Tag: Heidi Shafer

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Healthcare “Road Show” Off to a Good Start

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

There has been no shortage of skeptics about the bona fides of the health-care task force recently appointed by state House Speaker Beth Harwell (R-Nashville) to look into the matter of an alternative to Governor Bill Haslam‘s “Insure Tennessee” proposal for federally funded Medicaid expansion, which was dead on arrival upon its presentation to the General Assembly in last year’s sessions of the General Assembly.

Criticism came from both left and right. Early on, state Democratic Party chair Mary Mancini seemed to dismiss it out of hand in a press release titled “A Task Force Called Meh,” in which she said, “It doesn’t have any actual policy or concrete meeting dates. It doesn’t have the will to actually, you know, do anything. … Once again we are a witness to the failure of the Republican majority to lead.”

Nor was everybody in the state Republican Party exactly blissful about the task force’s creation. At a meeting of the National Federation of Independent Business in Memphis last week, two key GOP state Senators were less than enthusiastic. “It remains to be seen how serious this is as a task force,” said Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown), the state Senate’s Judiciary chair. “I find it curious that the House now has this road show,” said state Senator majority leader Mark Norris (R-Collierville), referring to a series of public hearings the task force has begun statewide.

(Both GOP Senators, it should be noted, were vehement opponents of “Insure Tennessee.”)

To be sure, the task force has evolved since Harwell put it together in early April. Back then, it consisted of four House members, all Republicans: Cameron Sexton of Crossville, the task force chairman, who chairs the House Health Committee; Steve McManus of Memphis, chair of Insurance and Banking Committee; Roger Kane of Knoxville; and Matthew Hill of Jonesborough.

Since then, the Speaker, acquiescing to pressure to diversify the group, has added state Rep. Karen Camper (D-Memphis) and one member from the state Senate, Richard Briggs (R-Knoxville), a physician. Crucially, perhaps, both Camper and Briggs were supporters of “Insure Tennessee.”

The reconstituted task force began holding its public hearings in Nashville last week and intends to hold several more before preparing legislative recommendations, which chairman Sexton says he hopes to have ready by June.

On Monday afternoon, three members of the task force — Sexton, Camper, and McManus — were on hand at the University of Memphis University Center, where they were joined by panelists and audience members representing a diverse group of respondents, including hospital spokespersons, representatives of ad hoc health providers, and prospective patients.

In the spirited discussion that ensued for two hours, there was some evidence that, the critics of left and right notwithstanding, the task force might indeed be up to something serious. A key moment came at the very close of things, when McManus, who in 2015 had adopted an adverse position on “Insure Tennessee” and chaired a brief hearing of his committee to an inconclusive end, responded to some passionately expressed testimony by uninsured and under-insured attendees, mostly low-income people who had invested some hope in the prospects for Medicaid expansion through “Insure Tennessee.”

“We’re going to have something for you,” McManus said, in an emotional statement of his own. Asked later if he thought his group would give serious reconsideration to some version of the governor’s plan. “Absolutely, we will,” he said, adding, “Let’s face it. Back then the matter was a political football.” Meaning that its coupling with the Affordable Care Act, better known among Republicans as “Obamacare,” had doomed the proposal to partisan treatment by the General Assembly’s GOP super-majority.

Typical of a potential sea change among Republicans was a lament by panelist Ron Kirkland, a Jackson physician who ran for Congress in the 8th District GOP primary in 2010, that more than $1 billion annually in Affordable Care Act (ACA) funding had been lost to the state by its failure to endorse “Insure Tennessee.” As Kirkland put it, “We’d have been jumping up and down if that much money was available to the [West Tennessee industrial] mega-site!”

And numerous of the medical-community representatives noted that Medicare funding allotments for Tennessee had been scaled down under the ACA with the idea of fleshing them out again with the Medicaid-expansion component of the Act. Subsequently, the Supreme Court’s ruling that the latter component was not mandatory upon individual states had allowed Tennessee and various other states to opt out of Medicaid expansion, with the unintended consequence of reducing overall medical funding.

Overall, the discussion on Monday seemed pointed more toward solutions of this and other dilemmas than to recapitulating various rhetorical talking points. Perhaps this is one road show that might lead to something real and tangible on the main stage of Tennessee government.

• “Give a mouse a cookie…”: Given the factional divisions on the Shelby County Commission, such as they are, it is a rare thing indeed that Heidi Shafer, the East Memphis Republican who so often speaks for what is arguably the Commission’s dominant coalition, should quote with approval Steve Basar, a fellow Republican but one who often sides with another, predominantly Democratic group.

