Tag: City Council

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Editorial Opinion

What Gives?

Three members of the Shelby County Commission cast votes Monday for a proposal that may be good politics but makes for unsound public policy. This initiative — for a five-cent across-the-board reduction in the county property tax — came from Wyatt Bunker, who represents the county’s suburban and rural edge and its ideologically conservative edge, as well.

According to Bunker, the proposal, if enacted, would have cut $8 million out of county revenues for the next fiscal year — although the commissioner maintains that such a cut would, sooner or later, raise revenues. Right. The same logic pursued by the relentlessly tax-cutting Bush administration has driven the national deficit to new historical heights.

Various of Bunker’s commission colleagues expressed exasperation with the proposal, especially since A) it came just after a tense debate concerning the commission’s need to divert wheel-tax money originally earmarked as operating funds for the schools into the county’s general fund, where it can be tapped for future capital improvements, and B) it followed weeks of a painstaking budgetary process, now concluded, in which every stray corner of county government was scrutinized for real or potential waste.

Yet, two other commissioners, fellow suburbanite George Flinn and Chairman Joe Ford of Memphis’ inner city, joined with Bunker in voting for the proposal which, had it passed, would have thrown county government back to square one in its financial planning for the next cycle.

What gives? Well, the legitimate needs of the taxpayers would have been first. As several commissioners pointed out, the needs of the schools would have come asunder, closely followed by law enforcement. It made a certain political sense for Bunker and Flinn to vote the way they did, since they represent (or believe they represent) constituents who favor tax cuts at all costs. But what was Chairman Ford, who normally balances policy and service needs with the legitimate requirements of fiscal solvency, thinking?

Ford, who must have known the discussion and the vote were pro forma, urged Bunker to reintroduce the proposal next year. Fair enough. At least that will give the commission enough lead time to reorganize fiscal priorities so as to facilitate such an across-the-board cut, if that’s what they regard as needful. Given Governor Bredesen’s success in imposing drastic cuts when he took office in 2003, we’re not saying the idea of an across-the-board cut is impossible. But the last time we looked, the governor was taking some criticism of policy changes (his gutting of TennCare, for example) that we regard as legitimate.

Property owners are surely entitled to relief and deserve consideration of the sort just awarded in Nashville, where state senator Mark Norris and state representative John DeBerry won passage of legislation authorizing the state’s local governments to enact limited tax freezes for seniors.

Those eligible in Shelby County are homeowners at least 65 years old with incomes not exceeding $31,549. That amounts to 59 percent of the county’s senior households and is consistent with Shelby County’s unique need for balance between revenues and services. When it can, the commission should act upon the new law. Anything more drastic will have to wait.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

New Mayor, New Council?

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Naming “crime, cronyism, and corruption” as major issues in this year’s mayoral election, candidate Carol Chumney addressed the Germantown Democratic Club at the Pickering Center Monday night, pledging if elected to “get a good team” in order to bring renewed efficiency to Memphis city government.

Subsequently, City Council member Chumney fielded at least two questions from the membership (which includes several Memphis voters who live in Cordova) about her reported difficulties with the mayor’s office and fellow council members.

One member asked: What about her “relation-building” and “leadership style”? Would these be obstacles?

Chumney responded that she had developed good relations with fellow legislators while a state House member for 13 years and said, “City government has been a little different because there’s been, quite frankly, some corruption. Many times I would be the only one who would stand up and say anything. Some folks are going to get mad at you. I’m a strong leader, I will tell you that.”

When another member followed up by asking if the City Council would back her proposals if she were elected mayor, Chumney said, “We’re going to elect a new City Council.” Noting the virtual turnover of membership in the County Commission in last year’s elections, she expressed confidence that city voters would follow suit. “It’s going to happen here. They’re going to vote in a new team.”

Pledging to renew cooperation between city and county law-enforcement agencies, Chumney said, “It’s disrespectful to expect the police to go two years without a pay raise while asking them to risk their lives for us.”

She repeated her objections to the Riverfront Development Corporation’s proposals, including the recently approved Beale St. Landing project, and called both for the city’s retention of the Coliseum and for “something classy” in the downtown Pyramid.

Chumney said she’d heard “disturbing rumors” about the past management of Memphis Networx and reported plans for its pending sale and promised “to get to the bottom of it.” She said the council’s authority over a prospective sale was uncertain but said she was seeking authoritative word on that from the state Attorney General’s Office.

• Germantown is becoming an important campaign venue for candidates running for office in Memphis. A week or so earlier, members of the Republican Women of Purpose organization heard a presentation at the Germantown Public Library from Brian Stephens, City Council candidate in District 2, the East Memphis-suburban seat being vacated by incumbent Brent Taylor.

Stephens has been active in an effort to strengthen laws regulating sexually oriented businesses (S.O.B.s in the accepted jargon) and specifically to make sure that veteran topless-club entrepreneur Steve Cooper does not convert a supposed “Italian restaurant” now under construction in Cordova into an S.O.B.

