Tag: Henri Brooks

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Politics Politics Feature

Mano-a-Mano

A political comeback is apparently in the works for former public services and neighborhoods director Kenneth Moody, who left office in 2009 with his patron, former Mayor Willie Herenton. And that will set up an interesting one-on-one contest in next year’s Democratic primary for the job Moody seeks — that of Juvenile Court clerk.

Already an active Democratic candidate for the position is Shelby County commissioner Henri Brooks, whose campaign against what she saw as abuses at Juvenile Court resulted in a scathing Department of Justice report last year that has required extensive (and costly) fixes by the court.

The current Juvenile Court clerk, Joy Touliatos, is expected once again to be the Republican candidate for the office, facing the winner of the 2014 Democratic primary.

Confirming his intent to be a candidate, Moody acknowledged that, under his administration as public services director, serious problems developed in two city divisions under his general purview — the rape crisis center (MSARC) and the city animal shelter. Both divisions were administered by subordinates, but Moody said this week, “I take responsibility for what went on. I was director of public services.”

Moody, now an administrator of a local security service, says he learned from that experience and “it has made me a better manager.”

A former basketball star for the University of Memphis, Moody will have support from some influential allies, including Bank of Bartlett president Harold Byrd and local activist/philanthropist Gayle Rose, both longtime friends.

• Jocelyn Dan Wurzburg, a well-known Memphis activist in social and civic causes, is coming in for a double dose of statewide honors.

Wurzburg, an attorney, was recently honored by the Tennessee Human Rights Commission (THRC) at its 50th anniversary celebration in Nashville for her longtime advocacy in civil and women’s rights. The commission created a special award, to be called the Jocelyn Dan Wurzburg Civil Rights Legacy Award, which will be given to deserving recipients henceforth.

THRC executive director Beverly L. Watts said: “During this year of recognizing civil rights advocates throughout the state, the 50th anniversary co-chairs and I realized Jocelyn Wurzburg embodies civil rights ideals, principles, and dedication to equality. This award was presented to Jocelyn D. Wurzburg for her specific contributions to the commission and her dedication to equality. The board will present this award at its discretion to those who embody the dedication to equality.”

Also a pioneer in the mediation process, Wurzburg was originally appointed to the THRC in 1971 by Governor Winfield Dunn and reappointed in 2007 by Governor Phil Bredesen. She authored the 1978 legislation that became the Tennessee Human Rights Act and transformed the commission from an advisory organization to one with power to litigate claims of discrimination.

Wurzburg is one of two Memphis figures who will be inaugurated into the Tennessee Women’s Hall of Fame at the 10th annual Women’s Economic Summit in Nashville this weekend. The other is former University of Memphis president Shirley Raines.

Germantown mayor Sharon Goldsworthy will also be prominent at the summit as a member of a mayors’ panel discussing economic issues.

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Politics Politics Feature

Sealing the Deal

I’m off to the two national conventions. But first:

What hath Henri Brooks wrought? And then unwrought?

Or maybe those questions should be posed in reverse order. In any case, what the outspoken and influential county commissioner from District 2, Position 2, did at the very beginning of Monday’s meeting of the Shelby County Commission was abstain from voting on the second reading of an ordinance to redefine five countywide offices.

And a good two hours later, what Brooks did was decide she could vote on that ordinance after all, giving it enough votes finally for the required super-majority of nine and putting it on the way to a third reading and final passage. All of which means that Shelby County voters will have a chance to approve the newly re-created and freshly chartered offices of sheriff, trustee, assessor, county clerk, and register on the November ballot.

What happened in between was that the 13 commissioners were forced into yet another vexing and acrimonious recap of all the various dissents and counterarguments that had kept the commission from coming to agreement on what to do about the five offices, which in essence had seen their constitutionality invalidated by the state Supreme Court in January 2007.

That act, a spinoff of the court’s ruling on similar positions in Knox County, forced the commission to re-create the offices under the county charter. A first compromise effort, which came after literally months of frenzied disagreement, was put on the August ballot as Ordinance 360 and was narrowly rejected, though a companion measure, Ordinance 361, passed handily.

After the defeat of Ordinance 360, presumably because of a controversial term-limits provision — a maximum of three four-years terms for the five officials, plus the mayor and commissioners — the commission bit the bullet last week and forged two new ordinances for November. One would merely re-create the five positions, and the other would impose limits of two four-year terms on the officials.

The second reading on Monday was expected to be routine — though, given the cantankerousness that has prevailed in previous discussions, nobody could be 100 per cent certain. And, sure enough, Brooks’ demurrer left the first resolution short by a vote and put the second one in jeopardy.

