Tag: David Reaves

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Politics Politics Feature

Partisanship vs. Solidarity?

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

As is pointed out in this week’s Flyer editorial, the Shelby County Commission, the elective body entrusted with budgetary oversight over public education in the county, has made a point of voting unanimously against the school-voucher bill now moving through the General Assembly.

It did so for both financial and philosophical reasons. And the commission’s unanimous vote was reached in full anticipation that the voucher bill, sponsored by state Senator Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown), would, as has been the custom in legislation on this subject, be among the last measures coming up for a final vote in the current legislative session, due to expire in April.

The commission’s vote was a clear signal of its attitude toward vouchers, and it was made in anticipation of the fact that it would soon have the opportunity to designate an interim successor in state House District 95 to Mark Lovell, the Republican representative who, faced with allegations of sexual misconduct, was recently forced to resign by the leadership of his party.

While a special election to replace Lovell is set to conclude on June 15th, well after the completion of the General Assembly’s work, the commission made haste to set up machinery for the interim appointment whereby applications would be made available from March 21st to March 27th, interviews would be conducted March 29th, and an appointment made April 3rd, in time for the eventual appointee to be serving in the House for the duration of the current session.

Estimates of how long that period could be range from a week to the greater part of a month, but the assumption, again, was that the interim state representative-designate would have an opportunity to vote on the voucher question.

That was how matters stood until a move was initiated among various local Democratic activists to take advantage of the commission’s current composition — seven members elected as Democrats and six elected as Republicans — to appoint a Democrat as the interim state representative from District 5. 

That initiative was first made public in a letter sent to the commission’s seven Democrats by Dave Cambron, president of the Germantown Democratic Club and a member also of the 13-member ad hoc group appointed recently by state Democratic chair Mary Mancini of Nashville to revive the Shelby County Democratic Party. (For a variety of reasons, including what Mancini called “many years of dysfunction,” the dissension-prone local party was formally decertified by the state Democratic executive committee last year.)

Cambron’s letter began with a clarion call: “We have a unique opportunity to send a new progressive voice to the state capitol from Shelby County.” Cambron made the case for local party activist and state Democratic committee member Adrienne Pakis-Gillon, “a leading progressive activist, a club member, and a staunch Democrat who will not hesitate to stand up for the values that we are.”

Cambron said it was “critical that Adrienne is chosen to fill the vacancy for State House District 95” and went on to contend that four of the commission Democrats had committed to support her candidacy, while three — he named Eddie Jones, Justin Ford, and current chairman Melvin Burgess — had not. 

“This is simply not acceptable,” Cambron wrote. “Our Democrats must be unified and stand up against the radical right-wing agenda coming out of the State Capitol.”

In reality, not all of the four Democrats Cambron claimed as committed to Pakis-Gillon would confirm the fact, and at least one made it clear that he resented being put on the spot, as did one of the three Cambron mentioned as uncommitted. 

The Republican members who had put themselves on the record against vouchers began to react negatively to what they saw as the introduction of an extraneous partisan factor. Several of them noted the availability of anti-voucher Republicans among potential applicants for the interim position and said they saw the move to appoint Pakis-Gillon as a conscious rebuff to the constituency of District 95, one of the more consistently Republican-voting areas in the state. 

A motion by GOP Commissioner Terry Roland of Millington to forgo the previously agreed-on appointment schedule achieved only a tie vote in committee and therefore technically failed, but it picked up support from Republican David Reaves of Bartlett, a former Shelby County Schools board member who had spearheaded the commission’s move to appoint an anti-voucher interim state representative. 

As of this week, the situation was fluid, with neither Democrats nor Republicans having a unified position on the matter, and with the body’s previous solidarity on the vouchers issue so riven by disagreement on the partisan issue that there is now serious doubt as to whether an interim appointment can even be made.

The situation will have to be resolved on March 20th, the date of the commission’s next public meeting, or there will not be time for the appointment process to be carried out. Not only would District 95 lack a vote on a matter which is predicted to have a close final outcome, but the commission’s original intent to use the appointment to make a statement on vouchers will be surrendered as well.

Only once before has the commission broken with the tradition of filling a vacancy with a member of the same party as the person being replaced. That was in 2009 when a majority of seven Democrats chose fellow Democrat Matt Kuhn as an interim commissioner to replace Republican David Lillard, who had left to become state treasurer.

That move produced an immediate fallout in Nashville, where Republican legislators from Shelby County protested by imposing a stall on the commission’s legislative agenda, grudgingly relenting somewhat later when Republicans like then GOP Commissioner Mike Carpenter and then District Attorney General Bill Gibbons made public pleas for action on the agenda.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Voucher and De-Annexation Issues Both Headed for Showdowns

CREDIT: JB

JB

County Commissioners Steve Basar and Terry Roland during deliberations on Wednesday.

Two matters of significant importance to Memphis and Shelby County (considered both separately and as a single geographic unit) are hanging fire as of this week.

One involves the question of school vouchers, which is sure to come to a head in the state General Assembly before it adjourns in April. The other has to do with de-annexation legislation directly affecting Memphis and its suburbs, and this matter, too, is likely to have a reckoning in Nashville before session’s end.

VOUCHERS: Until this week, it seemed reasonably certain that the Shelby County Commission was prepared, on a tight deadline, to establish the machinery for appointing an interim state Representative to fill the state House vacancy created by the resignation last month of Rep. Mark Lovell in District 95 (Germantown, Collierville).

A schedule had already been prepared, calling for applications for the interim position to be made available between March 21st and March 27th, with applicants to be interviewed by the commission on March 29th and an appointment to be made during the Commission’s regular public meeting of April 3rd.

Given that the legislature has plans to adjourn sometime in April, that left little time for an interim Representative to serve. (Governor Bill Haslam had meanwhile issued a writ establishing a schedule for a special election, to be completed in a general election in June — well after the end of the current legislative session.)
The momentum for the Commission’s determination to appoint an interim successor to Lovell was the likelihood that at least one voucher bill, sponsored by state Senator Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown), and possibly another, sponsored by state Rep. Bill Dunn (R-Knoxville), would be among the late measures still requiring a definitive vote in the waning days of the General Assembly.

