Tag: Edmund Ford

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Council Pushes Pipeline Votes

Protect Our Aquifer

The proposed route of the Byhalia Connection Pipeline.

A Memphis City Council committee pushed votes regarding the Byhalia Connection pipeline project Tuesday pending a meeting with the council and its attorney on the matter.

The council public works committee agenda included two items related to the pipeline. One was a resolution — a non-binding, joint opinion on the matter — opposing the project. The other was an ordinance — a law with teeth — that would ban certain types of development, like pipelines, in new groundwater protection districts.

Neither received a vote from the council committee Tuesday. That move came after the council’s attorney, Allan Wade, suggested a halt to further movement until he had a chance to meet with council members and attorneys from Memphis Light, Gas, and Water (MLGW) behind closed doors, away from the public eye.

Wade told council members that the city’s authority to move on the act were “constrained by federal and state law.” He said he’s heard from those opposing the pipeline and what they ask is “quite frankly out of what authority we have.”

Memphis City Hall

This justification to slow the vote came first from council member and public works chairman J.B. Smiley. He began the discussion Tuesday by noting that “we have heard the voices of the people” but that “our board has limitations.” He said much of the power over the pipeline rests with the federal government and the council “has no power to tell the federal government what to do.”

Wade also asked the council to consider pending litigation between the pipeline company and property owners. Those owners are attempting to stop the company from taking their land through eminent domain in Shelby County Chancery Court. Wade said passing a resolution against the project would be fine. However, passing a new law during the ongoing lawsuit could prejudice the condemnation proceedings.

Council member Edmund Ford, one of the resolution’s co-sponsors, hinted at a raft of concerns he had with the project, many of which he vaguely described at the beginning of the meeting as having emerged “in the last 24 hours.”  City of Memphis

Edmund Ford

Here’s what he said:

“There’s a lot of different issues with this Byhalia Pipeline. In the last 24 hours, I’ve found out a lot of different things that were not very good. Attorney Wade, I need to you to look into all these different things.

“Promises have been made on one side and, then, they’re telling stories that [Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland’s Administration] is doing things on another side. I’ve talked with the administration and everything and they don’t know what’s going on.
[pullquote-1-center] “I’ve talked with Deidre Malone [who is handling public relations in Memphis for the pipeline company]. She’s kind of pissed off at me and I really don’t care. It’s because the people in my district, hey, it concerns them. I’m not invested in somebody just trying to look good or make something from this.

“There’s a lot of issues. Dr. [council member Jeff] Warren, I appreciate you and Mr. [Memphis Citizens Against the Pipeline organizer Justin] Pearson and all of the rest. But these are issues that are coming up and these are legal issues now.

“I’ve been talking with attorney Wade and I need to bring him into some of these things that have come up within 24 hours, okay? After he gets through, we need to postpone (the day’s vote) until next week if we can.”

Presentations on the pipeline project were slated from the Southern Environmental Law Center and others. However, those presentations were pushed on time constraints made by a lengthy debate earlier in the day on whether or not the city should allow the retail sale of dogs and cats. 

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Politics Politics Feature

Numbed by the Numbers: County Commission Struggles to Agree on Budget

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Separate attempts to produce a budget for Shelby County failed to produce anything resembling a consensus on a marathon meeting day of the County Commission on Monday. Commission Chairman Mark Billingsley said he intends to call a special meeting for next week to see if the process can be expedited.
Jackson Baker

Commission Chairman Mark Billingsley

Billingsley told his fellow commissioners the called meeting would likely be necessary in the interests of reaching agreement on a budget, with the new fiscal year just around the corner on July 1st.

The Memorial Day holiday next week forces an adjustment of the normal schedule, which would mandate a day of committee meetings during the week, preparatory to the next regular commission meeting the week after. The holiday forces the entire sequence to occur a week later, with committee meetings scheduled for June 3rd and the next regular public meeting to be on June 8th.

Hence the need for a called meeting, especially since Monday’s meetings — a special called budget meeting, starting at 11 a.m., followed by the regular Commission meeting at 3 p.m — became embroiled in complications that were still unsnarled when the commission adjourned at nearly midnight.

“We’re getting into another day,” said budget chair Eddie Jones wearily, with the clock moving toward the witching hour and one of the Webinar meeting’s participants, an administration staffer participating from home and having to alternate her contributions with soothing words for a restless two-year-old. “That sounds wonderful,” was the wistful comment of Commissioner Mick Wright on this audible reminder of a domestic life beyond numbers-crunching.

Various formulas have been adduced for dealing with a looming budget deficit that had looked to be as large as $10 million even before the effects of the coronavirus crisis pushed things even further into fiscal crisis.