The capsule version of what happened next: Every argument for and against limits of two four-year terms, limits of three four-year terms, and there being no limits at all was hauled out of storage, dusted off, and given another hearing — though, as before, agreement proved elusive.

At one point, Commissioner George Flinn seemed to have come up with a compromise that would have let Shelby Countians vote on one ordinance that re-created the five jobs with limits of three four-year terms, accompanied by another resolution limiting the offices to two four-year terms that superseded the first resolution in that respect.

A majority of the commission seemed ready to vote approval, but the moment of epiphany dissipated when it came to actual voting. Flinn’s motion failed, as did another variant, offered by Commissioner Mike Ritz, that located the two-term provision in the first proposed ordinance and a three-term provision in the second or “trump” ordinance.

Then, for reasons as unexplained as was her original abstention, Brooks proposed a re-vote on the original first ordinance, simply re-creating the five positions, and, since she voted for it this time, it got the necessary nine. Following that, so did the original second resolution, with its provision for limits on the five officials of two four-year terms.

Not everybody liked the outcome, but most commissioners acknowledged afterward that the two ordinances, submitted to the voters in November as referenda, had good chances for passage.

• In other significant actions, the commission rejected a proposal for outsourcing food services for the division of corrections to a private corporation and approved a long-pending salary adjustment upward for sheriff’s deputies at or below the rank of lieutenant.

Though both votes flowed across party lines, each reflected the enhanced power of the Democratic electorate — both on the commission, where Democrats now own a majority and District 5’s Steve Mulroy has often provided a swing vote on politically contentious matters, and in the county at large, where the August 7th election results tilted decisively toward Democratic demographics.

• Thursday is the filing deadline for Scott McCormick‘s vacated District 9, Position 1, City Council seat. See memphisflyer.com for updates on this and other political matters.

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Editorial Opinion

Politics and Rule 33

The election in 2006 of a new and, thanks to term limits, almost completely overhauled, Shelby County Commission led to a plethora of ad hoc committees, new regulations, what-have-you. Two of the new rules deserve special mention.

One is the so-called “Mulroy Rule” named after first-term commissioner Steve Mulroy, a lawyer, who proposed it by way of streamlining the parliamentary aspects of commission business. The old protocol had it that members seeking recognition from the chair would be called on in the order of their requests, regardless of the subject matter. The Mulroy Rule gives the chairman discretion to vary that order in the interests of a commissioner who seeks recognition for a point previously covered in the discussion but still pending.

Another new one is Rule 33, so called for its place in the revised bylaw sequence. This one is even more innovative, in that it allows for a commissioner to ask for and get a two-week deferral on any item, so long as the commissioner seeking the deferral has not been granted one on that item previously. Given the well-known complications of Roberts’ Rules, the new rule has often proved to be a convenient piece of streamlining.

It has also served once or twice as a means, for better or for worse, of circumventing an action about to be taken by the commission as a whole. So it was on Monday, when Rule 33 was invoked by Commissioner Mike Ritz to defer a resolution to appropriate $1 million to the Memphis Chamber Foundation. The money would be used to fund a plethora of local organizations and other beneficiaries in the interests of “facilitation of economic development in Memphis and Shelby County.”

And that was a no-no in the eyes of a couple of commissioners, notably Henri Brooks and Sidney Chism, the latter a well-known political broker during election seasons. In the last few weeks, Brooks has carried the brunt of a battle against the resolution, noting that one of the proposed beneficiaries was the local group Mpact, which over the years has involved itself in political issues, though not especially in advocacy of this or that candidate. New Path, another organization not included in the grant, does play politics in the direct sense, however, and normally endorses slates of candidates at election time.

There happens to be a modest overlap of membership between the governing boards of the two organizations, and that was enough to prove antagonistic to Brooks and her commission ally Chism, who prefers to push candidates of his own choosing, sans benefit of county funds. In committee hearings, therefore, Brooks managed to attach conditions utterly forbidding the use of county-appropriated money for overtly political purposes.

There ensued objections to the objections, however, and efforts to parse the issue a bit more proved fruitless. The matter got so tangled that a frustrated and/or confused Ritz moved for a deferral. When that motion was defeated, he shrugged and invoked Rule 33, which meant that the resolution got deferred anyway.

Perhaps the two weeks’ respite will allow the commissioners to unravel the controversy and arrive at a satisfactory compromise. If so, the odd but promising Rule 33 might become a precedent for other local bodies.

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Editorial Opinion

Good Advice from NATO

Speaking to Tennessee reporters from Brussels on Tuesday, 8th District congressman John Tanner, who was there as chairman of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization delegation from the U.S., commented on the obvious: Our NATO allies require — and on this occasion got — confirmation that our misadventures in Iraq and the lingering controversy about our involvement there will not hinder the American commitment to Afghanistan.