The Commission had voted unanimously on February 20 to oppose voucher legislation pending in the General Assembly. The Commission’s seven Democrats, all African Americans from Memphis districts, and six Republicans, whites with constituencies in East Memphis and the suburbs, were firm on the issue.

They all saw voucher legislation, which would enable public funding for tuition at private schools, as being a threat to the financial and logistical underpinning of both the Memphis-based Shelby County Schools district and the six independent municipal districts in the suburbs.

But a complication arose over the weekend in the form of a concerted effort among various Shelby County Democrats to persuade the seven Commission Democrats to vote as a bloc to appoint prominent Germantown Democrat Adrienne Pakis-Gillon as the interim appointee from District 95.

Inasmuch as District 95 is, by some reckonings, the most dyed-in-the-wool Republican House district in the state, the GOP members of the Commission expressed concern at this possible breach of what they considered a long-standing gentlemen’s’ agreement that governmental vacancies should be filled by members of the same parties that had occupied the seats previously.

Though that tradition had been flouted once before, in the case of a vacant Commission seat, it never had been in determining interim appointees to the legislature.

Consequently, in Monday’s meeting of the Commission’s general government committee, there came a motion from Republican Commissioner Terry Roland of Millington to abandon the idea of appointing an interim successor to Lovell, leaving the District 95 seat vacant until the 2018 legislative session, come what might on vouchers in 2017.

Roland’s motion failed on a vote of 4 ayes, 4 noes, and one abstention among the committee members present, but, ominously for opponents of the voucher bills, one who supported Roland was GOP Commissioner David Reaves of Bartlett, a former School Board member who had been arguably the most determined opponent of vouchers on the Commission and who had spearheaded the unanimous anti-voucher vote of February 20.

As late as Tuesday morning, Reaves was insisting that, as he told the Flyer, “”We need to appoint somebody to represent the district.” But on Wednesday, with partisanship threatening to supplant vouchers as the issue, Reaves had begun to backtrack on the need for an interim appointee.

He had assumed, along with other Commissioners, that the gentlemen’s’ agreement would hold, and that some moderate Republican (Reaves himself suggested former School Board colleague David Pickler) would fill the void in Nashville long enough to express the will of the Commission on the voucher issue.

Now everything was in doubt, with Democrats and Republicans beginning to eye each other across the partisan divide and a showdown scheduled for Monday, March 20, when the Commission will meet again, with one last chance to begin trying to get someone up to Nashville on behalf of District 95 before legislative adjournment.

Much depends on whether, as of March 20, there is anything resembling bloc unity among the Commission’s seven Democrats on the matter of an interim appointment for Pakis-Gillon or any other Democrat.

An informal survey of the Democratic contingent by the Flyer indicates that such is not the case, that as many as three Democratic members have yet to decide on the matter, and one or two have strong doubts about the propriety of risking long-term bipartisan comity for the sake of a transitory and perhaps Pyrrhic symbolic victory.

Especially for its effect on what looms as a forthcoming extra-tight House vote on vouchers.


DE-ANNEXATION: On Thursday, the day after the inconclusive Commission vote on District 95, the aforesaid Terry Roland was on his way to Nashville, in tandem with a group of suburbanites from the South Cordova and Southwind-Windyke areas desiring to de-annex themselves from Memphis.

The point, as Commissioner Roland explained it, was to force more or less immediate action on a de-annexation measure in the face of what appears to be a dilatory attitude by the Memphis City Council toward acting on a home-grown de-annexation alternative offered up recently by a joint city-county task force.

“They don’t want to wait around until 2020 or 2021 when the Council might or might not have got something done on the task force plan,” Roland said, referring to a “rightsizing” initiative prepared to the City Council last month by Caissa Public Strategies on behalf of the Strategic Footprint Review Task Force, the ad hoc city/county body created to explore formulas for potential voluntary de-annexations.

That report cited six areas considered suitable for de-annexation via City Council action. Several of the areas were large but thinly inhabited land masses where the cost of providing essential city infrastructure was judged to outweigh returns to the city via sales and property tax revenues. But included also and key to the proposal were the South Cordova and Southwind-Windyke areas, both annexed by Memphis relatively recently, both sources of significant revenue for the city, and both hotbeds of de-annexation sentiment.

Some residents of both those areas, while pleased at being included in the “right-sizing” plan, professed themselves at subsequent public meetings to be dissatisfied by the plan’s proposed scheduling, which put off final implementation of their de-annexation until 2020 or 2021.

These residents’ restlessness has been increased further by the apparent disinclination of the Council for a definitive vote on the right-sizing plan before the legislature’s planned adjournment in April, and further yet by a growing consensus on the Council to arrange instead for referenda down the line in the affected city areas.

Hence the decision by the Roland group to exert direct pressure on the legislature to act on its own during the current session. “I’d be fine with having the Council act on it, but it doesn’t look like they’re going to,” declared the Millington Commissioner and declared candidate for County Mayor in 2018.

If the legislature should act on its own, it could well favor a reprise of the 2016 measure proposed by two Hamilton County suburbanites, state Rep. Mike Carter (R-Oooltewah) and state Senator Bo Watson (R-Hixson), whose original measure enabled easy referenda on de-annexation by any community annexed by a city since 1998.

The Carter-Watson measure, considered Draconian by Memphis and other affected cities, passed the House last year and was tabled in a Senate committee only by dint of monumental last-ditch exertions against it by officials of Memphis and other urban areas and by the Greater Memphis Area Chamber of Commerce.

One word of caution for the politically ambitious Roland from a Council source: “Curry Todd (R-Collierville) and [Steve] McManus (R-Cordova) got a message last year” — the idea being that former state Representatives Todd and McManus may have lost their reelection battles last year at least partly due to their zeal for the Carter-Watson bill and the resultant disaffection of influential donors in commercial and financial circles.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Commission Gets It Together

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

God knows what will happen when the Shelby County Commission tangles with the deannexation issue — as it will, now that the legislature has its eye on the matter. The city of Memphis, self-protectively, has devised its own plan.

