Tag: County Mayor Lee Harris

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Threat of Reduction in State Funds Averted for Memphis and Shelby County

UPDATE: Reportedly, the House-Senate conference committee has agreed on new amounts for Memphis and Shelby County, as well as for Davidson County (Nashville). Memphis and Nashville are to receive $10 million apiece as a result of negotiations by the conference committee, which included three participants from Davidson County but none from Shelby County.

Locally, this solution represents a partial restoration of the $14.3 million originally allowed to Memphis by the state Senate but reduced to $5 million in the proposed House version of the budget. Shelby County’s amount reverted to the Senate’s original budget version of $7.7 million, a figure which had also been reduced to $5 million in the proposed House budget.

The funding is part of a $200-million package which was authorized by the legislature for statewide distribution in March as a response to the economic emergencies caused via the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. At that time, the money was restricted for specific infrastructure or COVID-related purposes, but the restrictions were lifted by the Senate last Thursday and by the House on Wednesday of this week, but the two chambers disagreed on the amounts to be allotted to the state’s two largest urban areas.

Accordingly, the money, whose sums the two legislative chambers now agree on, is available for the general funds of both Memphis and Shelby County.

Rep. Mark White

PREVIOUSLY REPORTED: What the Senate giveth, the House taketh away. The newly freed state financial resources that the Tennessee Senate voted last week to make available to Memphis and Shelby County have been truncated significantly by the House, and only the work of a joint-chamber conference committee can fully restore them. The issue is that of so far unreconciled differences in the budgets approved by each chamber.

On Thursday of last week, state Senate majority leader Jack Johnson (R-Franklin) announced that the Senate’s version of the fiscal 2020-21 budget would allow the lifting of restrictions from a $200 million infrastructure grant program approved in March. In practical terms, what this meant was that the City of Memphis was enabled by the Senate action to re-allocate some $14.3 million in previously restricted infrastructure-grant funds for any purpose it chose; Shelby County’s share of the newly freed-up funds was $7.7 million.

The problem is that the House version of the state budget, passed on Wednesday, allows the lifting of restrictions on how that previous statewide funding is spent by local governments but caps the amount allowed for the cities of Memphis and Nashville and for Shelby County to a maximum of $5 million each. That’s a cut of $9.3 million for Memphis, and one of $2.2 million for Shelby County. The theory of the reductions on the amounts for the state’s two largest urban centers, as presented by House majority leader William Lamberth (R-Portland), is based on the state’s need for fiscal austerity and the fact that Memphis, Nashville, and Shelby County, uniquely, had all been beneficiaries of the federal CARES Act, covering some of the same potential purposes, including COVID-19 needs, as were intended for the state infrastructure-grant money in March.

This has not gone down well with Shelby County’s legislative delegation in Nashville, nor with the two local governments here. “This does not seem so good a deal for Memphis and Shelby County,” observed state Rep. G.A. Hardaway (D-Memphis) in debate. The state, he said, would be doing a “back-out” and “end-around” of moneys the city and county governments had been led to expect. State Rep. Bob Freeman (D-Nashville) voiced similar sentiments on behalf of the state’s capital city.

Lamberth expressed confidence that Memphis and Nashville were able to “bounce back faster” from current financial predicaments than more rural areas, whose allotments were not cut — the idea seeming to be that the two big-city areas could better shoulder the pain of austerity.

A spokesman for Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland released the following statement: “We had included the original proposed state funding into our FY21 budget. We are hopeful that amount will remain intact as it goes through the conference process.”

In the case of Shelby County, the $7.7 million figure provided for it in the Senate’s version of the budget has already been spoken for in the Shelby County Commission’s ongoing efforts to achieve a budget for fiscal 2020-21. The Commission voted on Monday to incorporate the whole amount into the county’s fund balance or reserve fund, there to be drawn upon to meet such needs as rehabilitation of The Med (Regional One) and funding for construction of the new Juvenile Justice Center.

Before receiving news of the House’s intended reductions of the county’s grant amount, Commissioner Van Turner and County Mayor Lee Harris had been reaching toward agreement on how to split the figure of $7.7 million between the two needs. Should the reduced House figure survive the forthcoming conference committee between the two chambers in Nashville, the county’s budget calculations will be even further complicated than they already are. State Rep. Mark White (R-Memphis) was more sanguine about the consequences if the House’s budget figure should stand. “We’ll always take care of Memphis,” he said. “We’re now getting $5 million that wasn’t on the table to begin with. So we’re $5 million ahead.”