But so Shafer did on Monday, in the course of her current effort to retard — or at least subject to serious vetting — a proposal to assist the office of District Attorney General Amy Weirich with backup to help process the future use of body cameras by local law enforcement, primarily the Memphis Police Department.

A condensed version of the Basar remark cited by Shafer would go something like this: “Give a mouse a cookie, and he’ll ask for a glass of milk. Then he’ll want another cookie.” And this de facto little aphorism was employed by Shafer as a warning against what she called “mission creep” in the matter of funding Weirich’s office.

The fuller argument, as she and other skeptics have developed it in two of the Commission’s mid-week committee sessions and two of the body’s regular public meetings, boils down even further to a fairly simple formulation: “Why us?” — the idea being (a) that the impetus for use of body cams came from the MPD and city government, and (b) the District Attorney General’s office is a creature of state government, not county government.

Ergo, why should county government have to foot the bill?

That argument has found enough buyers so far to have stymied the initial proposal for a fuller funding of the D.A.’s office in the amount of $143,378. By the time of Monday’s meeting, the issue of direct new funding was off the table — replaced by an offer from the administration of Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell to shift residual money in the county’s fund balance to provide “temporary support staff for body camera rollout.”

That support would total out, as finally agreed to by the Commission on Monday, to about $25,000 from the fund balance. And that amount, as Shafer reminded an acquiescent administration CAO Harvey Kennedy, would have to be shared with the Public Defender’s office, which, according to state law, is entitled to funding equivalent to 75 percent of any sums appropriated to a District Attorney General’s office.

Enough stop-gap money will be shifted to endow three temporary employees for the D.A.’s office, along with two for the Public Defender’s office, for a period of roughly a month to assist with body-cam rollout.

To stick with the aforementioned Basar analogy, that compromise solution is less a cookie than a crumb, and it’s a clear signal that, with stiff funding increases sought by the Sheriff’s Department, and even stiffer ones sought by Shelby Couty Schools, the D.A.’s office will face difficulty during forthcoming budget negotiations in getting much more for the body-cam matter.

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Lee Harris Out, Steve Basar In?

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Though University of Memphis law professor and state Senate minority leader Lee Harris seems to have opted out of a contemplated Democratic primary challenge this year to incumbent congressman Steve Cohen for the 9th District congressional seat, a replacement of sorts may be in the wings.

That would be Shelby County Commissioner Steve Basar, a Republican, who confided to the Flyer on Monday that he is actively considering making a race for the seat. 

For decades, no Republican has finished higher than the low 40-percent range in congressional elections in the 9th, but Basar points out, for what it is worth, that in 2014 District Attorney General Amy Weirich, the Republican nominee, outpolled former Judge Joe Brown, the Democratic nominee, among the district’s voters.

If Basar should end up in a race against Cohen, that would create a situation whereby not only would the two main contestants in this predominantly black district be white, they would both be Jewish as well.

Harris has not yet been reached for comment, but the Flyer learned last week that he had changed his mind about running and had so informed Cohen, who confirmed receiving such a voice mail to that effect from Harris. The congressman said he would defer to Harris concerning any further statement on the matter.

UPDATE News of state Senator Harris’ change of mind regarding a race for the 9th District congressional seat, which was first noted by the Flyer last week, was made formal this week with Harris’ release of the following statement:

Late last year, I was approached by several Memphians who want to see a new generation of leadership. Their faith in me is humbling and, at their request, I promised that I would consider running for Congress. I have had an opportunity to serve my community in the Memphis city council, in the Tennessee senate, and as one of the top Democrats in the state, all of which have been honors that I never could have expected. However, after careful consideration, I have decided that now is not the time for me to run for Congress. I will continue to serve this community in the Tennessee senate, do my best to bring Memphians together, and continue to focus on getting things done
.

Tennessee Senate Minority Leader Lee Harris (D-Memphis)

• As was the case of its two previous full meetings in January, the Shelby County Commission managed on Monday to minimize the controversies — the main one being an ongoing power struggle with the administration of county Mayor Mark Luttrell — that have flared up regularly during the year or so since the election of 2014. 

As was the case on Monday, the meeting of January 11th had owed much of its briskness to the relative sketchiness of its agenda, though the main reason why it moved along so fast may have been simply the determination of its presiding officer, chairman Terry Roland, to get things out of the way in time for everybody to be home to view that night’s NCAA collegiate football championship.