County government will, at some point, need to take a position — though in a sense it is passive, a bystander, once more having to absorb leftovers from the city, when and if they come, as they did, for one example, when former Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton ceded the city’s share in management of the Health Department to Shelby County during his last year in office.

Jackson Baker

Terry Roland

Commissioner Heidi Shafer urged her colleagues Monday, at the close of the commission’s meeting, to attend any or all of four information sessions to be held by the city between Thursday, February 23rd, and Wednesday, March 1st, in various neighborhoods that would be affected by the city’s plan.

Shafer, who had been a member of the city/county task force appointed a year ago to study the deannexation matter, reminded her fellow commissioners that they would be “guests and observers only, of what has been disclosed by the city of Memphis.” She pointedly cautioned them: “Just remember, whatever is deannexed by the city … guess who gets to take care of it and pay for it, but us.” 

Whatever discords and discombobulations that issue may yield for the future, however, the rest of the commission’s meeting, Monday, turned into a surprising exercise in harmony — though a few harsh words kept it from being a total love-fest.

Commissioner Terry Roland, an outspoken foe of a proposed county “social media policy,” took proponents of the measure to task and bitterly denounced it as interference in the exercise of the First Amendment, insisting (in some of his milder rhetoric) that “you cannot tell somebody how to think.” 

The proposed policy was devised by the administration at the prior request of the commission and was clearly aimed at curbing such embarrassments as occurred when Corrections Center deputy director David Barber, in last fall’s election aftermath, denounced then President Obama on his Facebook page as being less American than the Ku Klux Klan. Barber was encouraged to retire.

At one point, Roland created something of a mini-sensation of his own when, by way of demonstrating the kinds of things that occur in private discourse of public officials, he talked out of school on colleague Mark Billingsley, whom he quoted as opposing the bid of a candidate for Republican Party chairman on grounds that the aspirant, Cary Vaughn, was “too Baptist.”

Billingsley angrily denied saying any such thing.

As it turned out, Roland was not an outright outlier on the issue, attracting enough other nay votes to make the final outcome 6-4, with one abstention. The proposal needed an absolute majority of the commission — 7 votes — and failed.

The commission’s most compelling — and, in some ways, surprising — demonstration of unity occurred on two matters. One was a 9-2 vote endorsing legislation in the General Assembly to legalize medical marijuana. Only Billingsley and Shafer dissented.

The other matter was SB161/HB126, a bill, essentially authored by state Senator Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown), that applies only to Shelby county and would allow state education funds to be used for private institutions. In the estimation of critics, the measure would deprive public schools in Shelby County of $18 to $20 million annually.

Commissioner David Reaves, a former school board member, led the charge on that one, terming it “an assault” on public education and declaring that, if it passed, “we should be prepared to challenge it.” There was a chorus of agreement from other commissioners, and even Shafer, a supporter of what she calls “school choice,” condemned it for targeting Shelby County alone. The final vote was 10-0, with Shafer abstaining.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Is Terry Roland a Bully?

Tempers flared during Monday’s regular meeting of the Shelby County Commission. Big time.

And the surface turbulence led to the uncovering of a behind-the-scenes matter involving a claim by several other commissioners that commission chairman Terry Roland has engaged in threatening behavior toward them.

The precipitating issue was the commission’s consideration of a proposal from former Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton to build two educational residence facilities for convicted juvenile offenders in Frayser and in Millington.

The commission voted 8-2 to endorse the project, a sort of combination charter school/incarceration model that would locate juveniles in a dormitory situation close to their families. Called the NewPath Restorative Campuses, the proposed facilities would be run by a nonprofit group and would be privately funded, for the most part, requiring no outlay of county money.

The project would be boosted by an allocation of state funding — some $17.5 million that is now going to the Wilder detention facility in Fayette County — and that fact was cited by Roland as a reason for his support.

“He’s not asking us for any money,” Roland noted about Herenton, a former school superintendent who is now executive director of the W.E.B. DuBois Consortium of Charter Schools and who would direct the facilities’ educational operations. “They’d be spending $47 million for each facility,” said Roland, and would be generating 600 jobs for his own community of Millington.

The commission’s vote of approval indicates that most commissioners bought into that reasoning. Commissioner Walter Bailey was one who did not, however.

Though he praised Herenton as an individual and a professional, Bailey demurred, citing what he said was incomplete information about the project, as well as his aversion to what was basically a privatization of functions that were traditionally public.

Herenton became visibly angry, criticizing Bailey for having “the audacity to pontificate” and telling the commissioner, an African American like himself, that 85 percent of the juveniles to be housed “look like you and me,” and would be the beneficiaries of superior educational and wraparound services currently unavailable to them.

Still steaming after the vote, Herenton was heard to mutter the word “bullshit” in regard to Bailey’s objection.

Other commissioners had misgivings, as well. Mark Billingsley, who joined Bailey in abstaining on the vote, and George Chism and David Reaves, both of whom voted no, all cited what they said was a lack of specific information about the project.

After the vote, Reaves became involved in a disagreement with Roland that resulted in an actual physical altercation. It took place off the main commission chamber in a back room that is often used for conferences.

Roland and Reaves differ in their accounts of what happened. According to Roland, Reaves approached him and “put his finger on my nose.” The commission chairman said that Reaves then accused him of “selling out my race” by supporting the Herenton proposal.

Both commissioners agree on what came next. Roland shoved Reaves.

“All I did was get him out of my face,” Roland said. “I was clearly in the right. The dude came up on me.”

“I never touched the man,” said Reaves, who further denies mentioning the word “race” in the context claimed by Roland. “I told Terry he was selling out his constituents,” said Reaves, who added that he was confident that, based on the political history of Memphis and Shelby County, people in Millington, like those in Bartlett, would object to giving former Mayor Herenton an unconditional approval for his project.

He said that if he mentioned the word “race,” it was probably to suggest that Roland, an announced candidate for county mayor in 2018, was using his support for the project to play politics on behalf of his political race.

Commissioner Heidi Shafer, who was in the back room conferring on a matter with Kim Hackney, assistant CAO for the county administration, became aware of the fracas and rushed out to locate a deputy sheriff serving as bailiff, returning with him to find the disturbance apparently over.

