Tag: Heidi Shafer

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Politics Politics Feature

City-County Accords on Public Education

CREDIT: Michael Donahue

The subject of education figured large at Monday’s meeting of the Shelby County legislative delegation at the Pink Palace.

One subject of accord between the attending legislators and representatives of the county’s various school districts was the need for the Tennessee Department of Education to comply with previously promised levels of funding under the state’s Basic Education Plan. Shortfalls in such funding have occurred routinely in recent years.

Michael Donahue

Sen. Brian Kelsey

That was only one of the ways in which the Memphis-based Shelby County system and the six districts maintained by the county’s suburban municipalities — divided by a serious schism during the years of merger and de-merger of the past decade — have come to make common cause in matters of public education.

Another indication of the new comity figured in a surprise declaration by state Senator Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown) that, for the first time in more than a decade of trying, he will desist in the coming 2018 legislative sessions from his annual efforts to pass legislation authorizing school vouchers for private schools.

Residents of the Republican-dominated suburbs of Germantown, Collierville, Bartlett, Arlington, Lakeland, and Millington — all of which have hardened their commitment to public education by voting for school taxes — have made their own disaffection from the voucher concept increasingly clear. The point was underscored last year by a unanimous vote opposing vouchers by city and county representatives alike on the Shelby County Commission.

Further, chair Heidi Shafer communicated to legislators the will of the commission that the state Achievement School District remand back to the Shelby County School District’s iZone program the 31 under-performing county schools currently administered by the ASD, on grounds that the special state-run district established early in the tenure of Governor Bill Haslam has failed to improve their scores.

Another significant point of city-county unity on an education-related matter was expressed Monday by a unanimous vote on the commission to oppose county involvement in Haslam’s proposed State Facilities Management concept, an out-sourcing program. As Commissioner David Reaves said, “I’m confused. The state is swimming with surplus money. Why do they need to out-source?”

Prior to the commission’s vote, various citizens had testified about the prospective loss of jobs at the University of Memphis and other public entities under the governor’s program.

• Bill Giannini, who was killed in a car crash on Interstate 40 last Thursday afternoon, en route to Nashville after touching base with friends in Memphis at holiday gatherings, had in recent years been living in Mt. Juliet, a near suburb of the state capital. His choice of residence, made after his 2011 appointment by Governor Haslam to serve as deputy commissioner of Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance, was a practical one.

But native Memphian Giannini, who left that job late last year to seek the chairmanship of the state Republican Party and had meanwhile founded the Resolve Consulting Firm, was meditating seriously on a return home. For some months, he had been expressing keen interest in a race in 2018 for the District 32 state Senate seat which state Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris of Collierville, now a federal judge-designate, will be vacating.

In fact, when he first floated the idea of running for the seat last summer, at the time of Norris’ appointment, Giannini had made the case that he was the only serious candidate for the seat who had been raised in the east Shelby County area encompassed by District 32, and expressed concern that Norris’ successor might be someone who “hasn’t lived a day in the district.” (That was aimed at two likely candidates: Shafer and state Representative Mark White, each of whom has actively considered a move into District 32.)

In his time, Giannini had made a serious imprint on local politics, both as chairman of the Shelby County Republican Party a decade ago and later as chairman of the county Election Commission during a period of protracted controversy over the 2010 countywide election, which saw the members of a defeated Democratic slate challenge the results of that election, a Republican sweep.

Ironically, prior to that election, Giannini, foreseeing a Democratic wave that has still not occurred locally despite a theoretical Democratic majority in the county, had been among those Republicans arguing stoutly for a return to nonpartisan elections in Shelby County. At a Republican club meeting in November 2009, Giannini had joined with his then newly elected successor as GOP party chairman, Lang Wiseman, in advocating a reversion to the status quo before local Republicans took the initiative and held the first local partisan primary in 1992.

“Shame on us for initiating those … now we are left with that albatross,” Giannini bemoaned at that 2009 meeting.

Giannini was known as a stout partisan, though he had numerous friendships across party lines, one of them being nominal Democrat Jim Strickland, the Memphis mayor for whom Giannini had done some consulting work for of late and who would profess himself “shocked and saddened” at the news of Giannini’s death.

Giannini, who was in a band during his high school days in Bartlett, was a talented guitarist, a fact which he demonstrated some years ago from a local stage in an extended guitar duet on Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” with another unexpected virtuoso, former Arkansas Governor and erstwhile presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.

The accident that took Giannini’s life last Thursday occurred when his car swerved across a median into the westbound lanes of Interstate 40 in Decatur County, colliding with the car of Cordova resident Dennis Tolivar Jr., who was injured. It was the second fateful accident on I-40 for Giannini, who had been involved in a multi-car pile-up in December 2012 that resulted in a fatality.

Giannini was absolved of any responsibility in that accident by the state highway patrol.

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Politics Politics Feature

Busting Some Moves

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Jackson Baker

Craig Fitzhugh addresses a Collierville crowd.