In mid-April, County Mayor Lee Harris had proposed a $1.4 billion “lean and balanced” budget, with $13.6 million in specified cuts offset by a $16.50 raise in the county’s motor vehicle registration tax, a.k.a. the wheel tax. A majority of commissioners could not be found to agree, and alternative budget proposals, all with different versions of austerity, have since been floated, one by Commissioner Brandon Morrison, another by budget chair Jones, working more or less in tandem with vice chair Edmund Ford.

Among the issues raised by Monday’s day-long discussion was that of whether, as county Chief Financial Officer Mathilde Crosby contended, the proposals offered by Jones and Ford focused overmuch on cuts in administrative departments, thereby paralleling what has been something of a running feud between Harris and Ford based, as more than a few observers see it, as a potential long-term political rivalry between the two.

Crosby also offered criticism that the Jones-Ford proposals for budget-cutting ignored distinctions between the county’s general fund and various dedicated funds for mandated functions.

Another potential issue is that of the county tax rate, currently pegged at $4.05 per $100 of assessed value. Commissioner Reginald Milton, for one, believes that the rate is set artificially low because of simple mathematical error and that this factor is bound to doom the county to endless future variations of the current budget scramble until the rate is recalculated. The current rate has so far been reaffirmed in two of the three readings required for passage.

The budget issue is predominating over other matters, though the commission did reach an agreement Monday on what had been a controversial proposal by Commissioner Tami Sawyer for an ordinance requiring, on penalty of $50 fine, that residents and visitors wear protective face masks in public areas. Sawyer recast her proposal in the form of a resolution requesting such a requirement by the Health Department but providing for no fine. The resolution passed 8-5 on a party-line vote, with the Commission’s Democrats voting for and the Republicans voting against.

Another matter of consequence that awaits the commission is the matter of new voting machines for Shelby County. The commission has twice voted a preference that the county invest in a system of hand-marked paper ballots in time for the August county general election and federal-state primaries, but the Shelby County Election Commission has approved the recommendation of Election Administrator Linda Phillips that new ballot-marking machines from the ES&S Company be purchased instead.

With the elections approaching, the need for a decision soon increases. The process requires that Harris sign an order authorizing the purchase of a new system, after which the commission must vote for its funding. At issue is whether the commission will approve the Phillips/SCEC request or act according to its own preference for the hand-marked system.

A sizable and well-organized group of local activists is pushing for the latter option, on grounds, among others, that a system of hand-marked ballots would be cheaper, more transparent, and less vulnerable to hacking.

Other, related aspects of the controversy include allegations from the activist ranks of potential conflicts of interest involving Phillips and family members and a concern that purchase of the ES&S machines would involve an implicit need to purchase a new voter-registration system from the same company.

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Politics Politics Feature

Shelby County Commission Tackles Issues With State Legislature

The March 3rd Super Tuesday vote, with presidential preference primaries favoring Democrat Joe Biden and President Donald Trump, and nominating Joe Brown and Paul Boyd, respectively, as the Democratic and Republican candidates for General Sessions Court clerk, has come and gone.

But there was still politics to be found locally. In a lengthy, oddly contentious meeting of the Shelby County Commission on Monday, political factors weighed heavily on several controversial issues, most of which were resolved either unanimously or via one-sided votes. A pair of hot-button issues were addressed in the form of late add-on resolutions at the close of Monday’s meeting, which had already generated significant steam via the regular agenda.

One of the add-on resolutions opposed Republican Governor Bill Lee‘s proposal for open-carry legislation, at least for Shelby County, and passed the Commission by a bipartisan 10-1 vote, the lone vote in opposition coming from GOP Commissioner Mick Wright, who chose to let his dissent speak for itself.

The resolution was co-sponsored by Republican David Bradford and Democrat Tami Sawyer. The minimal discussion of the measure was itself bipartisan, with, for example, Democrat Reginald Milton and Republican Amber Mills making similar declarations of being pro-Second Amendment but citing opposition to the open-carry measure from law enforcement officials.

Specifically, the resolution’s enacting clause asks that any open-carry measure exclude Shelby County: “Now, therefore, be it resolved the Board of County Commissioners of Shelby County Tennessee be carved out of any and all permitless gun carry legislation.”

It should be noted that in a separate action over the weekend, the Shelby County Democratic Executive Committee unanimously passed its own resolution condemning Senate Bill 2671/House Bill 2817, the permitless-carry legislation, citing similar objections — noting that, for example, “the Memphis Mayor, Memphis Police Director, and the Shelby County Sheriff have already spoken out against the bill.”

Another late add-on resolution at Monday’s commission meeting was introduced by Sawyer. It would have repeated the commission’s previous stand in favor of voter-marked paper ballot machines in Shelby County and included an exhortation to the General Assembly to “support legislation for paper ballot on-demand options,” thereby tying into specific ongoing legislation to that end.