“I couldn’t really tell who did what to whom,” Shafer said. About Roland, she said, “Terry’s definitely not a turn-the-other-cheek kind.”

Reaves later identified Billingsley and Chism as other commissioners toward whom Roland had displayed “bullying” and threatening behavior. Both confirmed having had such experiences.

Said Billingsley: “Terry has threatened to beat me up in front of several county staffers in the hallway. He consistently displays bullying behavior. Anybody who disagrees with him about anything is met with great hostility. That’s unbelievably unprofessional. There’s no place for it in government, and it sets a very poor example for a community that already has too much hostility on its hands.”

Chism had a similar account: “Terry once lost his temper with me. He was very aggressive, and there were people in the office that heard it. It was all over a resolution that I wouldn’t co-sponsor, but he insisted he wanted my name on it.” Chism said Roland was “way over the line,” but that he “immediately apologized.”

These new claims of belligerent behavior on Roland’s part are reminders of previous circumstances involving the Millington commissioner and his colleagues. Former Commissioner Steve Mulroy said back in 2011 that Roland had cornered him in the commission library and said, “You and I are never going to agree. There’s only one way to settle things. We’re going downstairs, and I’m going to whip your ass!”

At the time, Roland said, “Aw, heck, I was just kidding with him,” and, though Mulroy still insists he believes Roland was serious in his threat, the two commissioners would ultimately let the matter subside with jocular references to a potential boxing match for charity.

In 2012, Roland was the featured speaker at a meeting of the Collierville Republican Club when several fellow GOP Commissioners, who favored another approach, began heckling him.

Interpreting a muttered phrase from then-Commissioner Chris Thomas as a disrespectful jibe about his late father (Thomas denied saying anything of the sort), Roland threatened to “knock you out of that chair.” Then-Commissioner Wyatt Bunker called the Collierville police, who arrived after the meeting was over but found nothing amiss.

On that occasion, Roland insisted he was the one being bullied, and he had similar words for his disagreement with Reaves Monday. “I’m not going to let politics get in the way of making a good decision to help our people,” he said. “I’m not going to be bullied. I’m trying to do what’s good for everybody.”

And Roland reciprocated Reaves’ charges of political motivation by accusing Reaves, Billingsley, and Chism of being partisans of Roland’s potential mayoral opponent, current county Trustee David Lenoir. He said the three also were supporters of former U.S. Attorney David Kustoff in the 8th Congressional District GOP primary and that he, by contrast, intended to remain neutral.

Meanwhile, Billingsley revealed that in April he had queried then-County Attorney (now appellate Judge-designate) Ross Dyer, as follows: “It is unfortunate I have to inquire for a county attorney opinion, but I have no other choice. If a Shelby County commissioner contacts another Shelby County commissioner … and threatens their ability to put items on the… Commission agenda, threatens lack of funding, and threatens their ability to serve in their [elected] capacity, based on their personal animosity [toward] that individual, would this be considered official misconduct? Additionally, is there a process for reporting?”

Dyer, whose investiture as a Judge in the Court of Criminal Appeals will take place this Thursday, promised at the time that an answer would be forthcoming at some point from himself or from his staff.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Politics or Government in Shelby County?

CREDIT: JB

Even as most political attention locally is trained on an ongoing city election season, Shelby County government has a political crisis on its hands in the form of an ongoing power struggle between branches of government.

When the Shelby County Commission concluded its last public meeting of the 2014-15 cycle on Monday, it was still in a state of uncertainty and division as to the nature of its own leadership in the year to come, having elected Steve Basar as its chairman two weeks ago, only to un-elect him in a reconsideration vote an hour later.

But the commissioners seemed to have less difficulty on Monday in unifying against a common foe: the administration of Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell, which has gotten involved in a power struggle with the commission — one that consistently has put the two entities at loggerheads as to just who is the boss in the county system.

The contest was joined in two ways on Monday. First, when Luttrell requested and was given the opportunity to address the commission to open the meeting, in his remarks, the mayor made an effort to review some of the differences between his administration and the commission on budgetary and spending priorities and proposed a forthcoming “summit” with the county’s legislative body to review priorities and to try to get them in sync.

One item mentioned in the mayor’s remarks — a workforce development grant of $175,000 to Seedco, a national nonprofit organization, to train local residents for retail positions — would become the focus of a debate and test-case vote, one that the mayor, who opposed the grant, would lose by a 10-2 vote.

Luttrell’s opposition to the Seedco grant, much of which would be in conjunction with the opening of a Just-A-Buck dollar store, was that routing economically at-risk citizens into relatively low-paying retail-sales positions was not the proper focus for the county’s workforce-development efforts.

In the commission’s later debate on the Seedco grant, the mayor’s position was supported by Commissioners Basar and David Reaves, two Republicans who often find themselves on opposite sides of the commission’s internal politics, but who concurred in opposition to the grant.

Basar, as Luttrell had, challenged the emphasis on retail sales vs. higher-paying kinds of employment, and pointed out that Seedco had in 2012 been charged by the federal government with fraud in its New York City job-placement operation.

Reaves made the point that the commission, once having made a grant to Seedco, would have no further oversight over its disposition, contrasting that with workforce development programs conducted under two existing entities, the Greater Memphis Alliance for a Competitive Workforce (GMACW), operated under the auspices of the city/county EDGE board, and the federally sponsored Workforce Investment Network (WIN).

The commission would have significant input in either of those workforce development programs without having to “spend a nickel,” said Reaves, who called the proposed Seedco grant an exercise in “pork.” He offered a motion, seconded by Basar, to refer the matter of the Seedco grant back to committee while the commission looked into doing something with GMACW or WIN.

The motion went down, however, and it became apparent that something more than pure cost-accounting or workforce-development policy was involved in the debate when influential GOP Commissioner Heidi Shafer, the body’s budget chair and normally an opponent of grants in principle, came down hard for the Seedco grant.

Shafer has made no secret of her view that the Luttrell administration had arrogated too much authority to itself, particularly in its dealings with the commission during recent budget negotiations, when the administration declared a $6 million surplus but opposed efforts by Republican members to offset enough of that amount to allow for a one-cent decrease in the county tax rate.