Shelby County Democrats are continuing with their efforts to spread their party’s influence. The most recent instance was a fund-raising dinner Sunday night at the 148 North Restaurant in Collierville featuring several speakers — including state Representative Craig Fitzhugh, the state House minority leader and currently a candidate for governor; James Mackler, candidate for U.S. Senator; Floyd Bonner, candidate for sheriff; state Senator Lee Harris, now running for Shelby County mayor; John Boatner Jr., candidate for the District 8 congressional seat; and Sanjeev Memula, candidate for state House District 95.

• Another local gathering attracting a sizeable number of political figures was the Christmas party of the Tennessee Nurses Association, held Monday night at Coletta’s in Cordova. A good mix of Republicans and Democrats was on hand, including District 33 state Senator Reginald Tate, an inner-city Democrat who confided that he had felt compelled to resign his longstanding affiliation with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a national organization, largely funded by conservative donors, which grinds out sample bills and disseminates them to state legislatures.

Tate, who had been listed as a member of ALEC’s Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force, told the Flyer he had been pressured by fellow Democrats to sunder his ties with the organization, for which he expressed no particular ideological affinity.

• The confrontation between a Shelby County Commission majority and County Mayor Mark Luttrell over the circumstances of proposed litigation against distributors of opioids went up another notch on Monday. 

An eight-member commission majority — Republicans Heidi Shafer (the current commission chair) and Terry Roland, and Democrats Van Turner, Willie Brooks, Justin Ford, Reginald Milton, Melvin Burgess, and Eddie Jones — are supporting a Shafer initiative to force Luttrell’s hand on proposed litigation by the county against an extensive network of physicians, pharmacists, and others involved, both legally and illegally, in distribution of opioids, which, in the estimation of Shafer and the commission, have resulted in damaging levels of addiction in Shelby County.

Chancellor Jim Kyle recently ruled that Luttrell, who sued to block Shafer’s unilateral engaging of a law firm, had rightful authority over litigation by the county but declined to intervene in the lawsuit itself, now in limbo in Circuit Court. The chancellor suggested that the suit was in the public interest but recommended mediation between the commission and the mayor.

Meanwhile, Luttrell, who has floated the alternative idea of deferring to a statewide legal action against the opioid network, is still in formal (if suspended) litigation in Chancery Court against the commission. The eight-member coalition at odds with the mayor on the matter voted Monday to hire Allan Wade, who represents the Memphis City Council, as its “special legal counsel” in the matter.

That action carried, but it aroused opposition among a five-member commission minority consisting of Democrat Walter Bailey and Republicans Mark Billingsley, George Chism, Steve Basar, and David Reaves.

Typical of this group’s sentiments were Billingsley’s complaints that outside attorneys were enriching themselves at county expense and that the proposed ongoing action against the alleged opioid-distribution network was too extensive, involving well-established name-brand companies like Johnson & Johnson.

Roland, among others, responded that the proposed legal actions against opioid distributors were pro bono and would cost the county nothing, while Luttrell’s action did in fact “cost the county.”

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Attorney Wade Joins Commission Team in Battle with County Mayor

CREDIT: JB

JB

Wade at Commission on Monday

The war between a Shelby County Commission majority and County M ayor Mark Luttrell acquired a new front and a new warrior on Monday — the latter being Allan Wade, who was hired by a Commission majority to represent the body in its various legal responses to Luttrell on the still-festering matter of proposed litigation against opioid distributors.

(Wade, who functions as the City Council’s attorney, is much in the spotlight these days, having been a point man a day later in the Council’s controversial decision on Tuesday to call for a second referendum on the the use of IRV — instant-runoff-voting — procedures in the forthcoming 2019 city election.)

Meanwhile, the newest confrontation in the Commission-Luttrell battle concerned a technically unrelated matter of take-home pay. And it was the proverbial case of adding insult to injury.

Actually, the latest controversy was an outgrowth of sorts from the existing one. Early in Monday’s regular meeting, Commissioner David Reaves requested the opportunity to reconsider a vote, taken during the previous Commission meeting, on an item to raise the pay of both the Sheriff and the Mayor.

Two weeks ago, the item was defeated, but Reaves, who had been on the prevailing side then, said he had felt constrained to change his vote because of his increasing awareness of the severity of the opioid crisis and the burden of combatting it that would fall upon the Sheriff’s office. Reaves said he’d also come to realize that the Sheriff might be under-paid relative to counterparts elsewhere in the state.

So he wanted, after all, to raise the Sheriff’s pay, from its existing level of $116,000. But he wanted to do so in a way that didn’t automatically raise the pay level of the Mayor, which is proportionally linked to the Sheriff’s by the county charter.

After a fair amount of debate and back-and-forth with County Attorney Kathryn Pascover, the Commission availed itself of a loophole that allowed it to raise the Sheriff’s pay to 95 percent of the Mayor’s pay, leaving the latter at his current level but boosting the Sheriff to $35,575.

In fairness, Reaves is not a full-time member of the coalition arrayed against Luttrell, and his motive in holding down an equivalent pay increase for the Mayor was probably unrelated to the ongoing power struggle. It was doubtless otherwise with the eight members of the aforesaid coalition: Republicans Heidi Shafer (the current Commission chair) and Terry Roland, and Democrats Van Turner, Willie Brooks, Justin Ford, Reginald Milton, Melvin Burgess, and Eddie Jones.