Further, and importantly, the resolution provides an alternative to holding a public referendum authorizing new voting machines, as apparently required under a newly unearthed provision of state law. It underscores the authority of the county commission itself, “as the governing body of Shelby County” to purchase new voting machines, and notes the subsequent reallocation last month by the commission of capital improvement funds as a means of doing so. The resolution would not be acted on directly but was by unanimous consent referred to the next meeting of the commission’s general government committee.

Commissioner Sawyer appended to the resolution a copy of a letter signed by five Republican legislators representing Shelby County and addressed to the three Republican members of the Shelby County Election Commission.

The letter, on the official letterhead of state Senator Brian Kelsey, carried two specific “recommendations” to the GOP SCEC members. One directly opposes voter-marked ballots, stating that “[a]llowing voters to handle and mark paper inevitably opens the election process to numerous unnecessary human errors” and that “reverting back to technology from the 1990s would be a huge mistake.”

A second “recommendation” needs  to be quoted in its entirely: “Second, in order to ensure that everyone has the same opportunity to vote and to limit the financial strains on the taxpayers, we recommend seven days of early voting be conducted at all satellite voting locations in Shelby County, preceded by eight days of early voting at the Shelby County Election Commission office. Opening only one early voting location in the Agricenter, as was done in 2018, was wrong and in violation of state law. The solution we propose will fix this problem.”

Buried in this somewhat disingenuous language is the idea of cutting back the amount of time devoted to satellite early voting from two weeks to a single week.

Sawyer was pointed and defiant in the citation of the Kelsey letter, saying that its recommendations and circumlocutions alike, as well as the confinement of the communication to Republican members of the SCEC, constituted an affront to the commission and to the process of resolving the voting-machine issue in an orderly, conscientious manner.

“The letter undermines this board,” she declared, insisting that her condemnation of the letter be given maximum public exposure.

The voting-machine issue was not the only matter to invoke the possibility of cross-purposes between county and state authorities. An unexpected controversy arose over a proposal, advanced by Commissioners Milton and Van Turner at the behest of County Mayor Lee Harris, to allocate $33,799 for a Veterans Service Officer in Shelby County. Commissioner Mills, who with colleague Edmund Ford, had been to Nashville last week to discuss county-government needs with state officials, asked for a postponement of the action, insisting that she had been promised the prospect of not one, but five such officers for Shelby County via state action, and that county action on the matter could scuttle the state effort.

An argument ensued between Mills and Harris, with the mayor, backed by several members of the commission, expressing disbelief that county action on the matter would provoke a punitive reaction in Nashville. But in the end a narrow vote approved a deferral of the issue to the commission meeting of April 20th.

Modest controversy arose, too, over the commission’s action in approving  a paid parental leave policy for county employees. The annual price tag of the proposal, $830,000, to be paid for by internet sales tax revenues, was objected to by Republican Commissioners Mills and Brandon Morrison, who cited a looming $85 million county deficit, and abstained from an otherwise unanimous vote of approval.

Democrats at the Ready

Jackson Baker

Among those gathered Saturday morning at Kirby High School for preliminary party caucuses before this summer’s Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee were (l to r) Rick Maynard, U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, and David Upton.

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News News Blog

Council Looks to Fill Vacancy Left by Morrison

CREDIT: Memphis City Council

Memphis City Council

Bill Morrison

The Memphis City Council District 1 seat will soon be vacant, as Councilman Bill Morrison’s resignation from the council becomes effective on Thursday, November 1st.

Candidates wishing to fill the vacancy may be nominated by council members and the general public, or interested candidates can submit an application packet to the council office in Memphis City Hall. The packets can be picked up from the office beginning Friday at noon and must be submitted before Wednesday, November 14th at noon.

All candidates must submit proof of residency documents, as well as a sworn affidavit and nomination petition with at least 25 registered voter signatures who live in District 1.

The council, who will ultimately decide who fills the seat, plans to vote on a candidate at its meeting on Tuesday, November 20th. At the meeting, the qualifying candidates will have the chance to deliver speeches and answer any questions council members may have for them. Then, the council does multiple rounds of voting.

The process calls for the candidates receiving less than two votes in the first round to be eliminated. The voting continues until one of the candidates receives seven votes. After three rounds of voting, Chairman Berlin Boyd has the option to only consider the top two nominees.

Morrison, who was elected to the council first in 2007, then again in 2011 and 2015, was elected Shelby County Probate Clerk in August. Morrison, along with Janis Fullilove and Edmund Ford Jr., is one of three council members to be elected to other posts. Fullilove and Ford have yet to resign.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Shenanigans

Memphis City Council members Bill Morrison, Edmund Ford Jr., and Janis Fullilove are having a lucrative 90 days. Since the August 2nd election, in which all three won Shelby County offices, these “public servants” have been taking home two paychecks — one from the county for their new jobs and one from the city of Memphis for their council jobs.
That’s because none of the three have done the proper thing and resigned their council seats after winning new offices.
But the real issue isn’t the double dipping, as galling as that is. No, the real issue is that by not resigning, these three have created a situation that enables the current city council to appoint their replacements, thereby depriving their constituents of being able to select their own council representatives in the upcoming November election. The next city election after that is October 2019, so the three appointees will have the advantage of nearly a year’s incumbency in that contest. This isn’t how democracy is supposed to work.