In fact, that meeting had literally concluded with Roland intoning the words, “Roll, Tide!” — an exhortation not to be found in Roberts’ Rules of Order, but one that was properly consummated later on by the University of Alabama’s convincing win over the Clemson Tigers in the championship game.

Football fanships aside, some fundamental disagreements do remain — even if in relatively muted form.

A subsequent special meeting of the commission last Thursday, held to announce and ratify the body’s legislative agenda for 2016, had also been a relatively pro forma affair — though four suburban Republican commissioners — David Reaves, Mark Billingsley, Heidi Shafer, and George Chism — dissented from a resolution requesting a three-year moratorium on further expansion of the state’s Achievement School District. 

In December, the ASD announced plans to take over four more “failing” schools from the Shelby County Schools District, bringing to 30-odd the total number, most of which are located in Memphis. That resulted in protests from SCS, which operates its own i-Zone program for under-performing schools, and in proposed legislation to limit ASD’s powers or even to terminate it.

Monday’s commission meeting, though it was free of any extended dustups, as well, contained one clear disagreement of sorts that was barely spoken to. This was in the form of a resolution to award some $6,500 to the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center to support activities on behalf of the homeless.

Like several other grants on Monday’s agenda, this one lumped together financial outlays from several of the commissioners, each of whom has a de facto budget for such contributions, which do require approval by the full body. The grant was sponsored by Commissioners Reginald Milton and Walter Bailey. 

Commissioner Justin Ford, chair of the general government committee, which initiated the grant, and, like the two sponsors, an urban Democrat, added another $1,500 from his district kitty, bringing the total of the MGLCC grant up to $8,000.

Just before the vote was taken, Basar made a point of reminding his fellow commissioners that, when the vote was taken during last year’s budget session to provide each commissioner with a $100,000 fund from which to make individual contributions, the expected protocol would be for the commission as a whole to honor the request. His own vote would be in line with that expectation, he said.

That may have been Basar’s way of voting to approve the grant while partly dissociating himself from it. A few other commissioners — again, suburban Republicans — were more direct. Reaves voted no, while Billingsley and Roland abstained. Another Republican, Shafer, had left the meeting. There had been no public discussion as such, but, asked later on for his reasoning in opposing the grant outright, Reaves said he doubted that his constituents would be in favor of awarding funds to the designated recipient.

Thus it was that a social issue, one that in previous years, even some recent ones, might have aroused some uncomfortable debate, had diminished to the point of being a relative blip on the radar screen. But a blip it still is.

For the record, there was one moment of complete public harmony at Monday’s meeting. It occurred as the first order of business, with a special resolution honoring Memphis Police director Toney Armstrong, soon to be director of security for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, for “27 years of exemplary service in local law enforcement.”

The vote for that resolution was unanimous, and all 13 commission members happily gathered themselves around Armstrong later for a group portrait.

• Though it is almost certainly going nowhere, a bill has been introduced in the General Assembly that would prohibit presidential candidates who are not “natural born” from being on a Tennessee ballot or from receiving the state’s electoral votes. The sponsors of the measure, clearly aimed at Texas Senator Ted Cruz, are state Senator Jeff Yarbro and state Representative Jason Powell, both of Nashville.

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2015: A Year of Change in Memphis Politics

Sitting uneasily at the same table for the annual Myron Lowery prayer breakfast on January 1, 2015 were future antagonists Mayor A C Wharton (left) and Jim Strickland (in center). At far right is Council candidate Mickell Lowery, who would be upset in a Council race by underdog Martavius Jones.

The year 2015 began with a bizarre New Year’s Day event in which Memphis City Councilman Jim Strickland was asked to stand up by a reigning figure in city politics, whereupon said official, council chairman Myron Lowery, basically called Strickland out for his presumption in considering a race against incumbent Mayor A C Wharton.

The year will end with the selfsame Strickland preparing to stand on a stage on New Year’s Day 2016 and take the oath as mayor, while both Wharton and Lowery exit city government, and Mickell Lowery, the latter’s son, wonders what went wrong with his own failed bid to succeed his father on the council.

On the national stage, similar head-scratching must be going on at the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport and in other establishmentarian councils where the old reliable form sheets seem to have gone suddenly and sadly out of date.