Those eight Commissioners are the ones supporting chairman Shafer in her initiative to force Luttrell’s hand on proposed litigation by the County against an extensive network of physicians, pharmacists, and others involved, both legally and illegally, in distribution of opioids, which, in the estimation of Shafer et al., have proliferated to dangerous and damaging levels in Shelby County

Chancellor Jim Kyle recently ruled that Luttrell, who sued to block Shafer’s unilateral engaging of a law firm, had rightful authority over litigation by the county but declined to intervene in the lawsuit itself, now in limbo in Circuit Court .

The Chancellor, who suggested that the suit was in the public interest, recommended mediation between the Commission and the Mayor, going forward.

Meanwhile, Mayor Luttrell, who has floated the alternative dea of deferring to a statewide legal action against the opioid network, is still in formal (if suspended) litigation in Chancery Court against the Commission, and the eight-member coalition at odds with the Mayor on the matter, voted Monday to hire Wade as its “special legal counsel” in the matter.

That action would carry, but it aroused intense opposition among a five-member Commission minority consisting of Democrat Walter Bailey and Republicans Mark Bilingsley, George Chism, Steve Basar, and Reaves.

Typical of this group’s sentiments were Billingsley’s complaints that outside attorneys were enriching themselves at county expense and that the proposed ongoing action against the alleged opioid-distribution network was too extensive, involving well-established name-brand companies like Johnson and Johnson.

Roland, among others, responded to the effect that “we’re the ones getting sued” and that the proposed legal actions against opioid distributors were pro bono and would cost the county nothing, while Luttrell’s action did in fact “cost the county.”

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Politics Politics Feature

The Bredesen Bubble; County Government Showdown

CREDIT: jackson baker

Since Phil Bredesen‘s name was first dropped as a possible Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Bob Corker, the former governor has done a neat back-and-forth on the prospect, first expressing no interest, next rising to the bait, and then leaving the idea open as both fellow Democrats and Republicans have engaged in a running guessing game as to his intentions.

That quandary persists right up to the minute, with a decision by Bredesen likely to come between the composition of these lines and their appearance in print. Or not.

The effect has been to paralyze or at least inhibit the momentum that declared Democratic Senate candidate James Mackler might otherwise have achieved. First-time candidate Mackler, a lawyer and Iraq war veteran from Nashville, has had difficulty emerging from the shade of anonymity despite a well-turned-out mailer or two and some impressive appearances before limited audiences — like the meet-and-greet/fund-raiser he held a month ago in the East Memphis home of Bryce Timmons, in which the personable candidate demonstrated in his remarks what could be a fetching mix of progressive political positions and, on the basis of his military service, some old-fashioned patriotism.

That the Bredesen mystery was ripe for solution was the thrust of a lengthy report in the latest edition of the nonpartisan “Smart Politics” newsletter published this week by the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs and Center for the Study of Politics and Governance.

Eric Ostenmeier, the resident “Smart Politics” sage, begins his account with a sense that a decision by Bredesen is imminent and casts the issue in a somewhat skeptical light. Says Ostenmeier: “The ‘will he or won’t he’ question may finally be answered this week with regards to a Phil Bredesen 2018 U.S. Senate bid, but, in the meantime, a new ‘Smart Politics’ report examines how unusual it would be for the former Tennessee governor to win the seat.”
Ostenmeier proceeds to review the history of Tennessee ex-governors who sought Senate seats during the last 100 years and finds that only one, Republican Lamar Alexander in 2002, who succeeded, while the handful of Democrats who’ve tried it — the most recent being Frank Clement in 1966 — have come up short.

Another caveat noted by Ostenmeier is the fact that, if Bredesen runs and is elected, he would enter the Senate at the age of 75, making him “the fifth-oldest to win a first term via an election, the second-oldest to enter via election since the passage of the 17th Amendment, and the oldest to enter via direct election for a full term.”

Meanwhile, the aforesaid Alexander, meeting with reporters in Nashville Friday after an appearance before the Greater Tennessee chapter of the Associated Builders and Contractors, had this to say about a potential Bredesen candidacy:

“He would be a formidable candidate. He was a popular governor. I think what he would have to explain to the people is how electing one more to the Democratic number in the Senate would help the people of Tennessee, and my argument would be if you want conservative judges and lower taxes and deregulation, then it’s better to have a Republican majority.” 

Alexander’s lines themselves bespeak a certain respect, born of fruitful relations between the two of them for the eight years of their simultaneous service from 2003 to 2009, when a term-limited Bredesen left the governorship. Beyond that, and the Republican senator’s obligatory bromide in favor of the mother ship GOP, Alexander’s meta-message is one of elementary and neutral caution to the two party-mates — former 8th District Congressman Stephen Fincher and 7th District Congressman (her preferred title) Marsha Blackburn — who will slug it out for the Republican Senate nomination.

What Democrats might divine from Alexander’s evaluation is less obvious. The fact is that the political views of Bredesen, a moderate Democrat who governed the state with a tight rein on expenditures, are probably closer in spirit to Alexander’s own than they are to the ultra-conservatism of Fincher and Blackburn.