This city council is also playing games with three referendums on the ballot for November, and you need to know what’s up. The citizens of Memphis in 2008 passed by a 71 percent margin a measure to institute Instant Runoff Voting. They also passed by a similar margin a measure to limit city council to two terms. The council is trying to overturn both of those decisions with deceptively worded referendums. For example, here’s how they’re tackling that pesky two-terms limit:

“Shall the Charter of the City of Memphis, Tennessee be amended to provide no person shall be eligible to hold or to be elected to the office of Mayor or Memphis City Council if any such person has served at any time more than three (3) consecutive four-year terms, except that service by persons elected or appointed to fill an unexpired four-year term shall not be counted as full four-year term?”

To an uninformed voter, it reads like the council wants to institute term limits — which is clever, because voters have already indicated they favor term limits. But in fact, it’s a blatant power grab to extend council members’ and the city mayor’s alloted time in office to 12 years from the current eight.

The language on the other two referendums — which would rescind IRV and eliminate single-district runoffs — is equally deceptive. The council is attempting to rescind measures that have been passed but haven’t even come into effect yet. Vote No on all three. This is some shenanigans.

Such shenanigans have also been happening on a national scale. Since the Shelby v. Holder decision in 2013, in which the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, there have been hundreds of restrictive voting measures passed, all in the South, and all in Republican-controlled states.

The Nation reports that since 2013, there are 868 fewer places to vote in the states affected by the SCOTUS ruling. Arizona, for example, has reduced the number of polling places by 70 percent — to just one polling place per 21,000 registered voters. In the most recent election in that state, voters waited in line for five hours at many polling places. See the map accompanying this column for a full accounting of this nefarious and anti-democratic practice.

Why do elected officials want fewer voters and longer terms in office? Simple. Money and power. It’s a plague and it’s spreading from the presidency on down to the local level. I can’t think of any election in my lifetime where it’s been more important to vote than the one coming up in November. We need to throw the rascals out and put a stop to this relentless assault on our democracy.

And speaking of shenanigans. … You may have seen an insert in last week’s Flyer that appeared at first glance to be a promo for the Cooper-Young Festival but was in fact a religious tract. The insert was sent directly to our printer without getting properly vetted by the ad department. We trusted someone and we got duped. Our apologies.
By the way, the Cooper-Young Festival is this weekend, so go. Have fun. Tell ’em the Flyer sent you.

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Politics Politics Feature

Seeing Double

CREDIT: Photographs by Jackson Baker

So, okay, the newly elected version of the Shelby County Commission began the process of reorganizing itself  on Monday, keeping some of the body’s traditions and abandoning others — managing to be somewhat surprising, either way.

The man of the day was Van Turner, who became the new commission chairman. There was no surprise there — except maybe to those who expected one erstwhile custom — that of automatic promotion to the chairmanship of the previously serving vice chair. That would be Willie Brooks, like Turner a second-termer, who was at least expected to serve as acting chairman for the chairmanship vote.

Photographs by Jackson Baker

Van Turner

But when clerk Rosalind Nichols undertook to assist the commission, eight of whose 13 members are brand-new, by explaining the bylaws for the reorganization, she specified that two votes would be held. And when nominations were invited for the first of those, for acting chair, the new commissioner from District 1, Amber Mills, had first dibs and nominated Turner.

Turner, as it happens, had written to each commissioner, expressing his wish to be chairman, and Mills, understandably, may have become confused as to the order of things. In any case, Turner was elected acting chair in a lopsided vote over Brooks and presided over the vote for permanent chair, winning that by acclamation.

Another returning commissioner, Reginald Milton, a Democrat like Turner and Brooks, had aspired to be vice chair and had done some proselytizing to that effect, stressing that it was time to discard the commission’s vintage habit of alternating power positions between Democrats and Republicans. Simultaneously, returning GOP Commissioner Mark Billingsley had dispatched a letter to his fellow commissioners making the contrary case.

When it came time to vote, not only did the four new GOP members vote his way, so did most of the Democrats. Final vote: 9-3 for Billingsley.

There was more to the votes for chair and vice chair than honorifics. Turner had managed to establish what had long been forecast to be his ultimate preeminence on the commission, and Billingsley had maintained at least the semblance of bipartisan sharing, as well as his own viability.

