Tag: Governor Bill Lee

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, Tennessee-Style

Photo: Jesse Davis’ family photo album

This is my fourth column in the editor’s chair. At least, it is if my math is right. Somehow it’s been a month. I’ve already received a few letters about my editor’s letters, and I thank those readers for caring enough to reach out. I’d also like to apologize to Mark, who wrote in recently to say he appreciated the relatively politics-free columns so far. Sorry, Mark, but I’ve got to follow my conscience on this one.

Last week, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed legislation enacting permitless gun carry for Tennessee. The law will go into effect on July 1st and will allow anyone 21 years old or older to carry a handgun without passing some sort of permit course. The age is 18 for active-duty military personnel. What’s telling is that he signed the bill at a Beretta factory in Gallatin, Tennessee.

Not, you know, a police station, or some venue I can’t think of at the moment that symbolizes freedom. It’s no surprise that Lee didn’t choose a police station as the setting for the photo op, since there’s been little support from law enforcement for the bill. Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner spoke out against it, as did (then) Memphis Police Director Mike Rallings. So who was this legislation crafted to serve? If you wrote in “gun manufacturers and the NRA,” then, reader, our score cards are a perfect match.

I can almost imagine our governor turning around in his chair to look a Beretta spokesperson in the eye and whisper earnestly, “Did I do good, boss?”

Because this kind of pageantry makes it pretty clear who Lee’s hoping to appease, and it’s not us poor schlubs who will be wondering if Bubba in the self-checkout line has an itchy trigger finger to go along with that hip holster. The most recent Vanderbilt University Poll shows that 59 percent of Tennesseans do not support this bill, and, as I’ve already pointed out, most law enforcement officials are against it as well.

Jesse’s Granny, Coleen Davis, photographed with dog and rifle
(Photo: Jesse Davis’ family photo album)

Before we go much further, I want to note that I was raised around guns. My grandparents lived out in the hills of Chester County, and we visited them often. Shooting was a regular pastime for most of my family. I remember walking in the woods with my granddaddy, who would occasionally ask me if the safety was on. I was supposed to know without checking, to always keep the barrel pointed toward the ground. To be mindful. I remember my grandparents’ neighbor Mr. Ray camping out one night to ambush and shoot the foxes who had been stealing his chickens. Whether you’re using them to protect yourself and your family or your egg-laying chickens, guns are tools, built to serve a purpose. But you’re supposed to know how to use a tool before you walk into a Cash Saver with one strapped to your hip.

If our governor really cared about safety, he would put on his good ol’ farmer cosplay plaid button-down shirt, cheese at the camera, and explain why law-abiding citizens shouldn’t worry about having to take a permit class. It’s short, easy, and not very expensive. He’d remind us all that we have a responsibility to each other, that enjoying the freedom to carry a gun means taking on the duty of using it safely.

That would be the direction to go if this bill were actually about public safety, but in reality it seems to be about little more than enriching corporate donors. If I had any doubts about that before, the photo op signing at Beretta has done nothing to dispel them.

This isn’t really a column about guns or gun rights. No, this is about responsibility — and my perhaps idealistic belief that our elected officials have a responsibility to the average citizens pushing the button at the voting kiosk, a responsibility that outweighs whatever they owe the folks funding their re-election campaigns.

I’d like to think I’d be equally frustrated if the law in question concerned relaxing vehicle emissions restrictions and Gov. Lee had signed it at the Nissan assembly plant in Smyrna. I don’t harbor a blanket fear or loathing for cars or guns. But I recognize that they’re powerful.

And power in the wrong hands can be dangerous. 

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Holding Our Own Against the State as Gender Bully

Transgender Pride Flag, a symbol of transgender pride and diversity and transgender rights (Photo: Sharon McCutcheon)

Staying up late at night, worried about your children is a common occurrence for all parents. What are they watching on their phones? Who are they chatting with? Who was that my kid just drove off with? Standard parental anxiety. However, now there is a new fear that has taken over my nightly worries and has manifested into actual terror. No, I am not being dramatic, this fear is real. I am speaking about our Gov. Bill Lee and the smug way he just made it impossible for queer and trans youth to exist safely in our state.

I am a mama, a proud one. My children do not seem to want to conform to gender-assigned clothing, never have and probably never will. Because my oldest likes to wear clothes bought on the “boys” side of Target, has always been a little advocate for the LGBTQ community, and prefers they/them pronouns, I am terrified that the governor has just given permission for narrow-minded and frighteningly armed people to target and bully my beautiful and brilliant kiddo.

A slew of anti-trans legislation poured out of our state capitol building like the pink slime in Ghostbusters. Just oozing with hate, really bad science and information. The Tennessee Equality Project works so hard to fight this “slate of hate” and try to keep our youth safe. Yet, that train left the station and instead of working on pandemic relief and healthcare needs for our suffering state, the state government dug in and went full bully on our most vulnerable.

When I watched Gov. Lee sign some of the cruelest anti-trans legislation, with his giant smug smile slapped across his face, I wanted to pack up and leave. I wanted to find that progressive utopia, where my children could learn freely about American history without it being sliced into slivers of white bread. My husband and I could raise our children in peace, free from the fear of being targets. We were going to find that location, move, and let Tennessee be a distant memory. There was only one problem — that place does not truly exist in America. Sure, there are more “tolerant” cities and states, but we are not looking to be “tolerated.” We just want to live our lives, safely and free of fear.