And, with old Democratic loyalties having long since washed away in most of rural and small-town Tennessee, it remains to be seen whether the current rank and file of youthful, urban-based Democrats will respond more enthusiastically to a Bredesen than to a Mackler. It is certainly true that the former governor would have a commanding lead among old-line party types and traditional donors.

If Ostenmeier proves correct in his projection of a timely decision by Bredesen this week or soon thereafter, we will soon know whether this kind of speculation is academic or on point.

•
Another issue that, at press time, was due for some kind of likely resolution this week is that of the showdown over opioid litigation between Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell and the County Commission, a clear majority of whose members have lined up behind the defiant leadership of commission chair Heidi Shafer.

The matter ended up this week in the courtroom of Chancellor Jim Kyle, who was asked to rule on Tuesday on Luttrell’s request for an injunction and restraining order against Shafer and her fellow commissioners.

The latest chapter in what has been an ongoing power struggle between the two branches of county government stems from Shafer’s bombshell announcement last week that she had, in the name of the county, engaged the national law firm of Napoli Shkolnik to seek damages from a wide variety of principals — drug manufacturers, pharmacists, physicians, and distributors (licensed and otherwise) — allegedly responsible and potentially liable for the adverse effects of widespread opioid addiction in Shelby County.

Luttrell, who contended that his administration had already been weighing the options for such legal action, promptly objected that Shafer was attempting a usurpation in the face of language in the county charter giving the office of mayor complete authority over legal contracts and establishing the county attorney, appointed by him, as the sole administrator of legal actions on behalf of Shelby County government.   
Another burr under Luttrell’s saddle was the fact that, to serve as co-counsel with Napoli Shkolnik, Shafer had named former Commissioner Julian Bolton, whom the commission had formerly sought to employ as an independent counsel of its own but, thwarted by County Attorney Kathryn Pascover‘s adverse ruling, had been forced to hire on instead as a “policy advisor.” Bolton’s involvement in the proposed opioid action thereby constituted an end run of sorts around Pascover’s ruling and Luttrell’s authority.

Whatever the outcome of the hearing in Chancellor Kyle’s court on Tuesday, the issues implicit in the mayoral-commission confrontation were certain to linger and continue to fester.   

At its Monday regular meeting, the commission overwhelmingly adopted a stern resolution presented by Commissioner Terry Roland, the language of which “directs” Luttrell and Pascover to desist from their lawsuit against the chair and commissioners. The resolution further seeks financial compensation for the commissioners’ legal expenses and, as an ultimate challenge, “prohibits the County Attorney or the Administration from entering into any litigation without the prior consent of the Commission by majority of their vote.”

Breathtaking as that resolution was (however questionable in its provenance), it fell short, in terms of its immediate effect, of another, more practical resolution that was held back from being introduced on Monday. This one, also prepared by Roland, called for a vote of no confidence in Pascover (and, by implication at least, of Luttrell) and is likely to be introduced at the commission’s December meeting, if not at a special called meeting beforehand.

Whatever the result of Kyle’s hearing, or of any formal mediation the two warring county branches might engage in by choice or by dictate, this power struggle is not even close to being over. The issue of opioid litigation is more a symbol of pre-existing intractable differences and a pretext for dealing with them than it is an animating reason for those differences.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Chancellor Kyle Splits the Baby in the Opioid-Suit Dispute

CREDIT: JB

JB

Smiles from the Commission’s side of the dispute indicated at least some satisfaction with Chancellor Kyle’s even-handed ruling.

Asked to rule on the dispute between two branches of county government on a dispute involving authority to sue regarding opioid damages, Chancellor Jim Kyle took a  leaf from the Biblical account of King Solomon, After hearing out legal pleading on Tuesday  for the Shelby County administration of Mayor Mark Luttrell and opposing testimony offering the County Commission’s case, Kyle split the baby neatly.

And, unlike the  account in the Bible, both parties got some of what they wanted, and neither complained.

Kirk Caraway, acting as attorney for the county administration, sought a restraining order and injunction against a suit — contracted for by County Commission chair Heidi Shafer, supported by a Commission majority, and filed in Circuit court — that sought damages against various principals (including physicians, manufacturers, pharmacists, and others) involved in the distribution of opioids in Shelby County, on account of the resulting ravages of addiction in the population.

Allan Wade and Herman Morris, attorneys for the County Commission and the legal firms hired by Shafer et al., respectively, had offered in their turn two motions of dismissal of the administration’s request for specific punitive and restrictive actions against the Commissioners..

And, in between debating those precise points of difference, the opposing sides essentially made competing cases for and against the right of Shafer and the Commission to file their action independently of consent and oversight from the administration via the County Attorney’s office.

After an hour and a half of arguments back and forth, Kyle withdrew to his chambers and emerged some ten minutes later with a ruling. As indicated, there was something in it for both sides.

The Chancellor declined to cross jurisdictional lines and intervene against the Commission’s suit, filed in Circuit Court by the national firm of Napoli Shkolnick and associated local attorneys, including lawyer Julian Bolton, who serves as the Commission’s policy advisor but is actively involved with as an associate of the other litigators.