Other members, Democrats and Republicans, have nursed other grievances, and there developed an apparent post-budget consensus on the commission for the body to look into having its own legal recourse and independent vetting sources.

The commission has meanwhile pressed for more candor from the administration on the county fiscal situation and secured an administration pledge in last week’s committee sessions for a “truing-up” this fall of the county’s fluid revenue status.

At one point in Monday’s discussion of the Seedco grant, after Luttrell had left the auditorium, GOP Commissioner Terry Roland confronted administration CAO Harvey Kennedy with an accusation that “it was kind of disrespectful for the mayor to come up here and talk about a summit when he has run roughshod over us for five years. … When you look at that charter, what it says is that this body has the power. … At the end of the day, we are the governing body.”

Later in the debate, Kennedy called Roland’s characterization of relations between the commission and administration “extremely inaccurate” and insisted that the county charter provided “shared responsibility” for the branches of government and that “we don’t work for the commission.”

Whatever the case, relations between the two branches could hardly be more strained, and it would seem that Luttrell’s desired “summit” with the commission, if and when it ends up taking place, could be the last best chance of patching things up.

Meanwhile, the commission will attempt once again to resolve its chairmanship question at its September 14th public meeting, with Commissioner Van Turner, a first-term Democrat, presiding as acting chair.


DOGGING THE VOTE:

JB




Three candidates in the Memphis city election who are running along similar and somewhat unorthodox lines are including an emphasis on shoring up animal rights in their platforms and
collaborated in a meet-and-greet at the Overton Bark dog park at
Overton Park on Saturday.



It didn’t take long for this little terrier, belonging to an attendee, to commit himself and come looking for a constituent service — to wit, a dog biscuit — from (l to r) mayoral candidate Mike Williams; Lynn Moss, candidate for City Council, District 9, Position 2; and Robin Spielberger, candidate for Super district 9, Position 1.



Two other issues held in common by the three are support for
retaining the Mid-South Coliseum and restoration of lost benefits for
city employees.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

County Commission Power Surge

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Monday’s public meeting of the Shelby County Commission saw the commission, as a whole, still trying to forge a new, more independent role for itself but experiencing a bit of erosion in its resolve.

The meeting began with Chairman Justin Ford continuing in his new mode of permitting audience statements on the front end of proceedings rather than, as was long customary, at the conclusion of business. Commissioners got an earful of complaints about its budgetary provision of $1.3 million to be divided equally between the 13 members of the commission for purposes of making grants within their districts.

“Charity” grants, the critical audience members were calling them, in a bit of a misnomer, inasmuch as the money — amounting to $100,000 per district — had been defined during the course of several recent commission debates as applicable to a district’s infrastructure needs as well as to this or that community organization with a civic or charitable purpose.   

Indeed, Commissioner Terry Roland, of Millington, who had been among a contingent of Republican commissioners who had lobbied hard but without success for a one-cent reduction in the county’s property-tax rate, was able to use that setback to respond to one of the critics, telling her that his share of the grant money would go, at least partly, to “fix your roads.”

Since there hadn’t been enough votes during the budget process to allocate at least some of county Mayor Mark Luttrell‘s $6 million budget surplus to a property-tax cut, the commission could at least use the back-door route of district grants to take care of district needs, Roland said. It was an agile argument and one not without irony, inasmuch as part of Luttrell’s argument against the proposed one-cent tax reduction had been that funding needed to be reserved for infrastructure repairs.

Even so, the audience complaints — apparently the tip of an iceberg that had included numerous phone calls, emails, texts, and personal intercessions from citizens — induced a change of mind in two previous supporters of the grants: budget chair Heidi Shafer and David Reaves, both Republicans. They joined fellow GOP member Mark Billingsley of Germantown — formerly the lone holdout against the grants, as he reminded the audience — in casting a nay vote.

The process was too “subjective,” Billingsley argued. Reaves and Shafer acknowledged that, and while they still thought the district-grant formula was a good idea, they were bowing to the will of their constituents.

Democrat Reginald Milton, author of the grant idea, held firm, insisting that government had “a role and responsibility to serve all its citizens.” Fellow Democrat Melvin Burgess told the two defecting Republicans, “We don’t represent the same districts. I represent District 7. Mine is a poor district.”

The ultimate vote, 10-3 in favor of the grants, indicated that there was still a fair degree of solidarity among the commissioners regarding the issue of self-assertion.

There had been an expected party-line division on the issue of third and final approval of the $4.37 county tax rate, same as the current one, with five Republicans — Shafer, Roland, Billingsley, Reaves, and George Chism — voting no in an 8-5 outcome, but most other issues saw the same degree of unity as was demonstrated on committee day last Wednesday, when the commission took on the Luttrell administration on two issues — an administration switch from Nationwide Insurance to Prudential as administrator of a county deferred-compensation plan for employees and an insistence that the commission had a right to its own attorney.

On Wednesday, commissioners went back and forth with spokespersons for the administration on the attorney matter. After a prolonged executive session, closed to the media, it was agreed that, while the county charter forbade the commission’s having a full-time attorney of its own, it permitted the commission to engage separate counsel for specific ad-hoc purposes, as, for example, during the late school-merger controversy, when the commission hired an outside law firm to litigate for its position.

Otherwise, the charter empowered the county attorney’s staff, headed by Ross Dyer, to represent county government in general, the commission, as well as the administration.

As a final add-on item to Monday’s agenda, Democratic Commissioner Van Turner introduced what was, in effect, a reprise of last Wednesday’s two controversies by proposing that the commission engage an attorney to look into the Nationwide-Prudential matter. The fat was back in the fire.

“It’s hard to serve two masters. It says that in the Bible” was how Roland posed the issue.

As might have been expected, the Turner proposal generated yet another extended back-and-forth, with Dyer and assistant county attorney Kim Koratsky insisting that they needed time to research the matter, which included the side issue of who would pay for an additional attorney. On that latter point, a consensus seemed to develop that the commission’s contingency fund would be the appropriate source.

Any possible solution to the controversy may have been sidetracked when Turner’s resolution, already a two-in-one, became a de-facto three-in-one, with his suggestion that former Commissioner Julian Bolton could serve as the ad-hoc attorney on the Nationwide-Prudential matter.