I have seen so many posts from friends and acquaintances saying it is time to leave Tennessee. They, too, are living in a world where their fears are becoming realities. We are making national and international headlines, where people are commenting that they never plan on coming to Tennessee because we are so hateful. Well that sucks for our tourism industry, our ability to recruit new business and wealth. Who will invest in us now? Trust me, these hateful bills will come back to bite Gov. Lee, straight in his dad jeans.

After a week of thinking about a lot of things — mainly how to keep my children safe from bigots and bullies — I decided the best thing to do is stay, be brave, and protect all our children. Leaving is what those knuckle-draggers want, so they can slowly create a Tennessee where everything is homogenized and covered in mayonnaise. Well, this Latinx mama, who wants her children to live freely and safely, is not going anywhere. (Although, it is always good to have a backup plan, like a godfather in NYC.)

I want nothing but safety and protections for my child and yours. I want dignity restored, and I want these East Tennessee Republicans to get the heck out of my business because I am a Memphian and I am willing to get in the mud to make their ability to pass outrageous and bigoted laws more difficult. I will take up more space. I will be louder and more visible, and I will not allow them to make a weird white pseudostate because they feel like their “culture” is being threatened. I know it is tempting to start the process of moving to a more tolerant place, but for now let’s stay and try to right the wrongs of this last year. As a mama, a Memphian, and your neighbor, I will always be on the side of dignity for all. I hope you will stay and fight that fight with me. Donate to your local LGBTQ organizations, be your child’s first champion, not their first bully. Memphis is our home; let’s keep it safe for all.

Liz Rincon is a political consultant.

Categories
Cover Feature News

Over and Out: The Good, Bad, and Ugly of the 2021 Tennessee General Assembly

The men who run the government take stock. (Photo: Jackson Baker)

Finally, well into the evening of Wednesday, May 5th, the first year’s session of the 112th Tennessee General Assembly came to an end, just slightly behind schedule. The leaders of elected state government stood in a row, as is the custom, on a low platform in the Capitol’s Old Supreme Court Room to face the truncated remainder of what, in previous years, had been a highly inquisitive and boisterous press corps.

Governor Bill Lee played host, speaking in his mellow, vaguely twangy Middle Tennessee tones and claiming success for the session in a general sort of way. The other leaders reciprocated in like regard, praising the governor and indulging in mutual compliments of each other. The chorus included Senate Speaker/Lieutenant Governor Randy McNally of Oak Ridge, House Speaker Cameron Sexton of Crossville, Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson of Franklin, House Majority Leader William Lamberth of Portland, Senate Republican Caucus chair Ken Yager of Kingston, and House GOP Caucus chair Jeremy Faison of Cosby. White men all, they were something of a cross-section of the Assembly’s current Republican governing super-majority.

Governor Lee then solicited questions from the assembled media members, calling them by their first names. They politely responded with a series of process questions — all within the framework of subject matters alluded to by the legislators, their queries dodging matters of ideology and lacking any measure of tendentiousness or satirical spite that these reporters, like all reporters everywhere, express in jocular discussions amongst themselves.

Toward the end of the discussion period, Lee was asked if he had a reaction to the significant changes that had occurred in a controversial bill, the brainchild of veteran Senator Mike Bell of rural Riceville, who had set out to create a new statewide chancery court to hear all challenges to the constitutionality of state-government actions. Bell, the chairman of Senate Judiciary, was, as he put it, “head on” about his intent — to scuttle the existing precedent of routing all such cases through chancery in Nashville’s Davidson, the state capital and, all things considered, the last remaining citadel of the old Solid Democratic South.

Rep. Joe Towns (l) and Democratic Caucus press chief Ken Jobe relax after passage of anti-slavery amendment (Photo: Jackson Baker)

“I’m admitting there’s partisanship within the judiciary; other people want to turn a blind eye to that. These judges are reflecting a philosophy now, and that’s of the people that are electing them,” Bell declared.

Several rulings emanating from Nashville chancery had riled him — most recently that of election year 2020 by Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle, a Democrat, who broadened the right of Tennessee voters to cast mail-in ballots while the pandemic raged.

Bell’s bill, as originally written, would have established a new Chancery Court consisting of three judges, each representing one of the state’s Grand Divisions but all elected statewide. Thereby, argued Bell, legal judgments affecting state authority and regulations would reflect the majority of the state’s voters — i.e., would be guaranteed Republican-friendly.

The specter of so blatant an imposition of political will on the judiciary begat a flurry of activity to counter it — some out of the public eye, some of it openly, as in a high-pressure petition campaign by several Tennessee Democrats to defeat the “Gov. Lee Judicial Power Grab” — so called, apparently, because the state’s Republican governor would have dibs on appointing the first three judges prior to elections in 2022.

Quieter — and, importantly, more bipartisan — were efforts behind the scenes to reason with officials in and out of the legislature, including, notably, members of the governor’s staff. By the time the bill came to pass, on the last day, it created no new court — elected, appointed, or otherwise — and merely sanctioned the state Supreme Court to convene ad hoc tribunals made up of existing chancellors from throughout the state to hear cases involving state authority.

Mourners in line to see the late Sen. Thelma Harper lying in state (Photo: Jackson Baker)

During the post-session press conference, Lee was asked his opinion of the significant changes made in the Chancery Court bill. With apparent sincerity, and with a convincingly uninvolved look, the purported power-grabbing chief executive answered that he didn’t know what those changes were, inasmuch as they had happened “during the last couple of hours.”