Ed Ford

There was one more decisive act on Monday, and, appropriately, it came from Turner, who announced to all and sundry that he would be appointing a task force to maintain liaison with the Memphis City Council and would construct it around the person of newly elected Commissioner Edmund Ford Jr., who, after his election to the commission on August 2nd, continues to serve on the City Council, along with two other Council members — Bill Morrison and Janis Fullilove — who were also elected to county positions and remain on the council.

By keeping up their council identity, which by statute they can do until 90 days after their election to new office — November 2nd, in this case — the three departing council members will negate the organized efforts of various activists to call for a special election in November to replace them, thereby allowing their successors to be chosen by the remaining council members in an appointment process for which the current council has become notorious.

At least where Ford is concerned, Turner’s action in effect provides cover for the process. In announcing his task-force plans, the new commission chair touted Ford’s dual service as an opportunity to “utilize the fact that he’s also a city councilman for these waning months” and “allow us to see what’s going on in the city from the county perspective.” Among the issues to be examined in this way by Ford and whoever else ends up on the task force are MATA and health care, two areas of city/county joint concern.

Asked about this de facto seal of approval (which, to be fair, could also be seen as a simple acknowledgement of reality), Commissioner/Councilman Ford denied outright that there was any “controversy” involved in his continuing to serve in two different elected bodies.

“The people in my district don’t care,” the commissioner from District 9 insisted, speaking of a forthcoming “meeting” that evening involving the constituents of Council District 6.

• Several members of the commission, along with other local elected officials, took part on Saturday in the annual Orange Mound Parade through that centrally located African-American Memphis neighborhood. Among those taking part was Phil Bredesen, the former two-term Tennessee governor, now running for the U.S. Senate as the Democratic nominee. Bredesen’s Memphis schedule on Saturday also included a luncheon appearance in Germantown with the “Women United for Bredesen” group and a planned participation in the Southern Heritage Classic Tailgate, which ran into bad weather.

All the events served as a sort of run-up to another Bredesen appearance this Thursday night. Currently billed as a “‘Memphis Matters’ Ideas Forum” at Rhodes College, it is what remains of what was originally intended by the sponsors (including Rhodes, WMC-TV, and the USA Today newspaper chain) to be one of four statewide televised debates between Bredesen and the Republican Senate candidate, 7th District U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn.

For whatever reason, Blackburn demurred at the idea of a debate at Rhodes, and the Bredesen campaign has been making the most of that decision, sending out press release after release accusing the GOP candidate of ducking a joint encounter in Memphis and playing up the newly configured Ideas Forum as a vehicle for their candidate to hold up his end on the matter.

At press time, Blackburn could not be reached on the matter of the aborted Memphis debate. Although two subsequent debates have since been arranged between the Senate candidates for Nashville and Knoxville, the only exchanges between the two candidates thus far have occurred via TV ads.

Blackburn currently has two attack ads running, one featuring President Trump endorsing her and bad-mouthing Bredesen and another accusing the former governor of favoring additional taxes and of gussying up the governor’s mansion at taxpayer expense. Both claims are somewhat off the mark. As Bredesen maintained in a response ad, he did not raise taxes, and, while the governor’s mansion was renovated during his tenure, he and his wife did not live there, remaining instead in their Nashville residence.

While most of his TV commercials to date have featured Bredesen sounding soft-spoken and willing to work across the partisan aisle, at least one ad on his behalf has appeared of late accusing Blackburn of excessive travel and other high-living habits on the taxpayers’ dime.

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Politics Politics Feature

Jackson Soldiers On

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, whose very presence has an inspirational quality, may have been spread somewhat thin on Sunday, when the great icon of civil and human rights made appearances in Memphis relating to both the city’s forthcoming homage to the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., to Operation PUSH, Jackson’s own self-empowerment initiative, and to the celebration of Black History Month.

Jackson also needed to be mindful to the demands of various important local projects and causes, such as the ongoing campaign of CME Church functionaries to renovate the Collins Chapel Health and Recreational Center (aka Correctional Hospital) for African Americans with special needs, one of several community improvement projects whose aims are aligned with the purposes of Jackson’s PUSH organization.

The Reverend has made repeated visits to Memphis on behalf of its renovation, the estimated price tag of which has risen from $3 million a year ago to its current projected level of $5 million. 

Earlier on Sunday, Jackson participated in a press conference upon his arrival at Memphis International Airport, preached the morning service at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church, and toured the Collins Chapel facility, after which he took part in yet another press availability.

Then came an evening visit to Mt. Pisgah CME Church for what was billed as a “community town hall forum.” At Mt. Pisgah, a palpably tired Jackson (recently he announced that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease) turned out to be essentially a guest observer, sitting at a conference table in the church’s front aisle, along with various church and school and public officials, while other officials and political candidates of various kinds sat in the congregation itself. 

His role during this phase of the program was to be a witness to the proceedings, which would go on to include lengthy speeches from those sharing the conference table with him — on issues ranging from Collins Chapel to school issues, and to matters involving Kroger vacating Orange Mound and rising MLGW rates.