Everywhere, it would seem, the representatives and figureheads of things-as-usual are hearing variations on “You’re fired,” which is how it might be put by Donald Trump, the real estate billionaire and political eccentric whose out-of-nowhere surge to the top of the pack among Republican presidential contenders is one of the obvious indicators of the new mood.

One of the most trusted end-of-year polls of the GOP race had Trump at 42 percent and Jeb Bush at 3 percent. Less extremely, back in our own bailiwick, the formerly invincible Wharton, whose two earlier mayoral races netted him victory totals of 70 percent and 60 percent, finished his 2015 reelection effort with a woeful 22 percent of the vote, a full 20 points behind the victorious Strickland, in what was essentially a four-person race.

It takes no crystal ball or soothsaying skill to see that there was discontent against traditional management — again, what we call the establishment — in all the public places: locally, nationally, and even statewide. Governor Bill Haslam, a pleasant, well-intentioned man with a little sense and sensibility, was spurned by the leadership and rank-and-file of his own Republican Party in the General Assembly in Nashville. 

His prize proposal, a home-grown version of Medicaid (TennCare) expansion called Insure Tennessee, was just different enough from the semantically vulnerable Obamacare to pass muster with the state’s hospitals, medical professionals, and — according to polls — the Tennessee public at large. It was opposed by the GOP speakers of the two legislative chambers in both a special session in February and the regular session later on and kept thereby from ever getting a vote on the floor of either the House or the Senate.

As Haslam noted in a barnstorming expedition across the state later in the year, the state also had a serious need for upgrading of its roads, bridges, and infrastructure in general, but — once burned and twice shy from the rejection of Insure Tennessee — he dared not advocate a gasoline tax or any other specific plan to raise revenue for infrastructure purposes. He was reduced instead to voicing a hope at each of his stops that an aroused public itself would clamor for such remedies. No such luck.

Meanwhile, the once-dominant Democratic Party had become such a shell of its former self that it was powerless to suggest anything of its own legislatively or to oppose any initiative of the Republicans, who owned a super-majority — and a Tea Party-dominated one — in both houses.

What the Democrats could do, in Shelby County and statewide, was outfit themselves with new leaders. Mary Mancini, a veteran activist from Nashville, became the new state party chairman, while Randa Spears was elected in Memphis to head Shelby County Democratic Party and to impose overdue reform on what had been some serious mismanagement of the party’s finances.

The local Republican Party elected a female chair, too,  Mary Wagner, suggesting the existence of a trend and the possibility that, as confidence in the old order continued to erode, political folks were increasingly looking to the women in their ranks as a source of new leadership.

• City and county politics were crucially affected by budgetary matters during 2015. 

In the case of the city, austerity measures approved by both Mayor Wharton and a council majority — specifically pension reform and reduction of health benefits for city employees — would taint public confidence in city government and shape the resultant four-way mayoral race to the incumbent’s disadvantage.

Even such seeming talking points for the mayor as the new Electrolux and Mitsubishi plants failed to diminish local unemployment to the degree that had been expected.

Mayoral candidate Harold Collins was telling with his mockery of the $10-an-hour jobs for temps he said prevailed at both locations. Memphis Police Association president Mike Williams embodied resentment of lost benefits for first responders in his mayoral bid. 

And, most effectively, the aforementioned Strickland hammered away at a triad of issues — public safety, blight, and a need for more accountability on the part of public officials — that his polling suggested were winning themes among voters of all ethnicities and economic classes.

Some considered these mere housekeeping issues, but as poll-derived distillations of the Memphis electorate’s concerns about the here and now, they were evidently on point — enough so that Strickland, in many ways a generic white man, would eventually capture 25 percent of the city’s black vote, pulling his mathematical share against African-American candidates Wharton, Collins, and Williams.

On the council front, six new members were chosen in open races, and in each case it was the most business-friendly candidate who won. This was undeniably the case with candidates such as Philip Spinosa, a young FedEx executive who raised a prohibitive $200,000 in an at-large race, avoiding public forums with his five opponents or much public contact of any kind except for a forest of yard signs bearing his name along the major traffic arteries of central and East Memphis.

Another financially well-endowed council newcomer, Worth Morgan, advertised himself similarly, but was willing to confront the rest of his field — and in the runoff a well-regarded Republican activist — in open debate, where he held his own.