That brought on an explosion from Reaves, who pronounced himself “sick and tired” of the whole controversy. “I’ll support the school lawsuit, not this,” he said, referencing a possible action in support of Shelby County Schools’ ongoing effort to challenge alleged underfunding by the state.

And Reaves was especially scornful that Turner’s resolution included the offer of a job to Bolton.

“I can help the commission resolve this impasse. I’m not looking for a job. I just want to help,” responded Bolton.

“Will you serve for free?” shouted Reaves. “You’re asking for money.”

Eventually, that flare-up ended, with other commissioners endorsing Bolton’s ability and integrity. Bolton and Reaves shared a relatively polite tête-à-tête after the meeting.

Meanwhile, though, Turner’s resolution was sidetracked, referred back to the general government committee, which Turner chairs and which had been the starting point of last week’s twin controversy. Dyer and company had gained the leave they sought to research the relevant issues, and the whole thing had bogged down into a truce of sorts.

• Next Thursday, July 16th, is filing deadline for the 2015 Memphis city election — which means that some long-unanswered questions will finally be resolved.

How complete is the field for city mayor? That’s one general question that needs answering. And, in particular, will Kenneth Whalum Jr. run for mayor? And, if not, will he seek one of the other offices — Council District 5 and Council Super District 9, Position 2 — for which he drew petitions last April?

One question involving former school board member and New Olivet pastor Whalum was long ago resolved, with the fraying away of any semblance of an arrangement with Memphis Police Association head Mike Williams, whereby only one of them would be a mayoral candidate. Both Williams, directly, and Whalum, indirectly, have since debunked that idea.

Meanwhile, spiffy new electronic roadside signs have begun to appear advertising the candidacy for the Super District 9, Position 2, seat of Joe Cooper — remember him? — who has also said he will offer free bus transportation to the polls for anyone needing it.

Cooper’s signs pledge his vote to restore the lost benefits of police and fire employees, and he credits Williams with being his authority on the matter.

Another Cooper idea for dealing with fiscal scarcities in city government is to sell naming rights to City Hall, and he cites as precedents the corporate titles adorning football stadiums in Nashville and elsewhere. Er, any potential bidders out there?

By next week, we should also have a fairly complete reckoning of what various candidates’ financial disclosures for the second quarter were. Stay tuned.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Give Commission Grants a Chance

Yes, there is always the prospect — especially in this barbecue capital of ours — that when money is handed out by politicians, it might qualify as “pork.” (Webster: “benefits dispensed or legislated by politicians to gain favor

with their constituents.”) This is especially a possibility when a legislative body such as the Shelby County Commission, which has been notorious for its internal divisions, agrees on a formula for dividing a portion of a budget surplus into equal sums for the 13 members to distribute in their districts.

The sum to be divided somehow ended up — with the consent of county Mayor Mark Luttrell’s administration, mind you — to be $1,300,000. It doesn’t take a genius with numbers to see how easily that figure can be split 13 ways, into integers of … hmmm, let’s see … an even $100,000. Wow, what a coincidence. Or is the right word synchronicity? Or pork?

The last possibility is the one that several members of the commission’s audience arrived at on Monday to express their displeasure at a then-pending proposal to allocate the aforesaid $1,300,000 into 13 even parts for individual distribution. And, as we learned from two commission members (one of them an original co-sponsor of the idea), there was enough negative feedback from their constituents to shift them from their original intent to vote aye into going nay instead. In the end, the proposal was approved 10-3 — which is still a lopsided vote of approval for that contentious body.

But there is more to the proposal, and the vote total, than the concept of a self-aggrandizing giveaway. It didn’t get spoken to on Monday, but the proposal also calls for the entire commission, as a body, to approve any given grant, once it is suggested by an individual member. To be sure, that process could invite the specter of collusion, if one has a suspicious mind. But it also could lead to the kind of genuine debate and cooperation and understanding of the peculiar needs of one’s colleagues that an elected deliberative body needs. And it tends to eliminate the kind of jealousy that used to mar debates of what to do with grant money under the old system of direct, sharp-elbow competition for whatever money was available for nonprofits. If you’re worried about unscrupulous wheeling and dealing, that was a system that overtly encouraged it.

Under the new system, each district gets its fair share of attention. Yet another new wrinkle worked into the resolution that passed is the explicit license for a commissioner to dispense one’s allotted sum for basic infrastructure needs.

“We’re gonna take care of your roads,” Commissioner Terry Roland told one of the protesting audience members on Monday, and it’s up to his constituents to see that he does.

The new grant-distribution formula is one of the several changes that would seem to follow naturally from the new single-member apportionment that occurred after the census of 2010. The single-member formula encourages, for better or worse, more hands-on engagement between commissioners and constituents, and we should set aside our innate cynicism long enough to give it, and its offshoot formulas, a fair chance to work.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Chism Backs Strickland for Mayor

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Adherents of City Councilman Jim Strickland‘s campaign for mayor are certainly pleased with their guy’s ability to go fund-raising dollar-for-dollar against incumbent Mayor A C Wharton (both candidates having reported $300,000-plus in their first-quarter disclosures). And they’re counting on a good showing for Strickland in both the Poplar Corridor and Cordova, where his message of public safety and budgetary austerity resonate.

But those predominantly white areas of Memphis (to call them by their right name) are probably not enough, all by themselves, to get Strickland over, especially since Wharton has his own residual strength in the corridor and with the city’s business community, where the mayor can hope to at least break even.

There is also the mayor’s advantage in being able to command free media on a plethora of governmental and ceremonial occasions.

Yes, it’s probably true that A C’s support in predominantly African-American precincts ain’t what it used to be, and it never was what you would call dominating, not this year with all the well-publicized cuts in city services. And not with Mike Williams working the African-American community, along with Whitehaven Councilman Harold Collins and Justin Ford, and with the Rev. Kenneth Whalum ready to grab off a huge chunk of that vote, should he make what is at this point an expected entry into the mayoral field.