Also reduced to insignificance during the Assembly’s last hours had been a bill by Shelby County Senator Brian Kelsey that, in its original form, would have prohibited local governments from filing actions against state government and given the state an automatic stay, pending the resolution of its appeals, of any injunction against it.

After numerous postponements and adjustments, all that was left of Kelsey’s bill on the last day was a provision allowing the state a somewhat more expedited way to appeal adverse judgments against it. The bill passed the GOP-dominated Senate by the unimpressive margin of 17 to 10.

In the case of both these bills, collective reason had prevailed, probably because there were enough legislators with legal backgrounds or with prior service in local governments to recognize wolves in sheep’s clothing.

There is another point worth making about the outcome of these two judicial measures: The term “Nashville” is often used, especially on this end of the state, as a term of reproach, as a synecdoche of sorts for the legislature’s more obstinate or backward-looking actions. But in fact, as in the case of the chancery court bill, Nashville more often than not comes in for the same sort of punishment as the state’s other major urban center, Memphis, and Davidson County legislators are fairly dependably shoulder-to-shoulder with Shelby Countians in opposing bills with an ultra-conservative tilt.

It is often tempting to regard what the legislature does as a clown show, and there is no doubting that it sometimes comes off that way. State Representative Frank Niceley, a Republican from Strawberry Plains in east Tennessee, seems especially determined to play into that stereotype. His arsenal of remarks, ranging from the comical to the folksy to the outlandish, is a familiar staple of the legislative dialogue, as when, apropos of nothing in particular, he trotted out last week a version of that old saw in which an equivocating politician of yore both endorses alcohol as the elixir of life and condemns it as demon rum.

More unfortunate was this doozy, supportive of a Niceley measure to guarantee Tennesseans the right not to be vaccinated against COVID-19: “I think if you’ve got your weight right, and your lifestyle right, and your diet right … I don’t think this virus will bother you.”

Yet Niceley can be a source of plain common sense as well, as when, during a debate on legalization of medical marijuana in Tennessee, he vented a concern that the state was allowing the possibilities of a highly profitable cash crop to go untapped.

The legislature cranked itself up in the last week to allow a somewhat adulterated variant of THC to be imported from outside Tennessee in limited quantities for limited medicinal purposes, and Niceley’s lament struck many as making all the sense in the world.

With some exceptions, the bills that were dealt with in the Assembly’s closing chapter this year were those for which sentiment was mixed. Much of the more drastic legislation was passed early on.

One example was HB 3/SB 228, a trans-phobic measure co-sponsored by Rep. Scott Cepicky (R-Culleoka), an ex-athlete,  and Sen. Joey Hensley (R-Hohenwald), a physician, mandating that a student’s participation in sports had to conform to the gender indicated on his/her birth certificate. The bill was signed by Lee and became law in early April.

Another case was that of the notorious SB 1121/HB 828, co-sponsored by Rep. Tim Rudd (R-Murfreesboro) and Sen. Janice Bowling (R-Tullahoma), basically requiring women seeking abortions to bury or cremate their fetal remains or pay a stiff fine to support a variety of state funds. This one, too, is now state law, signed by Lee.

But most far-reaching of all was HB 786/SB 765, co-sponsored by House Majority Leader William Lamberth (R-Portland) and Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson (R-Franklin). Dreaded (by law enforcement) and coveted (by the NRA and other gun groups) for years, the bill, now signed into law by Lee (and a pet project of his), allows open permitless carry of firearms.

What’s done is done, and only posterity will be able to fully gauge the consequences of these measures, which are no laughing matter.

Much of the last day of the session consisted of back-and-forths on matters of controversy. There was, for example, a protracted struggle between the House and the Senate on whether SB 623/HB 580, a caption bill regarding certain state mandates for the public schools, should contain an amendment from conservative House member John Ragan (R-Oak Ridge) making it illegal to teach any of a series of ideas currently being widely debated — e.g., whether America is a racist society or has historically fostered depredations by whites against citizens of color. The Senate refused at first to pass Ragan’s amendment to that end, characterized by opponents as a “Don’t-blame-white-people-for-the-race-problem” clause.

But Ragan essentially got what he wanted from a conference committee consisting of members from each chamber.  As articulated by the aforesaid Kelsey in the resultant committee draft, “‘Critical race theory’ holds that the rule of law does not exist but instead is a struggle of power relationships between races and groups.” Hence, such a theory, along with what Kelsey condemned as a corollary notion, that American history began not in 1776 but with the importation of slaves to the continent in 1619, would be taboo in Tennessee schools.

Not every difference of opinion was resolved by an act of senatorial backtracking, however. SB 843/HB 513 — a measure sponsored by two West Tennesseans in the shadow of Memphis, Senator Paul Rose (R-Covington) and Representative Ron Gant (R-Rossville) undertook to declare it a felony to “obstruct a highway” and would have created “the offense of throwing an object at another while participating in a riot,” as well as “the offense of intimidating or harassing another while participating in a riot.” Meanwhile, it would arguably have exculpated motorists from striking such a rioter — inadvertently, of course. Styled the “Law and Order Act of 2021,” the bill steamrollered through the House, 70-23, but was blocked in the Senate’s Judiciary Committee, where it was relegated to “summer study,” a.k.a. limbo.