All the while, Jackson sat silent, taking things in. There arose one potentially controversial moment, when City Councilman Ed Ford Jr. rose to expound, first on the grocery-desert problem developing in Orange Mound and then on the issue of a forthcoming November referendum on the November ballot by the council.

The referendum, backed enthusiastically by Ford, calls for the cancellation of a Ranked Choice Voting initiative approved by the city’s voters in a previous 2008 referendum and scheduled for implementation by the Election Commission during the forthcoming 2019 city election. In a nutshell, RCV would allow voters to cast as many as three votes for an office, ranking their preferences. The procedure distributes the voting results in such a way that runoffs in cases where there is no majority winners would prove unnecessary.

“Ranked Choice Voting, in my eyes doesn’t help us,” Ford said, comparing RCV to poll tax procedures of the Jim Crow past. He spoke of having debated the matter against “somebody in from Minneapolis” and against University of Memphis law professor and former County Commissioner Steve Mulroy, an RCV supporter.

“They must have gotten desperate,” he said, noting that his debate opponents had cited both former President Barack Obama and Jesse Jackson himself as RCV proponents. At this, Jackson, clearly determined to stay out of a local controversy, evinced no response whatsoever — though it is a fact not only that he has endorsed RCV as a progressive measure but that his son, U.S. Representative Jesse Jackson Jr., has sponsored legislation supportive of Ranked Choice Voting in Congress.

When Jackson finally got his pulpit moment, he was content to lead the congregation in one of his patented self-empowerment chants. His only intervention into a local issue occurred when he joined County Commissioner Van Turner — head of the Greenspace nonprofit that had removed two Confederate memorials from parks purchased from the city — at the pulpit. The Reverend joined hands with Turner and raised both their arms overhead. Then, having soldiered on for justice one more time in Memphis, Jesse Jackson paid his respects to the congregation and left the building.

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News The Fly-By

State Bill Could Tell Local Governments Who to Hire

State lawmakers want to tell local governments who they have to consider for construction jobs, and three members of the Memphis City Council are fighting back.

In August, 58 percent of Nashville voters elected to change that city’s charter to say that 40 percent of the hours done on construction jobs contracted by the city government must be done by residents of Metro Nashville, which includes all of Davidson County.

The local-hire amendment was proposed to create jobs for Davidson County residents on taxpayer-funded projects. Nashville Mayor Megan Barry is readying a workforce training program to help residents there get prepared for those jobs.

But last week, state Senator Jack Johnson (R-Franklin) proposed a bill to nullify Nashville’s charter amendment saying it discriminates against certain companies and pits counties against each other.

“There is opposition to my bill that says we are overturning the will of the voters in Nashville, and, in fact, we are overturning the wishes of the voters in Nashville,” Johnson said during the Senate’s Commerce and Labor committee last week. “I would submit to you that there are thousands and thousands of people living in my district and other areas around Nashville, and they didn’t have an opportunity to vote on whether or not they would be allowed to work on jobs that are contracted by Metro Nashville.”

Nashville’s local-hire amendment is against state law, according to an opinion issued by Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slattery III. Once contractors are licensed by the state, he said, no municipality can put additional requirements upon them.

If passed, Johnson’s bill would allow any company to bid on municipal construction jobs, but local governments would still have the right to score those bids and approve those bids however they like.

Still, Memphis City Council members Berlin Boyd, Edmund Ford, Jr., and Martavius Jones see the bill as a state imposition on a local government’s control of its business. The three council members urged the defeat of the bill, which they say would undermine a local government’s right to boost jobs within its own borders.

The three filed a resolution that was scheduled to be reviewed by the full council Tuesday.  The resolution said the city of Memphis and other municipalities have a “compelling interest” in developing business and workforces within their boundaries, citing the recent Shelby County study that found only about 41 percent of county contracts were awarded to county businesses.

Memphis already has a local preference ordinance on the books. Since 2005, local businesses have been favored by law in most city contracts. However, that mandate is not as strong as the local-hire amendment passed in Nashville last year.

“The local preference ordinance has been absolutely necessary, and we need it to continue to tackle issues such as poverty and job creation,” said Ford, the council’s vice-chairman.

Further, Memphis has a home rule charter, Ford reminded, meaning citizens can amend the city charter with a vote, and that he doesn’t want to see any bill that would erode that status.

But for Boyd, Ford, and Jones, the House and Senate bills hit at the deeper issue of more state control of city business.

“[The bills] sets troubling precedent in undermining local governments’ compelling interests in this arena,” the resolution says.

If passed, the Memphis resolution would be sent to state Senate and House leaders, and Governor Bill Haslam before state lawmakers were slated to vote on the bills Wednesday.