Kyle also took under advisement the two motions for dismissal filed by Wade and Morris. And he offered the opinion that there seemed to be agreement between the contending parties that legal action against distributors of opioids and that time was of the essence in proceeding on the matter.

In that sense, Kyle ruled on behalf of the Commission’s argument that a “public health crisis” existed. But on the matter of legal authority to pursue damages, he sided with the administration, agreeing that the county charter categorically and unmistakably restricted the right of legal action to the executive branch, allowing legal activity by the legislative branch only in support of legislative ends.

Having found on that count for the administration, which had argued that a “constitutional crisis” existed, Kyle granted a temporary injunction against the commission’s immediate right to proceed independently with the Circuit Court suit. But he noted that Luttrell had responded to the Commission’s action with a statement that the administration had  itself  been on course to proceed by the end of the year with some legal action against distributors of opioids.

Kyle therefore limited the injunction period to the end of 2017, acknowledging the administration’s authority over lawsuits but giving it time to decide whether to join in on the Circuit Court suit. Meanwhile he suggested from the bench, as he had previously in separate discussions with the parties, that the contending parties consult as to the possibility of joint action.

Thereby was the baby split, still alive and potentially able to be conjoined again via an agreement between the administration and the Commission. Should that happen, the Commission would have in effect forced the administration’s hand in expedited action against the purveyors of opioids. Or at least that’s how various Commissioners in attendance tended to view the outcome.

MTK

 

JB

Smiles from the Commission’s side of the dispute indicated at least some satisfaction with Chancellor Kyle’s even-handed ruling.

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Editorial Opinion

County Commission and Luttrell Clash Over Opioid Suit

Even as candidates are sorting themselves out for next year’s elections to the Shelby County Commission and the office of county mayor, the current version of the commission is still involved in what has been an extended power struggle with outgoing Mayor Mark Luttrell. That conflict has now entered an intense new phase, prompted by a disagreement between the warring entities over strategies for dealing with the ongoing opioid crisis.

The current wrangle was precipitated last Thursday by commission chair Heidi Shafer’s independent action in signing on with a national law firm to prosecute a lawsuit against a variety of drug manufacturers, pharmacies, and physicians. Luttrell objected to what he saw as a usurpation of administrative authority under the county charter and — pending the outcome of a scheduled mid-week vote by the commission on a resolution of support for Shafer’s action — prepared legal action to abort it.

Ostensibly, the dispute is over a choice of law firms to pursue remedies for damages resulting to Shelby County and its citizens from the ongoing opioid epidemic, as well as over the nature and scope of the recovery effort, and the timetable for prosecuting it. There are legitimate differences of opinion on these matters, and there is no denying the importance of the opioid crisis or its effect on Shelby County. The fundamental differences between the Luttrell administration and what would seem to be a majority of the 13-member commission are rooted in the aforementioned power struggle, one which has the potential to overshadow the long-distance future of local government.

The  basic conflict began during budget deliberations a couple of seasons back, when a majority of commission members chafed at what they saw as the county administration’s too-close-to-the-vest accounting of the county’s fund balance. Even after the budget of 2015 was finally signed, sealed, and delivered, the commission and administration clashed repeatedly over funding matters, with the commission wanting ever more information about and oversight over the process. In the ensuing struggle, the commission sought to hire an independent attorney to help monitor fiscal matters. In the end, former Commissioner Julian Bolton was allowed to come aboard as a kind of ad hoc “policy adviser” to the commission. He is now, as it happens, serving also as local counsel for Napoli Shkolnick, the firm with which Shafer executed her agreement on behalf of the county and one that, she says, is assisting the opioid-related legal efforts of numerous other governmental entities nationwide.

Luttrell insists that the administration has been on course to develop its own timely legal strategy on behalf of Shelby County, has dutifully and fully kept the commission informed of its efforts, and that the current imbroglio can only create confusion and delay and impede a successful legal effort on the opioid issue.

The disagreement will doubtless be resolved by mediation or judicial ruling, and the county charter, which was extensively revised in the recent past, may have to undergo further alterations by referendum or convention. At the moment, though, both the opioid crisis and the ever-worsening strains within county government are serious problems calling for some immediate solution, even if only a stopgap one.

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Opinion Viewpoint

A Policy That Stinks

After a decade of rough economic times, Tennessee is finally starting to show credible signs of recovery. But an unexpected issue has arisen that could choke off Shelby County’s being able to participate in that economic recovery.

The city of Memphis’ administration has issued a policy ceasing sewer connection to properties outside the city limits. This has dire consequences for every single taxpayer in this county.

Heidi Shafer

Most of us take our sewage system for granted. We walk over the round covers in the street stamped “Sewer” without even recognizing they are there. Sewage and sewer access aren’t the most pleasant topics. The fact is, though, that few issues are as fundamental to a society as the success, safety, and access to a reliable sewer system.   

Property without sewer availability is virtually without value. Property distant enough from residential or commercial developments can be turned back into farm ground (taxable at a much lesser rate). That means a direct loss of tax dollars flowing into the county coffers to cover the school system and teachers, the health department, Regional One, the jails, sheriff’s deputies, the courts, and even the Rape Crisis Center.

With so much at stake, and with city residents also paying county taxes, why would the city of Memphis upset the proverbial apple cart?