White said he thought the federal government would end up taking the strings off the COVID-related funds it had previously allocated to Memphis and Shelby County, and that it was important meanwhile to take care of the distressed counties of rural Tennessee.

White’s Democratic opponent for his District 83 seat, Jerri Green, responded to White’s support of the House version by saying, “Budgets reflect our values. And the values of anyone who voted for this budget do not lie with this community. If I was asked to voted for it, my answer would be ‘Hell no.'”

UPDATE: In the aftermath of the conference. committee report [see above], White, a member of that ad hoc committee, sent out a press release claiming to have influenced the final outcome and quoting GOP House Speaker Cameron Sexton as saying, “Chairman White was instrumental in the negotiation process between the House and Senate in efforts to obtain this critical funding for Memphis.”

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State Funding Could Plug County’s Budget Hole

After several marathon budget-review sessions and an interminable and mind-boggling amount of numbers-crunching and wrangling, Shelby

Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson announcing relief of grant restrictions

County’s budget stalemate may finally reach something resembling a satisfactory conclusion at Monday’s scheduled Shelby County Commission meeting.

Going into the weekend, the commission still had something like a $5 million+ looming deficit to make up. In the weeks of fretting over possible cuts and reallocations, a schism of sorts had developed between the county administration of Mayor Lee Harris, whose initial budget was rejected, and Eddie Jones and Edmund Ford Jr., chairman and vice-chair, respectively, of the commission budget committee.

In recent meetings, the impasse had come down, more or less, to non-stop sparring between Jones and Ford, on one hand, and county Chief Financial Officer Mathilde Crosby, on the other. The discussion wandered, as they say, into the weeds, and the weeds grew ever denser and more impenetrable.

On the eve of Monday’s meeting, two possible solutions were on the brink of being proposed. Jones had a formula which, he said, involved changes to the education portion of the budget, while Commissioner Van Turner was ready to propose substantial borrowing from the county’s fund balance, or “rainy day fund,” temporarily dispensing with county government’s tradition of maintaining the fund at 20 percent of the county budget.
Meanwhile, state government, acting as a deus ex machina, may have resolved the dilemma for the county by removing restrictions on $200 million previously offered by Governor Bill Lee to the state’s local governments for help with infrastructure needs and COVID-related expenses.

In its version of a $39.4 billion state budget completed last Thursday, the state Senate, in order to deal with what Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson (D-Franklin) called the “dire circumstances” of localities, voted to take any restriction off how local governments chose to spend the money. Indications are that the House, which has yet to finish its deliberations, will follow suit in approving removal of the restrictions.

Shelby County’s share of the money, which will become available as of the new fiscal year on July 1, is $7,756,653, enough, if applied to the county general fund, to overcome the remaining amounts of a prospective budget deficit.

The county’s sum had been spoken for some weeks ago in the form of a commission resolution to use it for partial funding of the county’s Juvenile Rehab and Education Center, but Commissioner Turner said he would be willing to pursue a formal rescinding of that proposed allocation — even, if necessary, to seek an override of a mayoral veto — in order to re-access the state money for the purpose of budgetary resolution.

Shelby County government isn’t the only local beneficiary of the state grant funds. Memphis’ share is $14,388,140, while the moneys available to the other county municipalities are as follows: Arlington, $288,135; Bartlett, $1,338,991; Collierville, $1,147,017; Germantown, $892,855; Lakeland, $308,438; and Millington, $265,802.

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County Commission Readies Actions on Budget, COVID, Voting

In a sprawling, nearly day-long session of committee meetings, the Shelby County Commission on Wednesday decided to authorize a hiring freeze, finally designated a formula for payments to COVID relief, and began a move for state approval of expanded absentee voting and voter-marked election ballots.

The commission also continued to examine ways of dealing with an ever-growing deficit crisis, one that County Financial Officer Mathilde Crosby now reckons at $39.1 million without “a trimming out of our budget.” County Mayor Lee Harris reinforced Crosby’s forecasts with the warning that there was “a real possibility” of layoffs. “We have to assume the worst in some ways,” he said.

The problem, as Commissioner Michael Whaley noted, is complicated by the fact of pending additional expenses for the Sheriff’s Department as it gears up for enlarged responsibilities in portions of Shelby County de-annexed from the City of Memphis, or about to be.

Harris indicated he would be consulting with other county officials this week preparatory to making a major budget statement on Monday, when the commission will be holding its next regularly scheduled public meeting.