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News News Blog

Officials: MPD Body Camera Program Needs Time, Money

Rallings, McGowen, Spinosa, Ford

Memphis Police Department officials asked the Memphis City Council on Tuesday for money this fiscal year to hire video analysts they say they need to get the department’s body camera program off the ground. 

MPD told council members Tuesday that they need $109,000 to hire 10 part-time video analysts who will review body camera footage before it can be made available to the public. That figure rises to about $300,000 for the new employees next year as they are paid for a full 12 months.

Asked for a timeline on the full implementation of the body camera program, MPD interim director Michael Rallings said “we’re not there yet.” 

“We need to hire the analysts first, before we put the cart before the horse,” Rallings said.

However, he said he hoped the analysts could all be hired by April.

Doug McGowen, the city’s chief operating officer, compared Memphis to other peer cities rolling out body camera and in-car camera programs. Seattle, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, and Denver are all “taking a phased-in approach.”

So far, Memphis has 150 in-car cameras deployed. It now has three officers testing body cameras but has a total of about 1,700 body cameras ready to be deployed.

Seattle has deployed 18 of its 500 cameras. L.A. has deployed about 690 of its 1,500 body cameras. Milwaukee has deployed about one-tenth of its total cameras and Denver is one-fifth of the way through a full deployment of its camera program.

McGowen projected that the MPD body cameras will create about 72,000 hours of footage each month. In-car cameras in Seattle now create about 18,000 hours each month. Milwaukee projects it will create about 36,000 hours each month. McGowen said Denver has created about 6,000 hours of footage in the last 28 days.

McGowen projected it will take three hours here to fully review and redact one hour of footage from police cameras. In Seattle, where they have more stringent public records rules, the process will take 10 hours for every one hour of footage. L.A. Has not yet released any police videos. Milwaukee and Denver have not yet had any requests for videos, McGowen said.

Cost projections to store the Memphis videos will be about $4.5 million in the next five years, McGowen said. That price shoots up to $10 million with the full deployment of all cameras. The figure in L.A. Is about $50 million and no cost projections were yet available form the other cities surveyed.

Council member Edmund Ford Jr. asked Rallings how Memphis stacked up against Albuquerque and New Orleans, cities that have already fully deployed car and body camera programs.

Rallings said camera policies in those cities are likely very different than what they’ll be in Memphis. Officers there can turn the cameras on and off “at will,” he said, and open records laws are also different in both cities. In total, he said the comparison to Memphis would not be “apples to apples.”

MPD bought its body cameras from Taser International last year. A lawsuit filed earlier this month from Taser rival Digital Ally claims Taser bribed officials to get contracts in six cities, including Memphis. Council member Phillip Spinosa asked Rallings if the suit would affect the city’s camera program.

“It has nothing to do with us,” Rallings said. “It’s between Taser and the other company.”

Sexual Assault Kit Update

The Memphis Police Department (MPD) has whittled its backlog of about 13,000 untested sexual assault kits down to about 3,000 untested kits.

That was the latest from MPD officials who told Memphis City Council members Tuesday that more than 5,500 kits have completed analysis and more than 5,000 are now at labs for testing.

Officials said they can send about 30 kits a month for testing.

Also, MPD’s rape kit testing project got a nearly $2 million infusion of cash Tuesday. In September, the New York County District Attorney’s Office announced it would award nearly $38 million in grant to 32 jurisdictions in 20 states to test backlogs of rape kits. Memphis won one of the biggest grants which ranged in size from $97,000 to $2 million.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

With Election Less Than a Month Away, Patterns Are Taking Shape

CREDIT: Jackson baker

We are now less than a month away from August 7th, when the final votes in the Shelby County general election and state and federal primaries will be counted, and distinct patterns are taking shape.

Those races that were expected to be the most closely watched ones at the beginning of the election season — for the 9th District congressional seat, for Shelby County Mayor, for District Attorney General, for the District 29 state Senate seat, and for Juvenile Court Judge and Juvenile Court Clerk, among others — continue to command attention.

Although several circumstances — including charges and counter-charges, endorsements, demographics, and the like — are potentially influencing voter reactions, one factor that cannot be overlooked is the perennial one of money. Some candidates have it in spades, while others are struggling.

A word of caution: Lest it be forgotten, two candidates in the May 6th primaries for county offices — Kenneth Whalum, running for the Democratic nomination for County Mayor, and Martavius Jones, a candidate in the Democratic primary for the District 10 County Commission seat — nearly won races against highly favored opponents with more visible campaigns and vastly more funding.

Credit those outcomes to the power of name recognition, which remains a major factor in the current scene.

For what it’s worth, however, here are three examples:

• City Councilman Lee Harris, who is campaigning aggressively in his Democratic primary effort to unseat District 29 state Senator Ophelia Ford, garnering endorsements by the bushel and across the political board, is also raising disproportionate amounts of money — he boasts a 10-to-1 ratio over Ford’s in the reporting quarter ending June 30th. (His edge in money on hand is somewhat lesser — $28,646.29 to $11,549.66, a shade less than 3-to-1).