On an issue whose topicality was certified nationally on this past Sunday morning’s political talk shows, Representative Nathan Vaughan (R-Collierville) got to retreat somewhat from his reputation as a Republican moderate, as he and his GOP colleagues churned out epithets like “mailbox checks” and “giveaway money” to distinguish unemployment stipends from money earned on the job, as he argued that the state’s unemployment compensation fund was in ultimate danger of depletion, at a time, he said, when easy unemployment money was militating against employers’ needs for an available labor force.

Democratic Rep. Gloria Johnson (D-Knoxville) took issue with the idea that the state’s laid-off workers were “lazy or living large,” but with impressive solidarity and party-line margins, both the House and the Senate saw things Vaughan’s way, approving HB 10230/SB 1402, which reduced the period of eligibility for unemployment benefits from 26 weeks to a range of between 12 and 20 weeks, while boosting weekly unemployment stipends by minimal amounts. The House passed the bill 71-19, the Senate by 26-7. Not much argument there on a matter that, in similar form, was undergoing discussion in a dozen other states.

Mention should be made here of a resolution successfully accomplished during the last week, one that voters of Tennessee will have an opportunity to concur with in the next statewide general election in November 2022. This was Senate Joint Resolution 80, sponsored in the Senate by Raumesh Akbari and in the House by Joe Towns, both of Memphis. What it will do, if passed on the 2022 ballot as a constitutional amendment, is nothing less than the abolition of slavery.

To be sure, slavery is already abolished in Tennessee and in its constitution, and has been since the state’s ratification in 1865 of the 13th amendment to the Constitution of the United States. But the state constitution, like the national one, reflects an exception — banning slavery or involuntary servitude “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” SJR 80, which contains language expressly granting the right of the state to require work on inmates, would banish that exception.

It is a fine point, perhaps, but one that has passed legal muster, though the resolution received a handful of no votes in both the Senate and the House, based on a foreboding, as Rep. Susan Lynn (R-Mt. Juliet) expressed it, that prisoners might henceforth have a right to sue for relief under the revised amendment.

The great majority of legislators in both chambers and both parties seemed untroubled, and the sponsors were certainly pleased — Towns to the point that he pronounced himself ready to launch a national campaign to expunge the criminal-punishment exception from the 13th amendment.

A mite giddy, perhaps, but who can begrudge him? It isn’t every year that the Tennessee legislature manages to improve on Lincoln the Emancipator.

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Memphis Gaydar News

“Transphobic” GOP Bill Aims (Again) at Transgender Athletes, Lee Approves

A bill from Tennessee Republicans targets transgender student athletes again this year and Governor Bill Lee’s statements for the legislation were “hurtful,” according to some lawmakers.

The bill from Sen. Joey Hensley (R-Hohenwald) and Rep. Scott Cepicky (R-Culleoka) would require “that a student’s gender for purposes of participation in a public middle school or high school interscholastic athletic activity or event be determined by the student’s sex at the time of the student’s birth.” A similar measure failed in the legislature last year.

This year’s movement may have gotten a bump from Lee on Wednesday, according to The Tennessean.

“Transgenders participating in women’s sports will destroy women’s sports,” Lee said. “It will ruin the opportunity for girls to earn scholarships. It will put a glass ceiling back over women that hasn’t been there.”

Sen. Heidi Campbell (D-Nashville) called the bill “hate legislation.” She called Lee’s statements “hurtful” and “transphobic” and called the whole thing “ugliness” that could hurt the state’s economy.

“What a hurtful thing for a leader to say,” Campbell said in a Medium post. “There have been zero incidents of this being an issue. This is just hate legislation, and to double down with an insult to our LGBTQ community is unnecessary.”

‘Transphobic’ GOP Bill Aims (Again) at Transgender Athletes, Lee Approves

Tennessee Senate Democrats said the legislation “may not solve any real problems, but it has caused real harm: to state economies as business goes elsewhere, with resources wasted on court battles and to the mental health of trans people affected by this ugliness.”

For its part, the Tennessee Equality Project (TEP) added the bill to the top of its 2021 Slate of Hate, bills aimed at limiting the rights of those in the LGBTQ community.

”This bill repeats the effort to prevent transgender students from participating in high school and middle school sports,” reads the TEP blog. “It ties a student’s gender to the original birth certificate. The ’whereas’ clauses attempt to pit transgender people against women’s sports.”

As an example, the bill says girls work hard to succeed in sports, sometimes to get scholarships.

“It is unfortunate for some girls that those dreams, goals, and opportunities for participation, recruitment, and scholarships can be directly and negatively affected by new school policies permitting boys who are male in every biological respect to compete in girls’ athletic competitions if they claim a female gender identity,” reads the bill.

[pdf-1]

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News News Blog

Lawmakers Urge Lee for Mask Mandate

Tennessee General Assembly

Clockwise from top left Rep. London Lamar, Rep. Vincent Dixie, Senator Brenda Gilmore, and Rep. Yusuf Hakeem.

Governor Bill Lee

A group of Democratic Tennessee lawmakers urged Tennessee Governor Bill Lee to issue a mask mandate immediately.

Lee announced Sunday that new social gathering restrictions would be put in place for the state of Tennessee. He signed an executive order limiting public gatherings to 10 people. However, places of worship, weddings, some sporting events, and funerals are exempt from the order.