Part of what the city is doing makes sense to me: As Memphis seeks to become “brilliant at the basics” while reconfiguring its mission based on a reduced ability to annex surrounding areas by fiat, reexamining established systems is timely.

I agree that it likely doesn’t serve Memphis or Memphians to extend new sewer connections outside of the Memphis limits. For decades, Memphis had expanded its outreach, perhaps assuming that all the areas would one day be within its limits.

Now that areas can be annexed only if the residents petition to be annexed, and with some areas actively seeking to be de-annexed, a recalculation and adjustment is needed.

So where is the “stinky” part of this sewer proclamation? The city of Memphis has begun what I can only term as “failing to process” applications of properties where sewer lines are already run to the area, and the sewer only needs to be “tapped.”

About a month ago, I began receiving calls notifying me that properties with sewer lines already run out to them were being effectively denied: The city was contacting the owners and asking if the owners wanted their building plans returned or shredded, since the city was not authorizing new taps, effective immediately.

Here are a few basic facts:

1) The persons or businesses who are using the systems are paying for their development and upkeep.

2) The 1970s treatment plant and subsequent interceptors were built to EPA specifications in order to obtain federal grant dollars.

3) Some surrounding municipalities rely in part or wholly upon the regional sewer system run by the city of Memphis.

4) Residential fees funding the development and upkeep of the sewer are numerous and outlined in various documents.

5) The county has also been paying millions directly to the city of Memphis to help with redevelopment inside Memphis’ city limits.

6) Some property owners outside Memphis through the years had planned to treat their own waste, but were induced to be added to the Memphis treatment system and were given “sewer credits.”  

Building a new sewage treatment plant for the county is doable, but will take three to five years to complete. And Memphis does not currently have a transition plan in its policy.

The one troubling reason for this draconian sewer policy being implemented so swiftly is the mistaken belief that if development is extinguished for three to five years outside Memphis, it would force development inside Memphis’ city limits.

If only that were true! People and business tend to go the path of least resistance. If I am looking at building a business, here are my choices: I can build within the Memphis city limits with its high taxes, crime problems, and bureaucratic requirements, or outside of Shelby County in DeSoto County, Tipton County, or Fayette County, with their larger undeveloped tracts of land, lower property costs, lower taxes, and simplified codes and procedures.

We in Shelby County government hope to work with the city of Memphis to develop a plan that helps Memphis adjust to current circumstances and creates a way for everyone in the county to move forward together.
Heidi Shafer is chairman of the Shelby County Commission.

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Politics Politics Feature

Roland “Rolls Um Easy” on Campaign Trail

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

The county mayor’s race is still some distance down the calendar, but at least one candidate — Republican Terry Roland, a Millington store-owner and Shelby County commissioner — has been running in public for a year or more.

On Saturday, he brought his campaign to the newly renovated Houston Levee Community Center in North Cordova, where he gave a fair-sized crowd his patented mix of country vernacular, governmental shop-talk, class-action rhetoric, and, where need be, a little topical pop talk.

Before he got started, he and his helpers fired up a grill and laid out a generous supply of hot dogs, hamburgers, and what Roland described as some “great Italian sausage.” Campaign associate Cary Vaughn — who would follow up Roland’s remarks later on by likening him to Joe Montana and calling him “the only candidate who understands urban and suburban” — jested on the front end that “we’re picking pockets all over Shelby County.”

That was an apparent tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact that the late-morning rally, fifth in an ongoing series across the county, would double as a fund-raiser, but there would, in fact, not be much of a hard sell to the attendees, most of whom seemed to be Roland loyalists already.

In his talk, Roland ran through a miscellany of his platform planks, including a boast on behalf of the commission’s recent two-cent property tax decrease, a recommendation of de-annexation as a way for Memphis to conserve its resources and pay for more police (and to avoid having to borrow deputies from the Sheriff’s Department), a ringing endorsement of TIF (tax-increment-financing) projects as an alternative to PILOT (payment-in-lieu-of-tax) arrangements, a pledge that his would be a “blue collar vs. blue blood” campaign, and finally some Lowell George.

Roland, a onetime country/rock singer himself, quoted some lines from “Roll Um Easy,” a favorite lyric by the Little Feat lead singer:

“I have dined in palaces, drunk wine with kings and queens,

But darlin’, oh darlin’, you’re the best thing I ever seen. …”

Except that Roland, to accommodate the plurality of his audience, made that “y’all are” rather than “you’re.”

At the moment, Roland remains the only formally announced mayoral candidate, though County Trustee David Lenoir is known to be planning a county mayor’s race on the Republican side, and former commissioner Sidney Chism has informally touted his own candidacy as a Democrat. Roland has wasted no time in gigging Lenoir. He made an effort during the recent budget season to defund part of the trustee’s budget, and on Monday afternoon — in a session called to discuss a draft of a “Strategic Agenda 2017-20” — he complained about what he said was the trustee’s laxity in selling off tax-defaulted property.

The Strategic Agenda project was overseen by the 2016-17 commission chair, Democrat Melvin Burgess Jr., who has let it be known that he, too, is likely to become a candidate for county mayor. “We’ve got to have a plan,” he said over and over on Monday, both in his public remarks and in private conversation.