Along with Strickland’s nonstop emphasis on public safety, there was an abundance of pro-police rhetoric among the winners of city races. The question — one that achieved the level of irony — was how all this public empathy, short of restoring lost benefits, could arrest the ongoing fallout from the ranks. Some 200 to 300 cops had already responded to benefit cuts by going elsewhere.

The general sense of rebellion that, in one way or another, seemed to characterize the political scene in 2015 may have found its fullest fruition in Shelby County government, where, after enacting various expected rituals of partisan rivalry amongst themselves, the county comissioners began to mount a coordinated campaign as a body against the administration of county Mayor Mark Luttrell. This development was a direct outgrowth of the budget season, during which commissioners on both sides of the party line convinced themselves that they were being spoon-fed half-truths about money available for public purposes and at year’s end were attempting to assert their own authority as superceding that of the mayor.

As with so much else on the political landscape in 2015, the accustomed way was under challenge. The new year of 2016 will presumably have to come up with some answers.

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Shelby County Commission Broadens Reach

Where’s Zoey? Can’t say where Waldo is, but that’s Zoey Goss sitting up there (briefly) in place of County Commissioner Heidi Shafer, who with other commissioners voted Monday to contribute $8,000 to a summer camp for Zoey and other children suffering from muscular dystrophy.

The Shelby County Commission, as currently constituted, is turning into a juggernaut of sorts. Chairman Terry Roland of Millington and Commissioner Heidi Shafer of East Memphis are but two of the determined commission members who have kept in working order a bipartisan majority that is perceptibly and consistently expanding its influence and authority vis-à-vis other power blocs.

For months now, the commission has been challenging the prerogatives of County Mayor Mark Luttrell‘s administration and asserting its own. “We are the people,” is a frequent boast by Roland, who attributes to Luttrell and others holding executive positions not much more than a responsibility to carry out commission policy dictates.

In defense of that position, he and Shafer, along with former Commissioner Julian Bolton, the independent counsel they are attempting to hire, cite various portions of the County Charter, laying special stress on its apparent conferring on the elected commission, “all lawful authority to adopt ordinances and resolutions governing the operation of government or regulating the conduct and affairs of the residents of the county.”

As for Luttrell, Shafer defined his role this way in a recent Viewpoint article for the Flyer: “The mayor is charged with seeing that all resolutions and ordinances of the board of county commissioners are faithfully executed. He or she is to present the consolidated county budget to the commission, which has full rights to modify or amend. The mayor is also compelled to ‘take such other executive and administrative actions as are required by this charter or may be prescribed by the board of county commissioners.'”

The administration has not yet loosed its own heavy artillery, fighting things out so far on the single issue of whether the commission has the right to an independent counsel — something that neither Luttrell nor his appointed county attorney, Ross Dyer, have been willing to concede. Both claim that only the elected chief executive, Luttrell, has contractual authority under the terms of the charter and that the county attorney and all of the office’s assisting personnel are contracted employees.

In the face of advice from Dyer that Bolton’s appointment would be illegal except as a possible adjunct to Dyer’s own staff and under his supervision, the commission voted late last month to hire the former commissioner. Mayor Luttrell subsequently vetoed the appointment, and the commission, in a special called meeting last week, found nine votes to override the veto — one more than the two-thirds majority required for an override.

Inasmuch as Luttrell has indicated he will refuse to sign a contract of employment for Bolton, the matter lies in limbo, awaiting either a legal determination, perhaps in Chancery Court, or some solution based on a compromise reached between the commission and the administration. A possible basis for the latter is the situation on the other side of Mid-America Plaza in City Hall.

There, Allan Wade has served since the 1990s as the Memphis City Council’s attorney, functioning both as a counterweight to the city attorney and an alternative source of legal opinion during public meetings from the desk he occupies on the floor adjacent to the council. Wade’s office is often cited by members of the county commission as a precedent for the one they intend to create. Interestingly, though, and this is where the prospect of a compromise on the county side begins to gleam, a striking analysis has been offered by Jimmie Covington, a longtime former journalist whose knowledge of city/county affairs was voluminous enough that the public officials he reported on frequently sought his opinion on matters under contention.

In another recent op-ed for the Flyer, Covington advanced the idea that there is no actual legal basis per se for Wade’s position of city council attorney — merely an ad hoc gentlemen’s agreement between the principals of city government that has spanned almost a quarter century. A solution of that sort on the county side is not impossible; Roland has hinted privately that it, or something like it, could be the carrot in a scenario whereby the stick might be a commission challenge to Dyer’s tenure as county attorney.