He discussed those efforts but offered other opinions as well, some of them surprising (a statement that “consolidation is coming, whether we like it or not,” for example) and some not (like his conviction, à la Taylor, that tax increases are not necessary for the city to maintain and improve basic services).

In general, Stephens, who seems to have a head start on other potential District 2 aspirants, made an effort to sound accommodationist rather than confrontational, stressing a need for council members to transcend racial and urban-vs.-suburban divisions and expressing confidence in the ability of currently employed school personnel to solve the system’s problems.

• Also establishing an apparent early lead over potential rivals is current school board member Stephanie Gatewood, running for the District 1 council seat being vacated by incumbent E.C. Jones. Gatewood’s fund-raiser at Fresh Slices on Overton Park Avenue last Thursday night drew a respectable crowd, and her membership in Bellevue Baptist Church on the suburban side of District 1 provides an anchor, in addition to an expected degree of support from the district’s African-American population.

• Last Wednesday night was a hot one for local politics, with three more-than-usually significant events, and there were any number of dedicated and/or well-heeled visitors to all three:

Residents of the posh Galloway Drive area, where U of M basketball coach John Calipari resides, are surely used to long queues of late-model vehicles stretching every which way in the neighborhood, especially in election season, when Calipari’s home is frequently the site of fund-raisers for this or that candidate.

But Wednesday night’s event, a $250-a-head fund-raiser for District 5 City Council candidate Jim Strickland, was surely a record-setter — outdoing not only Calipari’s prior events but most other such gatherings in Memphis history, including those for senatorial and gubernatorial candidates. A politically diverse crowd estimated at 300 to 500 people netted Strickland more than $60,000 for the night and brought his total “cash on hand” to $100,000.

Meanwhile, mayoral candidate Herman Morris attracted several hundred attendees to the formal opening of his sprawling, high-tech campaign headquarters on Union Avenue, the same HQ that, week before last, suffered a burglary of computers containing sensitive information — a fact that some Morris supporters find suspicious in light of various other instances of hanky-panky currently being alleged in the mayoral race.

Yet a third major political gathering took place Wednesday night, as Shelby County mayor A C Wharton was the beneficiary of a big-ticket fund-raiser at the Racquet Club. Proceeds from that one have been estimated in the $50,000 range — a tidy sum for what the county mayor alleges (and alleged again Wednesday night) is intended only as a kind of convenience fund meant for charitable donations and various other protocol circumstances expected of someone in his position.

Right. Meanwhile, Wharton declined to address the most widely speculated-upon subject in Memphis politics: Will he or won’t he enter the city mayor’s race? As the county mayor has informally acknowledged, he is the subject these days of nonstop blandishments in that regard, and there’s very little doubt that these have accelerated since a recent press conference by Memphis mayor Willie Herenton alleging “the 2007 Political Conspiracy.”

While some of Mayor Wharton’s intimates at the Wednesday night affair were keeping to the line that the chances of his running for city mayor were minimal to nonexistent, their answers to inquiries about the matter were delivered after what we’ll call meaningfully inflected pauses. The door may be shut for now, but it clearly isn’t padlocked.

Jackson Baker

Carol Chumney

NASHVILLE — The name McWherter, prominent in Tennessee politics for most of the

latter 20th century, will apparently resurface in fairly short order, as Jackson lawyer and

businessman Mike McWherter, son of two-term former governor Ned McWherter, is

making clear his plans to challenge U.S. senator Lamar Alexander‘s reelection bid next year.

Apparently only one thing could derail Democrat McWherter: a renewed Senate candidacy by former Memphis congressman Harold Ford Jr., who last year narrowly lost a Senate race to the current Republican incumbent, Bob Corker. “I don’t think I would compete against Harold. But I don’t think he will run,” McWherter said in an interview with the Flyer at Saturday’s annual Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner in Nashville.

The 52-year-old activist sees Alexander as a slavish follower of President George W. Bush.

“With one or two exceptions, he’s done everything the president has wanted him to do. He’s toed the party line,” said McWherter, who has recently paid courtesy calls on ranking Democrats, both in Tennessee and in Washington, D.C., informing them of his interest in running next year and soliciting their support.

• Keynote speaker at the Democrats’ dinner in Nashville was presidential hopeful Bill Richardson, whose situation somewhat paralleled that of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who earlier this month had been the featured speaker at the state Republicans’ Statesmen’s Dinner, also in Nashville.

On that occasion, Romney — who had been invited before the entrance of former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson became likely — was a de facto lame-duck keynoter, and mindful of the attendees’ expected loyalty to favorite-son Thompson, cracked wanly, “I know there’s been some speculation by folks about a certain former senator from Tennessee getting into the presidential race, and I know everybody’s waiting, wondering. But I take great comfort from the fact than no one in this room, not a single person, is going to be voting for — Al Gore.”

That bit of verbal bait-and-switch got the expected laugh, and so did a joke Saturday night by New Mexico governor Richardson, who uttered some ritual praise of native Tennessean and former presidential candidate Gore and then, when the crowd warmly applauded the former vice president, jested, “Let’s not overdo it. I don’t want him in this race!” — JB

Categories
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.