Lee has still not implemented a mask mandate despite pleas from healthcare workers and local lawmakers. Though Tennessee is a hotspot for virus growth, Lee has refused to order a mask mandate and refused again on Sunday, calling such mandates a “heavily politicized issue.”


In a virtual news conference Monday, Tennessee state Senator Brenda Gilmore (D-Nashville) spoke about how COVID-19 has hit Black and brown communities hardest. 

Gilmore

“COVID-19 doesn’t discriminate but institutionalized bias toward Black and brown people is causing a high rate for African Americans and Latinos, not only in Tennessee but across this country,” she said. “It’s ravaging people of color. Approximately 60 percent of the people who have died are African Americans and Latinas. It doesn’t mean that we’re more susceptible to get this virus. It just means that when we’re infected, we are most likely to die from it.”

State Rep. London Lamar (D- Memphis) said, ”[Lee] made this a political issue when he decided not to implement a mask mandate and further our ability to kill more Tennesseans by not putting in his mandate and forcing us to protect one another. 

Lamar

On the executive order, Lamar stated, “that’s not enough, we wouldn’t have to do that if we would have implemented a mass mandate, a long time ago,” she went on to say that she is tired of going to funerals during the holidays.

“I’ve never been in the shoes of our governor, Governor Lee,” said State Rep. Yussuf Hakim (D-Chattanooga), “but I believe it’s been laid out clearly that there’s great harm being done to the average citizen in the state of Tennessee. When you talk about us being the worst in the world, that means to me that you have to take exceptional actions to mitigate such circumstances.”

Hakim

Legislators on the call said that the Tennessee economy would not have been threatened if Lee had acted sooner.

”It is our fault that the Tennessee economy is suffering?” Lamar said. “Because businesses wouldn’t have to limit operations businesses and could still be functioning the way they’re functioning in other states if we implement simple tactics like mask mandates,” said Lamar. “We are killing our own economy, because we are not acting with leadership and courage and responsibility. We have over $1 billion in a fund that would be could be used to help families during this difficult time.”

They cited several republican politicians who also supported stronger measures to protect Tennesseans, like Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger, and former U.S. Senator Bill Frist.

Dixie

“Let’s take the power; let’s lead by example,” said state Rep. Vincent Dixie (D-Nashville). “I would like for us to increase testing even though we have a vaccine. I think the approach that Governor Lee seems to be taking is the survival of the fittest.”

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

“Fire Fauci!” — Candidates Call on High-Powered Surrogates

CREDIT: JB

As the last week of the August 6th election round began, candidates were racing around putting their best surrogates on display — hitchhiking, as it were, on other, better established or more well-known political figures.
JB

Leatherwood (l) with Lee

In the case of Tom Leatherwood, a Republican running for reelection to the state House of Representatives from District 99 (Eads, Arlington, eastern Shelby), the doppelgänger was Governor Bill Lee, down from Nashville. The two held forth before a sizable late-Monday-morning crowd at Olympic Steak and Pizza in Arlington, while partisans of Leatherwood’s GOP primary opponent, former Shelby County Republican chairman Lee Mills, picketed outside.

Slightly later on Monday, U.S. Senate candidate Manny Sethi, a Nashville physician and Republican newcomer who styles himself “Dr. Manny,” hit the stage of another well-attended event, this one at The Grove, an establishment in Cordova. He had in tow U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, and Sethi, who is opposed by former Ambassador Bill Hagerty, a Trump endorsee, fairly quickly disposed of any idea that he might be the moderate in the race.

JB

Sethi (r) with Cruz

“I’m tired of this coronavirus, aren’t you?” Sethi said, addressing a seated crowd of which roughly a third were maskless. “Let’s fire Dr. Fauci!” he continued, going on to endorse the glories of hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug President Trump has touted as a potential antidote to Covid-19.

James Mackler, a Democratic candidate in the Senate race, has condemned Sethi’s position as one making him unworthy of serving in the Senate.

Sethi is one of two physicians in the Senate race. The other, Republican George Flinn of Memphis, has denounced Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic as being woefully insufficient.

Meanwhile, Democratic state Representative Joe Towns, bidding for reelection in District 84, was the beneficiary of a Monday fundraiser at India Palace on Poplar. Towns had asked both Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland and Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris to be on hand. Strickland was able to make it, Harris was not. JB

Mills’ picketers at Leatherwood event.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Gov. Lee Extends Emergency Order on Coronavirus

Evidently spurred on by rising numbers of coronavirus cases in Tennessee, Governor Bill Lee has extended his state-of-emergency order (or “Executive Order Number 50,” as the Governor’s office refers to it) until August 29th.

Among the principal provisions of the order are to:

*Urge Tennesseans to continue limiting activity and staying home where possible, as well as following health guidelines and maintaining social distancing;

*Urge persons to wear a cloth face covering in places where in close proximity to others;

*Urge employers to allow or require remote work/telework if possible;

*Provide that persons with COVID-19 or COVID-19 symptoms are required to stay at home, and that employers may not require or allow employees with COVID-19 to work;

*Limit social and recreational gatherings of 50 or more persons, unless adequate social distancing can be maintained. (This provision does not apply to places of worship or to different directives on the subject issued by the six Tennessee counties, including Shelby, that maintain county health departments.);

*Provide that bars may only serve customers seated at appropriately spaced tables.