(“No comment” has been Dyer’s consistent response to all direct queries about the current imbroglio — which should not be taken to mean that he and Luttrell are not incubating an in-depth strategy of their own.)

So far the bipartisan majority for the commission’s power move has held — though there are clear indications that some commission members are not at home with the idea of prolonged conflict with the administration. David Reaves, who represents Bartlett, has been a dissenter on several recent votes regarding the attorney matter, though he was on the same page as fellow Republicans Roland and Shafer regarding some of the early challenges, which revolved around differences of opinion between the administration and the commission regarding the amount and disposition of a fiscal surplus.

Bipartisan coalitions are potentially unstable by their nature. The current one is Republican-led, from a base that has included five of the commission’s elected Republicans, plus Democrats Justin Ford and Eddie Jones, whose allegiance is provisional and dependent more on personal accommodations than on ideological grounds.

Largely as a result of internal machinations that denied him the chairmanship, the other elected Republican, Steve Basar, has been in de facto alliance with the commission’s Democrats on several specifically partisan matters, though his was a crucial swing vote for last week’s veto override.

From the standpoint of maintaining a bipartisan coalition versus Luttrell, the status of designated commission counsel Bolton as an African-American Democrat has been a crucial binder (though it is also the source of some of the misgivings harbored by Reaves and potentially other Republicans). In a commission meeting two weeks ago, Shafer bruited about the names of others who had been considered for commission attorney, including former GOP commissioners Charles Perkins and Buck Wellford, both of whom, she said, had declined the opportunity.

She also had mentioned in passing former Democratic Commissioner Steve Mulroy, who said this week that Shafer had contacted him as a reserve possibility if the current involvement with Bolton came unglued. (Mulroy said he had recommended instead that the commission consider an African American without any particular political bias.)

Meanwhile, even as there is a temporary lull in the matter of a commission attorney, the ad hoc commission coalition has opened up a new front with a different adversary — the Economic Development Growth Engine (EDGE) board.

• EDGE, the quasi-independent city/county agency charged with overseeing industrial recruitment and development, has often been the subject of public criticism for its decisions on payment-in-lieu-of-taxes (PILOT) arrangements with businesses. It has come in for criticism on the commission for that and for the fact that the representatives on the EDGE board of the commission and the city council are ex-officio non-voting members only.

Another bone of contention is an assumption that EDGE officials are on the cusp of completing a merger with the local Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA). Commissioner Basar introduced a resolution on Monday requiring EDGE to get the approval of both the commission and the city council before proceeding with a merger.

Perhaps because of its sponsorship (Basar is still persona non grata with the dominant coalition), the commission approved instead a motion to send the matter back to committee, as well as a resolution from Shafer requesting that no action be taken by EDGE and CRA until the full commission can formally review the matter at its December 7th meeting. Added Roland, ominously: “I am giving a firm warning to EDGE that if they try to sign a memorandum of understanding or go around us in any way possible, there will be a resolution from us rescinding EDGE.”

Yet a third commission foil, the Shelby County Schools board got off the hook Monday when, after serious criticism from members regarding SCS officials’ inability to be specific in their reasons for requesting commission approval of reshuffling some $10 million in previously allocated funds, the approval was granted, but with warnings from Shafer, among others, that the commission would require more details and more advance knowledge before approving any future such requests.

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The Battle Over Julian Bolton

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Julian Bolton, the former Shelby County commissioner who was appointed two weeks ago by commission chairman Terry Roland as a “special purposes” lawyer to look into the legality of his (Bolton’s) being hired by the commission as its permanent independent counsel, responded to Roland on Monday with a lengthy series of citations from the County Charter. All seemingly attested that he could indeed be hired, a prior finding by County Attorney Ross Dyer to the contrary notwithstanding.

The commission promptly voted 8-5 on Monday in favor of a resolution from chairman Roland to carry out the hiring.

Jackson Baker

Chairman Roland and County Attorney Ross Dyer seemed focused on another matter here, but they were much on each other’s mind on Monday.

Dyer chose not to comment on the new development, other than to reaffirm his contention of two weeks ago that any permanent attorney hired by the commission would have to be a member of his (Dyer’s) staff, paid by him, and managed by him. And, since Dyer determined that he and the commission chair would have to agree on a candidate, the county attorney in effect had claimed veto power over any such appointment.