Still, Strickland needs to grab a share of the black vote to have a chance to get elected. Where does he get it? Well, he’s attending African-American churches on Sunday, one of the well-worn pathways in local politics. So that will help. But probably not as much as the endorsement he got last Saturday at the annual Sidney Chism Community Picnic on Horn Lake Road from the impresario of that event. Longtime political broker Chism early on announced his support of Strickland from the stage of the sprawling picnic grounds.

Time may have tarnished Chism’s reputation a bit, as it did his longtime ally, former Mayor Willie Herenton (an attendee at the picnic), but the former Teamster leader, Democratic Party chairman, state senator, and county commissioner still has enough influence to have basically put Randa Spears over as Shelby County Democratic chair earlier this year. And he may have enough to give Strickland that extra boost he needs to be fully competitive. We’ll see.

Chism, as it happens, is mired in a couple of controversies at the moment. His employment as a “media specialist” by Sheriff Bill Oldham is regarded with suspicion as a political quid pro quo and pension-inflater by several Republican members of the Shelby County Commission, who at budget-crunch time are making an issue of it, along with an Oldham-provided job for former Shelby County Preparedness director Bob Nations.

And Chism may have reignited another long-smoldering situation when he used the bully pulpit of his picnic to attack an intramural Democratic Party foe, Del Gill, who was runner-up to Spears in the party chairmanship contest. Chism did so at first indirectly, on the front end of the event, while he was acknowledging from the stage the presence in the crowd of party chair Spears.

“She’s been catching a whole lot of flak from one crazy person, but I hope y’all put him out of this city, and he’ll be all right.” Chism chose to be more explicit when he returned to the stage after a series of candidates in the city election had made their public remarks.

“I said something earlier,” Chism said. “I said there was somebody who needed running out of town, and that person, I didn’t call his name, but that person is Del Gill. … He ain’t worth two cents. … He’s been lyin’ on me for 10 years He won’t show up and do it to my face, but he lies all the time.”

In a widely circulated email response, Gill returned fire, reminding his readers that he had taken the lead in having Chism censured by the local Democratic Party executive committee in 2014 for allegedly attempting to subvert the sheriff’s campaign of Democratic nominee Bennie Cobb in favor of Republican Oldham.

Chism used his attack on Gill as a platform from which to launch his recipe for Democratic success at the polls: “We’re not going to win any elections in Shelby County until we get into the mindset that we’ve got to get in the middle. If we get in the middle, we can elect Democrats, qualified Democrats.

“I didn’t say you’ve got to be a super-intelligent magna cum laude educated person. I’m saying you ought to be smart enough to know that the people in this country are in the middle.” He urged his listeners to “vote for the right person, and he ain’t got to look like me; just act like me.”

Actually, the two Chism battlefronts — his employment battle with GOP county commissioners and the Democratic Party fireworks — are connected. Such commission critics of Chism as Heidi Shafer and David Reaves, both Republicans, have made pointed remarks in private about what they claim was Chism’s disservice to fellow Commissioner Reginald Milton, a Democrat, in intervening against Milton’s own bid for party chairmanship. And Milton, perhaps unsurprisingly, has expressed his own skepticism about the sheriff’s budget requests.

Shafer and Reaves, along with GOP Commissioner Terry Roland, are also suspicious that Oldham’s wish to have Chism (and other Chism associates) aboard is related to a potential 2018 campaign by Oldham for county mayor, an office for which Roland, for one, has essentially already announced.

Oldham has been mum on the subject of his future political intentions, if any, but it is a fact that the progression from sheriff to county mayor has been made already by several predecessors — Roy “Skip” Nixon, Bill Morris, and current County Mayor Mark Luttrell.

Random notes: The newly elected president of the Shelby County Young Democrats is Alvin Crook, who made something of a stir last year when, in the course of a public debate, he formally endorsed Van Turner, his Democratic primary opponent for a county commission seat.

Crook, who is employed as a courtroom bailiff, says his group will be making endorsements in the city election this year.

Other new Young Democrat officers: Regina Beale, first vice president; Jim Kyle Jr., 2nd vice president; Matt Pitts, treasurer; Rebekah Hart, secretary; and Justin Askew, parliamentarian.

• Two Shelby Countians, state Senator Mark Norris and attorney Al Harvey, were among three Tennesseans who were invited guests of British royalty at Monday’s ceremony in Runnymede, England, commemorating the 800th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta there.

Norris was invited in his capacity as immediate past chairman of the Council of State Governments; Harvey, along with General Sessions Judge Lee Bussart Bowles of Marshall County, represented the American Bar Association.

A sure sign that the city election season is heating up: On Thursday, June 18th, from 5 to 7 p.m., Patrice Robinson, a candidate for city council, District 3, and Mary Wilder, candidate for the council’s District 5, will be holding simultaneous fund-raisers in different parts of town.

Overlapping events of this sort, still uncommon, will at a certain point in the election cycle, become routine.

• In its latest issue, the Tennessee Journal of Nashville takes note of the Tennessee Republican Party’s concerted “Red to the Roots” campaign directed at capturing as many of the state’s county assessor positions as possible next year.

The newsletter also notes that Shelby County Assessor Cheyenne Johnson, a Democrat, will be exempt from the purge attempt, having already won reelection to a four-year term in 2014. Johnson’s being on a different cycle from other state assessors is a consequence of the county commission’s consolidating all county offices into a common election cycle via 2008 revisions to the county charter.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Commission Plays 52-Pickup

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Early on in Monday’s regular business session of the Shelby County Commission, Commissioner  Melvin Burgess, a Democrat, moved to defer for two weeks a vote on appointing someone to fill a Judicial Commission vacancy, on the grounds that a discussion on the matter would crowd out some necessary and potentially lengthy deliberations on the county budget and tax rate for fiscal 2015-16.

That was either a face-value statement, as Burgess insisted, or a political maneuver, as the Republican members of the commission — or most of them — suspected, and very shortly the provisional consensus on a budget/tax rate combination that had apparently been reached in a lengthy commission session on May 20th began to come asunder.

Several of the GOP members — conspicuously excluding Steve Basar, who supported Burgess’ motion — objected that most of the 15 applicants for Judicial Commissioner were sitting in the commission audience and had cleared their personal slates in order to be present for the scheduled vote.

