a former mayoral candidate in Little Rock, Arkansas, Parkinson officially launched her campaign for the City Council’s District 5 seat last week against Jim Strickland. Carol Chumney currently holds the District 5 position but will vacate to run for city mayor. — by Preston Lauterbach

Flyer: What influenced your decision to run?

Parkinson: Memphis Light, Gas and Water, the Riverfront Development Corporation, and the Mid-South Fair. If you connect those dots, then you realize that there are shadowy, quasi-governmental non-profits that are systematically looting the system. It’s time for a change in the status quo.

It also has to do with seeing the skyline, the unique architecture of Memphis, being destroyed. I call it “government by demolition.”


What would you change?

For one thing, I would do everything I could to not set the precedent of paving over and bulldozing historic parks. I would do all I could to reopen the historic properties the city has closed. The Magevney House and the Mallory-Neely House have been closed for two, going on three years.

I want to make the city more family friendly, more kid friendly, and beef up our tourism. We’ve lost the way. We can unite the cultural and natural heritage of Memphis and make Memphis a destination again. When I was growing up in Arkansas, if you wanted to see a real city, you came to Memphis. That’s not the case anymore.

Are you running as a Democrat?

[Sighs] I suppose. What choice do I have? I think that when a City Council is abandoning the system of checks and balances and shirking their responsibility and being a rubber stamp for the mayor, [party affiliation] doesn’t matter.

Is there anyone in local politics that you look up to?

[Save Libertyland! member and County Commissioner] Steve Mulroy and Carol Chumney are two people with democratic principles that I would call my role models.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

On Changing Charters

In what was almost certainly the first of many such appearances to come, three elected county officials showed up at the conservative-oriented Dutch Treat Luncheon last Saturday to argue against making their positions and those of two other county officials appointive rather than elective.

The three — Sheriff Mark Luttrell, Trustee Bob Patterson, and Register Tom Leatherwood — noted for the record that the issue will
almost certainly be adjudicated in the courts. That’s because Shelby County is one of two Tennessee counties enjoying home rule, the other being Knox County, subject of a recent state Supreme Court decision allowing for the possible appointment of constitutionally mandated county officials.

The court’s ruling was based on the fact that the Knox County charter did not provide specific establishment of the offices of sheriff, trustee, assessor, county clerk, and register. Since Knox County’s governmental system was modeled precisely on that of Shelby County, the precedent there clearly indicates that our own system is vulnerable to revision by a similar judicial ruling.

Saturday’s meeting was further energized by a claim from the three Shelby County officials that county mayor A C Wharton was sponsoring legislation already before the General Assembly in Nashville that would facilitate a changeover into an appointive system. That generated something of a state of alarm among the listeners, who seemed to concur with Luttrell, Patterson, and Leatherwood that appointed officials are more remote from the population they serve than elected ones, less subject to direct monitoring, and, by definition, immune from a change in their status at the hands of the electorate.

As it turns out, the bill now pending in Nashville failed by a narrow margin to achieve support from the Shelby County Commission at the commission’s Monday meeting — a fact which probably dooms it to defeat in the legislature at large. And the scope of the bill was somewhat less than advertised, as well. As Wharton explained on Tuesday, the bill — the only one on the subject that he has personally approved — would merely have amended current state requirements to the end that referenda on changes in the county charter could be scheduled by the commission for special elections rather than awaiting regularly scheduled countywide general elections. “I just wanted us to be ready earlier, just in case,” Mayor Wharton said, somewhat ambiguously.

Though we are predisposed to the arguments made by the three officials on Saturday, we are open-minded about the issue in general. We urge Shelby Countians, official and otherwise, to avail themselves of ample study and debate on the matter while there’s still time to consider alternatives.

Meanwhile, we congratulate the members of the city Charter Commission, who on Monday announced a series of public meetings on possible changes in that charter.

The schedule: March 21st, 6 p.m., at City Council chambers, 125 N. Main; March 29th, 6 p.m., at Hollywood Community Center, 1560 N. Hollywood; March 31st, 1 p.m., at Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library, 3030 Poplar; April 18th, 6 p.m., at Whitehaven Community Center, 4318 Graceland.

Further information is available at www.memphischartercommission.org.

Categories
News

Politics, Favors at MLGW Preceded Lee

Politics and special attention at MLGW preceded current CEO Joseph Lee and were extended to, among others, the former editor of The Commercial Appeal, according to e-mails obtained by the Flyer.

On March 29, 2002, then-MLGW CEO Herman Morris wrote an e-mail to communications manager Mark Heuberger and vice president Curtis Dillihunt about the “CA Editor Problem.”

Morris wrote that he received a handwritten note “from the editor of the CA with a letter of complaint from his wife” requesting Morris’ help in a billing matter.

“This could set editorial policy toward MLGW for years and must be handled with touch,” Morris’ e-mail says. “I tried to call him Thursday but he was not in. I will be out of town 4/1/02 but will call him when I return on Tuesday. I would like you to get involved and make sure that we handle this matter with sensitivity.”