• Incumbent Republican County Mayor Mark Luttrell, whose ads have been omnipresent on TV of late, has a marked financial advantage over Democratic nominee Deidre Malone, with a reported $132,417 on hand as of the June 30th report, against $38,915.

• Rather famously, the Democrats’ nominee for District Attorney General, Joe Brown, whose colleagues on the party ticket were counting on him for help, both from the luster of his “Judge Joe Brown” TV fame and from his bankroll, has hit snags in both respects and reports only $745 on hand as of June 30th, compared to $269,227 for his opponent, Republican incumbent D.A. Amy Weirich.

In all three of these cases, the financial underdog is seeking a tactical edge elsewhere.

Ford had her first public event last week, a fund raiser/meet-and-greet at the funeral home of brother Edmond Ford on Elvis Presley Boulevard, gathering around her not only numerous members of the still powerful Ford extended family but supporters from elsewhere on the political spectrum, notably GOP County Commissioner Terry Roland, her former opponent in a 2005 special election.

Malone continued with a series of events targeting various components of the Shelby County body politic — meeting, for example, with a group of women’s rights advocates on Saturday at Pyro’s Pizza on Union, and contrasting her strong pro-choice stance with what she described as positions on Luttrell’s part that were ambivalent at best, particularly in his having chosen to disenfranchise Planned Parenthood in 2011 as the county’s partner in employed Title X federal funding for women’s health.

Brown, meanwhile, was working the grass roots, especially in the inner city, with his “Law and Order Tour” with sidekick Bennie Cobb, the Democratic nominee for Sheriff. He presided over an event last week at the Central Train Station downtown and made appearances at forums, like one held at St. Augustine’s Catholic Church on Sunday, where he continued to levy attacks on Weirich, blaming her for negligence in the matter of the much-discussed rape-kit backlog and questioning her use of federal and state funding.

• Early voting for the August 7th elections begins this Friday, July 18th, at the Shelby County Election Commission’s downtown location, and will continue there and, from Monday, July 21st, at 21 satellite voting sites until Saturday, August 2nd. (The locations of the satellite sites will be posted at memphisflyer.com.)

• In the wake of several meetings of the Shelby County Democratic Executive Committee hashing out disputes over the party’s endorsement of judicial candidates but leaving them intact, a group of Democratic lawyers, including former party chairmen David Cocke and Van Turner, is issuing its own ballot — including judges left off the party endorsement list whom they deem deserving.

These include Probate Court Judge Kathleen Gomes, Criminal Court Judge Mark Ward, and General Sessions Judges Bill Anderson, Phyllis Gardner, and John Donald, among others.

• The first fully separate cattle call for Board candidates took place Monday night at the First Baptist Church on Broad under the joint sponsorship of several ad hoc education organizations.

Present and accounted for were Chris Caldwell and Freda Garner-Williams in District 1; Stephanie Love in District 3; David Winston in District 5; Shante K. Avant in District 6; Miska Clay Bibbs in District 7; and Roshun Austin, Mike Kernell, and Damon Curry Morris in District 9.

Absent from the event, which took place during an off-and-on thunderstorm, were Teddy King and Anthony D. Lockhart in District 3; Scott McCormick in District 5; Jimmy L. Warren in District 6; and William E. Orgel in District 8.

The format called for each candidate to make an introductory statement and field one question from the moderator, Daarel Burnette II of the education periodical Chalkbeat Tennessee subbing for Keith Norman, the church pastor, who was absent. Though Burnette’s question was the same for each candidate, having to do with the candidate’s foremost objective as a prospective board member, there was a fair amount of variety in the answers elicited, most of them sensible and well informed, concerning issues ranging from curriculum to parent-teacher relations.

A final round of questions was solicited from the audience. Fielding a question about the desirability of separating “politics” from education, Kernell, a longtime state representative from southeast Memphis, was unique in embracing that inevitable pairing, saying that his experience and entrée with the state legislature could have positive results for his district and Shelby County Schools (SCS).

The nine-member SCS board being elected in this year’s school board elections from the city of Memphis and unincorporated areas of Shelby County replaces the provisional seven-member board, which was elected from the whole of Shelby County.

One of the members of the outgoing seven-member board, David Reaves of Bartlett, was an interested spectator Monday night, chatting amiably before the event with several of his current Board colleagues who were taking part in the forum. Reaves is now a County Commissioner-elect and will be swapping chairs in September.

Monday night’s event took place under the auspices of the Black Alliance for Educational Options. Ad hoc co-sponsors included representatives of Students First, Stand for Children, and the aforesaid Chalkbeat Tennessee.