The governor also signed Executive Order Nos. 51 and 52, which extend provisions that allow for electronic government meetings subject to transparency safeguards and remote notarization and witnessing of documents, respectively, to August 29, 2020.

Categories
News News Blog

Elected Officials Across State Respond to Police Brutality, Protests

CREDIT: Facebook/Tami Sawyer

Facebook/Tami Sawyer

Elected officials in Tennessee are having different responses to the death of George Floyd and the protests across the state that followed.

Many took to social media to express their thoughts on the shooting, police brutality in general, and the ongoing protests in the state.

On Saturday, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, authorizing the National Guard to respond, said the protest in the state’s capital were a “threat to both peace and property.” He called the protesters’ actions “unacceptable.” 


Elected Officials Across State Respond to Police Brutality, Protests (2)

Some state legislators applauded the decision by the governor and Nashville Mayor John Cooper to deploy the National Guard in response to protests. 

Elected Officials Across State Respond to Police Brutality, Protests (7)

Elected Officials Across State Respond to Police Brutality, Protests

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Elected Officials Across State Respond to Police Brutality, Protests (15)

Elected Officials Across State Respond to Police Brutality, Protests (10)

Elected Officials Across State Respond to Police Brutality, Protests (8)

Meanwhile, other elected officials expressed support, backing protesters.

Elected Officials Across State Respond to Police Brutality, Protests (6)

Elected Officials Across State Respond to Police Brutality, Protests (5)

Elected Officials Across State Respond to Police Brutality, Protests (12)

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Elected Officials Across State Respond to Police Brutality, Protests (14)

Elected Officials Across State Respond to Police Brutality, Protests (4)

In Memphis, two Shelby County Commissioners tweeted, questioning law enforcement’s response to protests here. 

Elected Officials Across State Respond to Police Brutality, Protests (3)

Elected Officials Across State Respond to Police Brutality, Protests (16)

Categories
Cover Feature News

What’s Next as Tennessee Restarts Its Economy?

As the song made famous by the late Doris Day has it, “Que sera, sera/Whatever will be, will be/ the future’s not ours to see/Que sera, sera … ”

Indeed, but the residents of Memphis and Shelby County, like those elsewhere in the inhabited world, can’t be blamed for wondering: Just what does come next?

So far, there have been no armed protests locally, like those that took place in the Michigan state capitol last week. And no reason to, inasmuch as the officialdom of Memphis, Shelby County, and the county’s other six municipalities have all concurred on a business-reopening plan to begin this week.

But there remains a distinct possibility that medical circumstances could impose a hitch on those plans. After all, it is known that the reopening plan was originally scheduled to be announced by the powers-that-be on Monday of last week but was delayed until Wednesday by a reported spike in the number of coronavirus cases.

Still, here we are, with a timetable for reopening, after tiresome weeks of isolation and social distancing and shuttered establishments of virtually all kinds, public and private. Local officials made every effort to accentuate the positive, but there was inevitably a tight-lipped ring to their statements, a left-handedness to their public optimism. The opening paragraph of the reopening announcement, undersigned by mayors and health officials, for example, went this way:

“After careful study of the data, and on the advice of our medical experts including the Shelby County Health Department, the mayors of Memphis, Shelby County, and the six surrounding municipalities have determined that May 4, 2020, is the date that we can begin phase one of our Back to Business framework.”
Brandon Dill

Mayor Jim Strickland

That first salvo of official broadsides had Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland proclaiming this: “Along with our doctors, we believe it’s time to slowly start opening our economy back up and get Memphians working again.”  

Not exactly bursting with confidence. And Strickland sounded even less certain when asked to elaborate in interviews. Here he was, speaking to WMC-TV, Action News 5 last Thursday: “We feel comfortable that over the last month, for the most part, the new cases and hospitalizations have remained fairly static.” [Italics ours.] With all due respect, the effect of those two qualifying phrases — “for the most part” and “fairly static” — is daunting.

The fact is, the way forward is strewn, not with palms or garlands, but with thorns and pitfalls. April was, if not the “cruelest month” of poetic legend, unkind enough. At the beginning of the month, some two weeks into his March 23rd stay-at-home order, Strickland took stock of the city’s financial outlook and found, as he put it, anything but a “pretty picture.” With the budget yet to be calculated, the mayor foresaw revenue losses of some $80 million in the coming fiscal year. As the month wore on, his estimate rose to at least $100 million — fully a seventh of what would be a maintenance budget of $700 million.

Strickland said sales taxes, which represent about 23 percent of the operating revenues for the city’s general fund, were estimated to decline by 25 percent, with a worsening of a situation that had already seen “significant reduction in the services we provide to thousands of citizens and layoffs of hundreds of city employees.”

In the course of the month, the city received assurances of $113 million from the federal government, but it could not be used as bailout money. The strings were that every penny would have to go for COVID-related expenses. Ditto with the $50 million of CARES Act money expected by Shelby County government. The city holds a reserve fund of some $78 million but needs to hold on to most of that as a last resource in case the disaster takes even more unpredictable turns.