The e-mail has not previously been reported by The Commercial Appeal in its coverage of politics and special treatment at MLGW. The CA editor at the time of the e-mail was Angus McEachran.

The e-mail was obtained by the Flyer from MLGW communications manager Gale Jones Carson on Tuesday, shortly before our deadlines. It continues:

“Finally, I need to develop a list of customers that require my personal awareness, attention, or staff intervention when they have problems. Generally, customers who can call me or the mayor at home should be on the list. The mayor(s); city councilmen; county commissioners; state legislators; congressmen; any city director; editor of the CA; news or station director of TV stations; hospitals; jails; airports; FedEx; other big plants or customers; Fred Smith, Jack Belz, Mike Rose, Ira Lipman, Maxine Smith, Carol Miller (my sister), Lori Miller (my niece), Haymond Turner (my inlaws), Tom Garrott, Ron Terry, Marc Jordan, Pat Tigrett, Dean Jernigan, Herman Ewing, Pitt Hyde, Ben Hooks, Jesse Turner, Russell Sugarmon, Bill Crawford, and Pete Aviotti.”

For more on this breaking story and Morris’ list, go to www.memphisflyer.com.

Categories
News The Fly-By

All in the Family

CREDIT: Melking | Dreamstime.com

Full disclosure: At this time last week, I was planning to write about the incestuous relationship between MLGW and city government.

Of course, I was only going to talk about interlocking pensions and retirement benefits. But then came news about a list of elected officials that MLGW insiders considered friends and family.

The Commercial Appeal reported last week that Mayor Willie Herenton, along with City Council members Edmund Ford, Rickey Peete, E.C. Jones, Myron Lowery, Jack Sammons, and former council members John Vergos and Pat Vander Schaaf, were all included in MLGW’s “Third Party Notification” service, a program designed to alert friends and family if loved ones’ utilities are in danger of being cut off.

But the politicians’ cut-off notifications, if there were any, were slated to go right back to MLGW executives.

Talk about friends with benefits.

Gale Jones Carson, MLGW’s new director of corporate communications, sent out a statement this week saying that the list was compiled before Joseph Lee, the former city finance director, was appointed president of MLGW in 2004. And that people included on the list probably didn’t even know it existed.

“We know that it’s more than a decade old,” said Glen Thomas, supervisor of corporate communications for MLGW. “Judging from the people on there, it has to be pretty old.” Thomas said he didn’t know what steps MLGW executives would have taken if one of the politicians’ accounts became delinquent. One can assume, however, that if someone wanted to know about it, they probably would do something about it.

In her statement, Carson said she could not explain how or why certain elected officials were selected for third-party notification. If council members didn’t have knowledge their account was being flagged, that means MLGW executives — for whatever reason — were interested if certain individuals were ever at risk of getting cut off. Was the utility simply being nice? Or was it looking for leverage with members of the City Council?

Technically, MLGW is owned by the city. The council has to approve rate increases and budgetary items. But MLGW has its own CEO, CFO, and board. That leads to some interesting overlap.

Carson created a stir in January when she left her job as Herenton’s spokesperson to work for MLGW, “bought” her six years back from her previous employment at MLGW, added it to her time working for the city, and because she now had 12 years of service under her belt, started collecting her city pension. And an MLGW paycheck.

But last week City Council attorney Alan Wade determined that there was nothing improper about what Carson did, even if she did buy her time back right before retiring.

“That may seem unfair,” said Wade. “If she had bought her time back when she first came over to the city, it would have been $9,000 as opposed to $14,000. By waiting, she penalized herself.”

More than 30 other employees have used the system in the same way; five of those were with MLGW.

“The two pension plans are separate and distinct. They’re not one and the same,” said Wade. “If an MLGW employee comes to the city and is in payment mode, he or she cannot buy into our plan. They have to start fresh.”

Lorraine Essex, head of human resources for the city, said she doesn’t know why MLGW has a different pension plan than the city. “This is the way the plan was set up in the ordinance,” she said. “It didn’t just happen this way, but I’m not sure how old the provisions are. Probably older than some members of the council.”

That doesn’t explain why employees can transfer time from MLGW or the Memphis library to their years with the city, but don’t have to add their time together. Employees should get what they’ve earned; I just wonder why there is an option that leaves the public paying for a pension and a salary at the same time.

Right now, an underlying problem is the “12 and out” provision that lets both elected and appointed officials retire after 12 years of service with the city. The industry standard is more than double that and that’s what the city now uses. The “12 and out” provision was ended November 2004 but, because of grandfathering, may come up until 2016.

Politicians with third-party notification, on the other hand, looks to be a thing of the past. Herenton is strongly recommending that the board discontinue the program immediately. MLGW’s Thomas said he doesn’t know what will happen to the list or if there will be any legal ramifications for the utility.

But with a lawsuit pending and the feds investigating, it seems that when you join this family, it may be for life.