• To no one’s surprise, GOP Commissioner Heidi Shafer, the past year’s vice chair, was elected county commission chair for 2017-18. The vote was by acclamation, and the sense of unity was underscored by the fact that her nominator was fellow Republican Steve Basar, with whom Shafer has often been an odds.

The vote for vice chair went to Democrat Willie Brooks, also by acclamation after the withdrawal from contention of fellow Democrat Eddie Jones. Brooks’ victory owed something to his bridge-building endorsement of a formal resolution by Republican David Reaves opposing a proposed charter school in Bartlett.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Roland vs. Lenoir: Next Year’s Mayoral Battle Flared Up in County Budget, Tax-Rate Debate

L to R: David Lenoir, Terry Roland

The forthcoming 2018 duel between Shelby County Commissioner Terry Roland and County Trustee David Lenoir for the Republican nomination for County Mayor has become a major factor in the Commission’s proceedings, and it figured notably as the county’s legislative body moved this past week toward approval of a budget and tax rate for fiscal 2017-18.

The latest set-to occurred on Wednesday, as a quorum of 10 of the 13 Commission members met in a special called meeting for the final required reading on the $4.11 tax rate that was voted with near unanimity on Monday (12 to 1, with only one Commissioner, Democrat Walter Bailey voting Nay).

The Wednesday meeting turned out to be not quite as pro forma as expected, however. Between Monday and Wednesday, Lenoir let it be known through several means —including at least one speech, a news interview, and a pair of Facebook posts — that he disbelieved in the $4.11 tax rate as being the actual tax cut that the Commission thought it was in adopting it.

Lenoir cited numbers purporting to show that representative homeowners, especially in suburban Shelby County, would actually be liable for higher out-of-pocket property taxes in the coming year, as a result of a recent county reappraisal significantly raising property values in the county.

The Trustee was an attendee at Wednesday’s meeting, and, though he did not speak directly to the Commission during the meeting, he had with him figures that he cited to reporters afterward appearing to show that taxes would be higher on the average in three suburban communities — Bartlett (up by an average of $100), Germantown (up $150), and Collierville(up $200). “And that’s residential property. Commercial property is up even more,” he said.

The issue had been bruited about by Commissioners at Wednesday’s meeting before they ultimately confirmed the $4.11 tax rate with a unanimous vote of 10 to 0.

Unsurprisingly, the response to Lenoir’s criticism was led by Roland, who maintained that the county administration, with direct concurrence and participation on Trustee Lenoir’s part, had,on the front end of tax-rate discussions, certified $4.13 as a figure that would maintain stable revenues in accordance with a new countywide property aapparisal that had, on the average, substantially raised real property values.

Inasmuch as state law prohibits “windfall” revenues resulting from such adjustments of a county tax rate to revised assessment values, Roland’s argument went, any overage of the sort claimed by Lenoir clashed with the Trustee’s own prior participation in certifying the $4.13 rate.

In any case, argued Roland, Heidi Shafer, and others, the lower tax rate of $4.11, which was adopted by the Commission on the premise that it gave county taxpayers a two-cent real tax decrease, would by definition make windfall revenues even more unlikely. And the defenders of the $4.11 rate, while acknowledging that some property-owners in the suburbs might end up paying more taxes as a result of dramatically higher assessments, the majority of county property-owners would be taxed at a lesser amount.

Lenoir’s contention is that the balance is in the other direction — i.e., that a majority of the county’s homeowners would end up paying more taxes while a minority would gain some measure measure of tax relief from the $4.11 rate. The Trustee noted to reporters that the lower rate had been achieved via a compromise this week between Democrats and Republicans that saw an additional 1 percent pay raise for county employees, added to what had already been a 2 percent raise in the provisional budget.

“It’s all baked in together,” the Trustee said, in defense of his contention that, on the whole, the final compromise package would, on balance, raise tax rates.

Though Roland et al. won this battle, it seems clear that Lenoir is counting on reversing the outcome during his forthcoming mayoral contest, when each candidate will claim to have acted more responsibly in the taxpayers’ interest and each will be able to cite numbers justifying his position.

This week’s verbal sparring followed a previous round back in the spring, before budget discussions began in earnest, when Lenoir claimed that he had advocated specific tax reductions in previous fiscal years had been ignored by the Commission — a contention rejected by Roland, who said no such proposal had been presented to the Commission, much less ignored.

Tensions between the two had flared up also early in last week’s 7 ½-hour marathon budget session of the Commission, when Roland had proposed transferring $50,000 from the Trustee’s proposed budget allocation to help pay for a needed employee in the General Sessions Drug Court of Judge Tim Dwyer.

Roland based his proposal on a contention that Lang Wiseman, a de facto legal counsel on Lenoir’s staff, was being paid despite “not showing up for work.” Lenoir appeared before the Commission to reject the claim and accused Roland of playing politics. In the end, the $50,000 needed by Drug court was approved through other channels, and Roland, satisfied, withdrew his proposal without a vote being taken.