The promise of imminent focus on budget matters was uniformly welcomed by Commissioners. “The public understands the severity of the situation,” as Commissioner Brandon Morrison noted. As well, County CAO Dwan Gilliom said he supported “any action to mitigate spending and find a way out of the fiscal situation. The hiring freeze, good until at least June 20th, was proposed by Commissioner Mick Wright.

In a special ad hoc meeting that followed the committee sessions, the commission returned to the matter of appropriating $2 million to assist in responding to the COVID-19 epidemic. The appropriation was rejected in regular session last week when commissioners failed to agree on a source for the funding.

In Wednesday’s reconsideration of the matter, Commissioner Tami Sawyer proposed a direct outlay of the previously considered $2 million for PPE equipment, personnel, and overtime expenses, as well as an additional $500,000 to the Christ Community Health Service to support testing for coronavirus at its outlets. Her resolution passed unanimously.

All of the matters discussed and approved on Wednesday will be revisited for formal approval at Monday’s regular commission meeting.

That includes a resolution on voting matters, proposed by Sawyer Whaley and Van Turner that 1) seeks an executive order from Governor Bill Lee to allow expanded absentee voting in light of the ongoing pandemic; and 2) urges again, as the commission has already done once, that machines allowing voter-marked paper ballots be purchased to replace the Diebold machines currently in use.

That resolution received a favorable recommendation on a vote of 7 for, 3 opposing, and 1 abstaining.

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County Mayor Harris Asserts 30-Day Goal for Passage of MATA Funding Proposal

CREDIT: JB

JB

At weekend gathering, Shelby County Mayor Lee Harri repeats vow to secure passage of wheel tax add-on to provide county funding for MATA. Also pictured are members of the Tommy Van family, hosts for the affair, and Lexie Carter, a co-sponsor of the event.

At its regular monthly meeting on Monday, the Shelby County Commission will take one more crack — the crucial one — at adding $20 to the current county wheel tax in order to contribute roughly $10 million to the operation of the Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA). On the eve of the vote, County Mayor Lee Harris set an informal deadline of 30 days to achieve a successful outcome for the proposal, which needs 9 votes and netted a maximum of 5 votes on Wednesday in preliminary voting in committee.

Harris mentioned the 30-day figure in conversation at a Saturday night fundraiser in his honor in Lakeland. “Either we pass it outright on Monday, or we’ll find a way to delay the final vote for 30 days,” the Mayor said. “But I predict we’ll get it done.”

The fund-raiser was at the home of Tommy and Monica Van and was primarily a cooperative effort by members of the local Asian and African-American communities. In his remarks to attendees, Harris recapped his argument for the wheel tax add-on as follows:


“There was no more vivid example of the need for increased transit options than a guy named James, an ex-offender. He lives in Frayser, and he finally found a job but, of course, the buses don’t run very frequently on the weekend. And on weekends, instead of missing his shift, he decides to sleep at his job so he can be there the next morning and not miss a shift. So James begged and pleaded that we invest more in transit so he could go home when his shift ends and come back to the job the next day and not have to sleep there.

“And I think about Miss Sarah who said transit is important to her, because she has not had ice cream for years. She says she can’t get ice cream from the grocery store to her house before the ice cream melts. And so she doesn’t buy ice cream anymore.

“So it’s about Miss Sarah and James and Frayser and all the folks who are trying to move around the community and trying to get access to jobs, and trying to create more opportunity for themselves and their family. And that’s the kind of debate I want to have. That’s why I ran for office in the first place. And I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to persuade all parts of this community that these are the right kinds of conversations to have.”

Harris also made reference in his remarks to the currently controversial issue of providing haven for foreign refugees. The mayor held a press conference last week to make public his letter to the U.S. State Department in favor of providing such haven in Shelby County. As he said about that moment on Saturday night:

“We tried to drive a conversation that this community should continue to be a welcoming community for refugees. Refugees, by definition, are individuals who come to this country fleeing persecution, their lives are on the line, and we as a country have the ability to intervene and save families and save lives. And so we should do it. We can try. [Applause]

“Years ago, Shelby County accepted about 400 or so refugees a year that is now down to about three dozen refugees. The United States of America with this heritage of being a beacon of hope around the globe right now. We have around 1% of the world’s refugees in the United States of America, I think we can do a lot better on that score as well. So these are the issues that I’ve talked about, since I’ve been in elected office. They’re not issues that win you a lot of, you know, big business donors per se, but they are issues that matter nonetheless. And so I’ll continue to drive these kinds of conversations for as long as I’m in office.”