“One of the reasons for the trip was to reaffirm to our allies that from the congressional point of view the two are not the same. Afghanistan is a completely different situation,” Tanner said. Such reassurance was all the more necessary, he pointed out, because of wide international publicity given the congressional debate over President Bush’s “surge” strategy for pacifying Baghdad.

Tanner, who voted with the majority in the House of Representatives last week to oppose the surge, said his delegation’s talks with military and civilian representatives of NATO, beginning over the weekend, had buttressed his convictions. “We’ve tried two surges — actually three — and not lessened the violence.”

Noting an ominous amount of evidence that resurgent Taliban and al Qaeda forces are preparing a Tet-style spring offensive on Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan, Tanner made an effort to sound reassuring that NATO had the situation under control. He pointed out the obvious distinction between our go-it-alone policy in Iraq and the coordinated multinational effort in Afghanistan.

And, at a time when the Bush administration is making much of alleged provocations in Iraq by Iran, Tanner passed on a note of caution that pervaded his delegation’s talks in Brussels: “There is a feeling in NATO that we need a diplomatic approach to Iran, that we need more diplomatic and political effort with respect to Iran and Iraq.”

We can only hope that this wise counsel on our allies’ part has at least a modicum of impact on President Bush and other administration officials, and we are grateful to Representative Tanner and his delegation colleagues for helping to broker such views.

A Modest Suggestion

Face it: For better or for worse, Shelby County commissioner Henri Brooks has become a force in local government — and, increasingly, a focus of controversy. Most recently, she was the target of criticism for a taxpayer-paid trip to Washington to request a Justice Department investigation of procedures at Juvenile Court. Critics charged that her action was premature, in that she will return to Washington next month for a meeting of the National Association of Counties.

We are struck by a certain irony in Brooks’ actions. In her brief tenure on the commission, she has made a point of citing federal statutes and the authority of the national government to achieve a variety of ends commensurate with racial equality. We suggest that such commendable single-mindedness might oblige her to reconsider her persistent refusal to join her commission colleagues in their ritual Pledge of Allegiance to the emblem of the federal government — under which, after all, hundreds of thousands of young Americans, white and black, once died to abolish slavery and other instruments of the inequality she so rightly detests.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Doing the Right Thing

When newly elected Shelby County commissioner Henri Brooks said recently that she hoped to be able to recommend to her commission mates a possible successor to her state House of Representatives seat who was as hard-working and dedicated as herself, she was no doubt sincere. And she may indeed know someone worth touting to the commission.

The problem is that, as of a Monday deadline, Brooks had decided to forgo resigning from her legislative position in time for the local Democratic Party to name a nominee in her stead. Her position could theoretically cost the taxpayers of Shelby County somewhere between $100,000 and $200,000 to fund a special election for a long-term successor, since all the commission can do is name an interim replacement. In reality, though, a special election is likely to be required anyhow to accommodate several other actual and probable vacancies — including one for a successor to state senator Steve Cohen should he win his current congressional race.

And, since many Democrats and other observers were critical of how the local party filled another recent vacancy — that for a successor to the now resigned state senator Kathryn Bowers — it is arguable that Brooks did the right thing after all in making sure the voters of her district, not an organized coterie on a committee, get to make the ultimate decision about their next representative.

As it happens, Brooks has become something of an exemplar in another quandary involving right choices: In her first two meetings as a commission member, she has made it clear that she will continue her practice, initiated during sessions of the legislature, of declining to participate, except passively and mutely, in the ritual Pledge of Allegiance which opens commission sessions.

Is she right or wrong? Right, if you agree with her that the flag is too tainted with racism to be so honored. Wrong, if you see it as the banner under which blood was shed to abolish slavery. Right again if you see her stand as an exercise of constitutional prerogative. Wrong again if you see it as flouting the sensibilities of her commission mates and the community. (Her fellow commissioners have so far been conspicuously un-judgmental.)

In short, the issue is not cut and dried. We reflected on all this again this week when our friend Lyda Phillips, the longtime communications director for the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, came to Memphis to promote her new novel, Mr. Touchdown, which chronicles the long-gone age of legal segregation through which she passed as a Whitehaven High School student in the 1960s.

Phillips’ evocative tale of the snubs and ostracisms and barricades and worse which confronted black students during that first wave of integration, and the parallel challenge to white students like herself to respond correctly under the prevailing social circumstances, was a reminder that it wasn’t then, isn’t now, and never will be easy to do determine just what is the “right thing” to do.

Right or wrong, Brooks has at least thought about such choices. For that she deserves some credit.