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Politics Politics Feature

Democratic Prospects for TN Governor. Dog-and-Pony at County Commission

In this week’s Viewpoint , Tom Humphrey, retired from the Knoxville News Sentinel, where he earned a reputation as the dean of Tennessee political writers, and now my colleague as a contributing editor of The Tennessee Journal, contributes some informed — and likely definitive — thoughts on the Republican candidates who will be vying in a 2018 gubernatorial contest which is about to get started in earnest.

As Humphrey points out, Tennessee is now about as deep-dyed red in its political sentiments as can be, and the GOP has a built-in advantage. But he also had some things to say about the two Democrats who have eyes on the Governor’s chair. For purely space reasons, these have been siphoned off from the Viewpoint and are presented here:

Karl Dean

Said Humphrey: “On the Democratic side, the minority party has a credible candidate in former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, and his credentials were enhanced by taking in $1.2 million in contributions during four months of campaigning. He paid $36,000 for a poll out of his own pocket and donated $7,000, but the rest came from others. Though he’s declared a willingness to self-fund with big bucks, it’s doubtful he could match the financial endowments of Republicans Diane Black, Randy Boyd, or Bill Lee in a general election.

“State House Minority Leader Craig Fitzhugh, D-Ripley, who is quite popular and respected among those who know him, is still toying with a run against Dean in the primary. And some Democrats are unhappy with Dean’s support of charter schools as mayor. But Fitzhugh is not well known outside the legislative arena, is not rich enough for major self-financing, and probably cannot raise a lot of money. (Just $12,076 in his House campaign account July 1st.)

State Rep. Craig Fitzhugh

“So Dean will likely be facing one of the Republicans in November 2018. Democrats, of course, are wishing and hoping that President Trump will have become unpopular enough by then to change the current GOP inclinations of Tennessee voters. But it doesn’t look that way today.”

Friend Tom (whose track record in making predictions is impeccable) could be right, though Dean, who spent two days in Memphis last week reinforcing old connections and making new ones, would obviously disagree.

As the ex-Nashville mayor, a self-described “moderate” who sees health care as next year’s dominant issue,  noted to the Flyer, there has been a gubernatorial pendulum swing, back and forth between Democrats and Republicans at eight-year (two-term) intervals, since the 1970s. On that calendar, it’s time again for a Democrat, and, like Dean, the last two elected governors — Democrat Phil Bredesen of Nashville and Republican Bill Haslam of Knoxville — had previously been mayors.

Humphrey points out in his Viewpoint that West Tennessee was left without a native-son gubernatorial hopeful, following last week’s presidential nomination to a federal judgeship of state Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris of Collierville, who had long been a potential GOP candidate.

That would seem to open the way to a race by Democrat Fitzhugh, a Ripley banker and an able and experienced legislative leader who, if he could get by Dean in a primary, has a combination of down-home likability and Main Street smarts that could possibly reawaken some residual Democratic sentiment in this part of the state, which until very recently produced the small-town and rural Democrats who basically ran the General Assembly.

• It was almost like a scripted TV show, with some of the lines improvised around agreed-upon themes but with the resolution of the drama known in advance.

This was the strangely harmonious meeting, Monday, of the Shelby County Commission, coming in the wake of a disputatious seven-hour marathon session a week ago, followed by a committee meeting two days later which appeared to further unravel whatever consensus had seemed to exist on the matters of a budget and a tax rate for fiscal 2017-18.

Instead of the hotly argued either/or positions of last week’s amorphous scramble, the commission Monday meeting followed a neatly Aristotelian formula of beginning-middle-end, starting with a proposal by Republican member Terry Roland of Millington to modestly amend the county budget and establish  a $4.11 tax rate that would translate into a two-cent decrease for county taxpayers.

The provisional budget previously cobbled together by the commission had called for county employees to get a pay raise of two percent. Roland’s scenario envisioned an additional one-percent raise. As formally presented later by Democrat Willie Brooks, that would add $2.6 million in expenditures, the rough equivalent of a cent’s worth on the tax rate.

JB

Commissioners Terry Roland and Eddie Jones

The commission’s GOP members had been vociferous last week on behalf of a $4.10 tax rate, and, though Republican David Reaves of Bartlett made a brief argument for that rate on Monday, he would soon enough join his party mates in acceptance of the $4.11 rate. Democrat Eddie Jones, who with other Democrats had voted last Wednesday for a $4.13 tax rate, now announced that he had discovered from talking to “constituents” that they, too, would appreciate a tax cut.

With the sole exception of Walter Bailey, who, invoking the need for “services” to combat poverty, held out for $4.13, the other Democrats — including Justin Ford, a frequent fellow traveler with the GOP who had been absent last week — quickly fell in line, and that was that.

As commission vice chair Heidi Shafer said, in gaveling a quick adjournment to the meeting, “I appreciate a commission that knows what it wants to do.” Shafer didn’t wink, but it seemed clear enough that the body’s members — either through alchemy or advance understanding — had indeed known what they wanted to do, possibly even to the point of allowing a pro forma disagreement from Bailey.

For procedural reasons, one more vote will have to be taken on the tax rate at a special called meeting on Wednesday. But, as Shafer also cautioned her colleagues, “Get here early. I don’t think that meeting will last very long.”