All that had seemingly scotched a resolution offered at the time by Roland to hire Bolton — as a decisive first move in a commission effort to assert its authority at the expense of County Mayor Mark Luttrell, who, a clear majority of commissioners believed, had over the months been ritually usurping prerogatives that either did not exist or that were more properly those of the commission to administer — both in determining policy generally and in fiscal administration, specifically.

Back in the 1990s, the Memphis City Council had engaged Allan Wade as its own independent attorney to sift evidence, make arguments, and determine policy in contradistinction to the city attorney and the office of the mayor. Wade was the model for the position the commission intended to create.

For weeks the commission had been battling Luttrell, and Dyer, both of whom had maintained the County Charter permitted only one county legal office under the direct administration of the mayor serving as legal advisor to all aspects of county government, including the affairs of the commission itself.

Two weeks ago, at the time of the first abortive resolution to hire Bolton as an independent lawyer, Dyer had, as indicated above, rejected that idea, but to mollify Roland et al., had suggested that, for specific, limited purposes, the commission could, as it had during moments of the city school-merger controversy of 2010-13, and, as it had during wrangling at Chancery Court over the various ways of reapportioning itself, hire an attorney for special, limited, non-recurring purposes.

“Fine,” announced Roland, who withdrew his original resolution and hired Bolton on the spot for the “single purpose” of countering Dyer’s case against the county commission’s hiring Bolton as a permanent and full-time independent counsel.

From that point, the Luttrell administration and the commission went on to hold what had been a preordained “budget summit” last Friday at St. Columbia Episcopal Conference & Retreat Center in Bartlett. The purpose was to reach a meeting of the minds on some of the issues dividing administration from commission and, if possible, to get on the same page regarding matters at large.

With Luttrell and Roland sitting side by side as co-chairs for the event, with principals from throughout county government sharing breakfast and lunch at the casual affair, and with a polite discussion of subjects ranging from revenue sources to the respective roles of the commission and the mayor in the budget process to the problem of OPEBs [Other Postemployment Benefits] to educational spending to recondite aspects of the county wheel tax and county infrastructure, all gathered did seem to achieve some sense of accord.

Interestingly, one idea that became something of a hit at the conference apparently derived from research by Bolton, who determined that in virtually every corner of Shelby County there were unused county-owned enclaves that could serve as office space for the county commissioner whose district happened to coincide with the available space.

One commissioner, Mark Billingsley, who represents Germantown, professed himself happy with the prospect.

So lingering was the mood of concord and free sharing of information on Friday, so warm and comfortable the sense of common purpose, that developments on the following Monday came as the proverbial cold shower.

By Monday morning, ad hoc attorney Bolton had made his report to chairman Roland, who distributed copies to the full commission.

Bolton’s report, based on his reading of the County Charter, said, in great and specific legal detail, that “the legislative power of the county is vested in the Board of County Commissioners of Shelby County [and] includes all lawful authority to adopt ordinances and resolutions governing the operation of government or regulating the conduct and affairs of the residents of Shelby County.”

From that broad first declaration, Bolton, citing codes and sections from the charter, went on to state that “the charter clearly subordinates the position of the chief executive officer, i.e., county mayor,” whose role is “to see that all resolutions and ordinances of the board of county commissioners and all laws of the state subject to enforcement by them or by the officers who are subject under this charter, to their direction and supervision are faithfully executed.”

Bolton’s memo went on and on in this vein, but its bottom line contention is that the commission, not the mayor, is the county’s chief governing authority. On the matter of the county attorney’s authority claimed by Dyer, Bolton writes, “The rules of statutory construction do not allow the subordinate office of the County Attorney, although chief counsel for the commission, to impair, frustrate, nor defeat the object of a statute, ordinance, or resolution by interpreting that ‘chief counsel’ means ‘sole counsel,’ absent specific statutory, or charter authority.”

All of this readily convinced Roland to add the new appointment resolution making Bolton a de facto independent attorney for the county commission. The actual vote on his resolution Monday was 8-4, in favor, with Democrat Van Turner demurring and four Republican commissioners — David Reaves, Billingsley, Steve Basar, and George Chism voting no.

Various reasons were adduced for the lack of solidarity with the commission — the fact that Dyer had reportedly interrupted their attempted executive session on the matter Monday morning, declaring it illegal, or allegations that interested Republicans from outside the commission had intervened with individual commissioners against the appointment of a Democrat, Bolton, as the commission’s attorney, rather than a Republican.