Conflict in County Government
Shelby County’s budget situation is uncertain as well, and like much else in county government, is subject to a kind of internally raging civil conflict. The discords of the moment, under Mayor Lee Harris, are hardly as pronounced as were those of the administration of previous Mayor Mark Luttrell, who, during his second term (2014-2018) found himself almost totally estranged from the Shelby County Commission. 
Justin Fox Burks

Mayor Lee Harris

Although Luttrell was a Republican and the commission had a Democratic majority, their differences were not partisan. Indeed, Luttrell faced his severest tests under two Republican chairs, Terry Roland and Heidi Shafer. Democrats still dominate the commission, but party loyalties, now as then, provide no cushion for Harris, himself a Democrat. His difficulties, like those of Luttrell, stem from disagreements over budgetary matters.

Luttrell’s alienation from his legislative body began when he evinced a determination to play fiduciary matters close to the vest, withholding information in 2015 about a looming budget surplus that commission members, once they tumbled onto its existence, decided they had plans of their own for. From that point to the end of Luttrell’s tenure, a power struggle persisted. When Harris took office in 2018, he took pains to express solidarity with the commission that had been elected that year, but discovered that maintaining an effective liaison with commissioners required a more systematic and continual effort than he had realized.

When he proposed his first budget in early 2019, he told commission members he wanted passage that very evening. He didn’t get it, of course. The budget didn’t get finalized until weeks later, after the usual give-and-take of negotiations. But in essence, he hazarded something similar this year, announcing last month, in the first blush of the coronavirus crisis, that he’d worked out a series of emergency reductions, across the board of county agencies, totaling $10 million, that would allow the county, by the nearest of near things, to escape bankruptcy.

Several department directors disputed his cuts, and the commission members couldn’t agree on them, and the bottom line was that nothing got done, not even a $2.5 million appropriation that was to have been the county’s contribution toward the costs of PPEs and other local COVID expenses.

Second thoughts on the commission’s part got that latter omission rectified two weeks later, and by then Harris had retooled his own plans, announcing a “lean and balanced” austerity budget of $1.4 billion that now required $13.6 million in cuts as well as a loan of $6 million  from the county’s fund balance, leaving that reserve fund at the “go-no-lower” level of $85 million. There were a few fillips, too, in the way of pre-K expenditures, money for the sheriff’s deputies who’ll have to be hired to police newly de-annexed areas of Memphis, and a few million dollars extra for the schools.

The gremlin in the mix was the ever-unpopular idea of upping the county’s wheel tax, to the tune of an additional $16.50 to be added to the base automobile license fee of $50. No other place to go, said Harris, inasmuch as local property and sales taxes had already topped out.

Between that meeting and this Monday’s, the commission held committee meetings last Wednesday in which disagreement over budget possibilities flared into open name-calling between Commissioner Edmund Ford Jr. and Harris.

Serving as vice chair to budget chair Eddie Jones, the two of them opened up a tear in Harris’ plans, which Ford called “garbage,” floating a plan to ignore the mayor’s “lean”model budget and replace it with a thinly reconditioned version of the old 2020 budget, coming in at $1.3 billion.

“I used to think I was halfway decent at math, but it’s obvious that I can’t add,” CFO Mathilde Crosby said. Harris accused Ford of having been a “bloodletter” when they both served on the Memphis City Council, and Ford reciprocated that Harris was “presumptuous and arrogant and ignorant.”

Perhaps wisely, Harris kept his distance from Monday’s commission meeting, at which the Ford-Jones idea of rehabbing last year’s budget was happily forgotten and the mayor’s own “lean” budget was equally ignored. With all hopes of agreement dissolving, Commission Chair Mark Billingsley seized upon the expedient of a budget retreat to be held on Friday in FedEx quarters at Shelby Farms, with only the commissioners, the mayor, CAO Dwan Gillom, and CFO Crosby there to reason together at six-foot distances and find both the humane initiatives favored by Commissioner Tami Sawyer and the “shorter shoestring” demanded by conservative Republican Commissioner Brandon Morrison.

Jackson Baker

Matters of State
Governor Bill Lee’s own “shelter-in-place” resolve was hardly long-lasting, and it was none too stout to begin with, although an online survey of Tennesseans, conducted by a condominium of northeastern universities found that Lee’s now-you-see-them, now-you-don’t actions have been welcomed by some 64 percent of Tennesseans, while only 13 percent disapproved.

In Nashville, this year’s session of the General Assembly was abandoned when the dimensions of the pandemic and its reach into Tennessee became clear. It was at a time, for better or for worse, of much unfinished business. Left pending were such matters as the funding (and timing) of private-school vouchers, the designation of the Bible as the state book, a carry-over anti-abortion bill, and open-carry gun legislation.

As reported by Erik Schelzig, the diligent and ever-accurate editor of the Tennessee Journal newsletter, “Senate leadership has made it clear its preference is to focus only on downward adjustments to the budget required by the economic impact of the coronavirus. But a vocal faction in the House wants to instead throw open the doors to the legislation left hanging when lawmakers left town in March.”

A not unimportant matter is the question of whether state legislators, if indeed they resume deliberations by the planned date of June 1st, would authorize “no-excuse” absentee voting. Early voting for the August 6th election round is scheduled for July 17th, mere weeks later. As of now, a firm cut-off date of May 8th still applies to absentee applications. As Schelzig notes, “There’s been little sign so far state Republicans are becoming more receptive to liberalizing rules on voting by mail. And they have ample political cover from President Donald Trump, who has been a vocal critic of allowing more absentee voting. If it remains just Democrats advocating for sweeping changes to Tennessee’s current vote-by- mail laws, the issue will likely be dead on arrival.”