; Privately, they began to sense that some deal had been made that involved trade-offs of various kinds, and Basar’s support of the Burgess motion convinced some of them, at least, of something that Commissioner David Reaves, a GOP member from Bartlett, was willing to voice later on:

“It all goes back to the chairmanship vote,” Reaves said, referring to a reorganizational vote of the newly elected commission last fall. Basar, who had been vice chair of the previous commission, had expected to be elected chairman but was stunned to find that most of his fellow Republicans were committed to other candidates. In the end, a majority of Republicans united behind Democrat Justin Ford, who had often voted with the GOP contingent during his first term.

Whatever the reason for that reversal — and they were probably as much personal as political — it made for a commission divided along clearly partisan lines, with the body’s Democrats, plus Basar, on one side, and the Republicans, plus Ford, on the other.

For weeks last fall, the two factions waged procedural warfare, with the Democratic/Basar coalition seeking either to unseat Ford as chairman or to drastically limit his authority. In the end, Ford survived, though with modestly curtailed prerogatives, and the showdown eased up. It, indeed, had been largely forgotten, until Monday, when Burgess made his motion. 

Ford, as chairman, attempted to disallow any deferral, but in the resultant vote, Burgess’ fellow Democrats, plus Basar, prevailed.

“Basar tipped his hand,” Reaves said. “He’s looking toward September, for the next chairman’s vote and trying to gain some leverage. Why else would he vote that way? It allowed us to figure out quickly that he had flopped.”

Basar denied any such motive, but he agreed that the Republicans began to shift, more or less in unison, to a common strategy, “once they saw me voting again with the Democrats.”

One consequence was a defeat for a long-pending ordinance proposed by Basar to apply pedestrian safety laws to unincorporated areas of Shelby County. Basar needed nine votes, but Republicans Reaves and Terry Roland, who had agreed to help him meet his quota, withdrew their support.

Subsequently, the old arithmetic of Democrats-plus-Basar versus Republicans-plus-Ford reasserted itself on vote after vote, preventing agreement on matters that, as of the marathon commission meeting of May 20th, had seemed either settled or within easy reach. 

The commissioners had then seemed to agree on a formula dividing some $1.8 million equally between each of the 13 commissioners for them to distribute to non-profit organizations in their districts. That matter, now involving a lesser sum of $1.3 million and altered to include other services and recipients beyond non-profits, was referred back to committee on Monday.

More importantly, a sense of distrust had arisen among the commission Republicans regarding what they thought had been a common commitment to use part of a $6 million surplus claimed by the administration of Mayor Mark Luttrell to lower the county tax rate one cent, from $4.37 to $4.36. 

The GOP members now began to suspect behind-the-scenes collusion between the administration, which had never been sold on the tax decrease, preferring to use any left-over differential on infrastructure, and Democratic members, who, now supported by Basar, were proposing to raise several sums apparently agreed upon on May 20th — notably for the Sheriff’s Department and Juvenile Court, each of which were seeking significant increases.

Consequently, Roland proposed a 4-cent reduction in the tax rate (“as a way of getting one cent,” he would later acknowledge).That went down, by the same quasi-party line vote as before, as did a follow-up vote for the 1-cent reduction.

In the end, a “flat” or stable tax rate at the current level of $4.37 received the same 7-6 vote distribution for the first of three required votes, and all budget items were deferred or referred back to committee.

In a true sense, nothing got resolved on Monday, though several commission meetings, both scheduled and ad hoc, are sure to revisit the budget/tax rate matters between now and the July 1st fiscal-year deadline. And several members, seeing the prospect of consensus slipping further way, are foreseeing that an official arbitration process will need to be invoked.

“Irresponsible,” was Chairman Ford’s verdict on Monday’s meeting.

• On the mayoral-race front, most observers are now betting that the Rev. Kenneth Whalum Jr., the New Olivet Baptist Church pastor and former school board member, will run for mayor, despite his insistence that he will defer to Memphis Police Association President Mike Williams, a declared candidate.

“He’s making noise like he is,” said Williams last week at Broadway Pizza, after one in a series of what will be several organizational meetings, noting that “I have never asked Whalum about not running. …  I’m just moving at my pace. Even if he runs, we’re still going to be friends. … My destiny has nothing to do with his destiny.”


•Oh, and make room for Robert “Prince Mongo” Hodges on your tout sheet. The Zambodian prince, a frequent mayoral candidate in the past, says he’ll pull a petition for mayor next week.


• And, almost unnoticed, Joe Cooper (yes, that Joe Cooper) has put together a potentially effective campaign team in his latest quest for a political comeback as a candidate for the City Council Super District 9, Position 2 seat.

Cooper says he expects to spend $100,000 on his race and has engaged the professional consulting team of Matt Kuhn and Mike Lipe to help him do it. Gene Buehler and Karla Willingham Templeton are Cooper’s campaign co-chairs.

Cooper, who serves wrestling legend Jerry Lawler as an agent and manager, says that Thursday of this week will be officially recognized as “Jerry Lawler Day” in both Memphis and Jackson, Tennessee, with Mayor A C Wharton said to be ready to issue a proclamation in his City Hall office on Thursday and Jackson Mayor Jerry Gist honoring Lawler similarly on Thursday night.


• So, guess who else is being touted for Mayor. Yep, Harold Ford Jr.

But not of Memphis, Ford’s erstwhile home base. No, the transplanted former 9th District congressman and 2006 U.S. Senate candidate, is apparently being talked up for mayor of New York, his current abode — the most recent hints of such a prospect coming from Bloomberg Business, which reported last week on a Lincoln Center “American Songbook” gala that, according to the periodical, honored Ford for his fund-raising efforts on behalf of the center.

Said the article: “‘Mayor’ was on the lips of some guests, though not Ford’s. Asked about his interest in leading the city, Ford, who once considered a run for a U.S. Senate seat from New York and has endorsed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race, said ‘I’m a new father for the second time, that’s what I’m focused on.'” 

The next mayoral race in New York will occur in 2017. Current Mayor Bill de Blasio, an avowed liberal, is in some quarters considered vulnerable to a challenge from the center or right.