The 8-5 vote, underwritten by all Democrats save for Turner and by Republicans Roland and Heidi Shafer (whose argument for enhanced commission authority is this week’s Viewpoint, p. 15), holds for a document that contains a space for Mayor Luttrell to sign.

The county charter would allow the resolution of Bolton’s appointment to become official without the mayor’s signature or, should Luttrell choose to veto it, by a simple majority override on the part of the commission.

The remaining obstacle to the installation of Bolton as an independent attorney representing the county commission is contained in one of the resolution’s enabling clauses: “Be it further resolved that the Shelby County Attorney is directed to prepare a contract under the supervision of the chairman, or his designee, for execution by the parties in accordance with Section 3.03 (A) (D) of the Shelby County Charter.”

County Attorney Dyer has made it clear to his confidants that he has no intention of preparing such a contract, technically forestalling the effect of the document and likely throwing the whole matter into the jurisdiction of Chancery Court for final judgment.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Restoring Balance Between the Shelby County Commission and the Mayor

The 2014 Shelby County election ushered in many first-time county commissioners to serve as the people’s representatives. It was the first full election under the single-member district division. Only five of the 13 commissioners had served a full previous term. So, while the changeover offers plenty of opportunity for positive change, it also creates a deficit in institutional knowledge.

Heidi Shafer

Previous large commission turnovers were somewhat mitigated by county attorneys who had years of service in the Shelby County Attorney’s offices. This time, however, a new county attorney was appointed by the mayor from outside Shelby County, creating opportunities for positive change along with a lack of practical historical knowledge.

The commission and mayor’s office are currently struggling over what powers appropriately belong to each according to the charter, and how to best serve the people who elected us.

Commissions in previous years have allowed the mayoral administration to borrow some of the commission’s powers, as it did when EDGE was created in 2010, and allowed mayoral contracting up to $100,000 during Mayor Wharton’s term. The commission is evaluating which of those powers should be taken back. 

We have been reviewing the Shelby County Charter for a clearer understanding of its mandates.

First, the charter proclaims: “The Legislature is given broad legislative powers inclusive of the rights to adopt County ordinances and is so constructed as to be truly representative of all the people of Shelby County.” And this: “The legislative power includes all lawful authority [my emphasis] to adopt ordinances and resolutions governing the operation of government or regulating the conduct and affairs of the residents of the county, to adopt the county budget, to fix the county tax rate, to make appropriations of county funds for all legal purposes, and to exercise all other authority of a legislative nature which is vested in the county by the Constitution, general statutes, or special, local or private acts of the General Assembly or this charter.”

Second, the commission may “adopt any ordinance or resolution [again, my emphasis] which is not in conflict with the Constitution or general laws of the state of Tennessee, or charter.”

Third, “The legislative branch is vested with all other powers of the county not specifically, or by necessary implication, vested in some other official of the county by the Constitution or by statute not inconsistent with this charter”. The mayor is given no similar provision.

The charter also lays out clear responsibility for the commission to order “such special audits as deemed necessary,” to establish purchasing policies, and to be the sole power to grant franchises, borrow money, and issue bonds. No county property or interests can be sold without express validation of the commission. The commission also sets its own budget.

All resolutions and ordinances become effective with or without a signature from the executive branch, unless the mayor chooses to veto. The commission can then override an executive veto with a majority plus one vote (unless the vote originally required a two-thirds majority to pass).

The commission has the power of approval and consent of all nominations by the mayor for any board, commission, agency, authority, chief administrative officer, county attorney, public defender, or divorce referee.

What are the duties of the county mayor? The mayor is charged with seeing that all resolutions and ordinances of the board of county commissioners are faithfully executed. He or she is to present the consolidated county budget to the commission, which has full rights to modify or amend. The mayor is also compelled to “take such other executive and administrative actions as are required by this charter or may be prescribed by the board of county commissioners.”

I am a believer in the separation of powers and of intra-governmental cooperation, when it doesn’t compromise the voice of the people.

But the charter makes it clear that the commission is the legal designee and guardian of that voice. The ongoing efforts of my colleagues and me to restore and safeguard the authority of the commission vis-à-vis the mayor should be seen in that light.

Heidi Shafer is a second-term member of the Shelby County Commission.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Politics or Government in Shelby County?

CREDIT: JB

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


DOGGING THE VOTE:

JB




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



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



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

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

County Commission Power Surge

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Give Commission Grants a Chance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Chism Backs Strickland for Mayor

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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