Locally the ballot will contain a mini-Shelby County general election and, as elsewhere in Tennessee, a primary for state and federal offices. The much-beleaguered county commission, on which Democrats have an 8-to-5 partisan edge, has formally resolved both to seek an extension of the absentee ballot and to urge the county’s Election Commission to purchase new equipment enabling hand-marked paper ballots. Indeed, the commission has conflated the two matters into a single resolution, which has passed twice now with the minimum seven votes required.

Under the more limited approach, a small number of committees would meet the last week of May before gaveling into session June 1st for as little as a week. Under the situation-normal approach, the session could last as long as three weeks — or even butt up against the end of the budget year on June 30th.

Jackson Baker

The Pending August 6th Election
Leaving aside the seemingly remote chance that a re-summoned legislature would facilitate an expansion of absentee voting, the chance that Governor Lee would support such an undertaking is equally unlikely. As indicated, the issue has no place in the playbook of the state’s Republican super-majority.

What is more to the point of reality is the issue of new voting machines for Shelby County, which county election administrator Linda Phillips has expressed hopes of putting to use in time for the forthcoming August election.

As indicated, early voting for that election is scheduled to begin on July 17th, a fact that presents a drastically foreshortened timetable for resolving a matter that has been seriously contested, in one way or another, for years, and confounded local elections for a decade or more.

No one needs to be reminded of the numerous electronic glitches that have led activists to join forces to campaign for a particular kind of machinery, which, perhaps ironically, constitutes a throwback to a less technological time. Among these activists are Shelby County Election Commissioner Bennie Smith, an acknowledged expert in the field of voting machinery; law professor and former Shelby County Commissioner Steve Mulroy; White Station High School government teacher Erika Sugarmon; and Mike Kernell and Carol Chumney, both former state representatives and veterans, respectively, of the Shelby County School Board and the Memphis City Council.

All of the foregoing are advocates of hand-marked paper ballots and argue that given Shelby County’s own checkered and error-prone voting history, and in acknowledgement also of the hacks and rumors of hacks that have plagued national elections, a resort to hand-marked ballots verified by scanning machines would be both safer and less costly. And, in a time of potential viral infections of metal surfaces, they would also be safer than the kind of ballot-marking devices that Phillips and the GOP members of the Election Commission have expressed a preference for.

So far the battle over voting devices has been a back-and-forth affair, and the forced reversion to electronic webinar meetings of the Election Commission occasioned by the coronavirus outbreak has complicated things further. A definitive choice of machine vendors by Phillips and a subsequent vote on her recommendation by the Election Commission members were both aborted by an electronic snag that kept member Brent Taylor, a Republican but a potential swing voter, from participating in a virtual executive session of the EC last week.

The Election Commission is slated to have another go this week, and so, for that matter, is the Shelby County Commission, which, unlike the EC, is dominated by Democrats and has repeatedly voted its preference — twice recently — for hand-marked ballots. Given the fact that the county commission controls the purse strings, the stage is set for a possible showdown between the two bodies over the voting-machine matter.

Meanwhile, the major pressure on all public bodies is the determination on so many people’s part and in so many jurisdictions everywhere to resume public activities — in advance of the reasonably arrived-at phases announced by President Trump requiring 14 straight days of declining coronavirus cases, advances in testing and contact tracing, and much else — parameters that have been roundly ignored everywhere — and not least in the White House itself.

In a recent discussion on CNN with Wolf Blitzer, various experts were heard to theorize that a second, more virulent phase of the pandemic would be coming in the fall and that, sans some unforeseen good fortune to concocting a vaccine, the plague would be with us for at least two more years.

That, said one of the authorities on tap, explained the sudden mania to hit the beaches, the supermarkets, and the national shrines. It was a matter of get-it-while-you-can, the scientist — not a fantasist — theorized. And it is undeniably a goad to our public bodies. Somewhere out there our future beckons — into some rosy and becalmed sunset in which to find our dreams or, if things should take a dystopian turn, there’s Edgar Allan Poe and “The Masque of the Red Death.”

And there is surely something in between.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Private School Vouchers Held Unconstitutional

Governor Bill Lee’s 2019 voucher bill allowing taxpayer money to pay for private school attendance in two Tennessee localities — Shelby County and Davidson County — has been ruled unconstitutional by Nashville Chancellor Anne C.

Chancellor Anne C. Martin

Martin because it violates the two counties’ constitutionally granted “home rule” status.

The controversial bill — whose adherents referred to vouchers as “education savings accounts” — notoriously passed the Tennessee House last year by a single vote, which was bargained for by then-Speaker Glen Casada, who kept the chamber’s voteboard open for an extra hour.

Ultimately, Casada was able to prevail on Knoxville state Rep. Jason Zachary to change his no vote to aye upon the Speaker’s pledge that the voucher bill would not apply to Knoxville or anywhere else other than Shelby or Davidson Counties.

New House Speaker Cameron Sexton, who opposed the voucher bill last year, has been resisting Governor Lee’s efforts to fast-track implementation of the measure. Those efforts would no longer appear necessary.

Shelby County Schools Superintendent Joris Ray called the ruling “excellent news,” as did state Senator Raumesh Akbari of Memphis, who said, “Public school tax dollars are meant for public schools, to serve every kid with a high-quality education regardless of their ZIP code. Private school vouchers break that shared promise by defunding our neighborhood schools, student by student and brick by brick. That’s why so many school districts wanted no part of this faulty program.”