Tag: James harvey

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Politics Politics Feature

Cutting the Cord

Anyone used to listening in to committee meetings of the Shelby County Commission via audio streaming on the commission’s website came a cropper last Wednesday — literally. Workmen on the 11th floor involved in the renovation of the Vasco Smith County Administration Building inadvertently cropped the fiber optics cord that enabled transmission of commission activities.

James Harvey

The unfortunate circumstance wiped out audio records of some lively debate, though recordings survive of the commission’s interviews with 11 candidates for the appointment to a vacancy in District 6 of the Unified School District’s board.

The candidates for the seat vacated by Reginald Porter, now chief of staff for the Unified District, were: Shante Avant, Perry Bond, Tony Braxton, Justin Casey, Cherry Davis, Clara Ford, Rosalyn Nichols, David Page, Joya Smith, Rhoda Stigall, and Sharon Webb.

The commission will vote on a successor to Porter on Monday.

Another matter introduced last Wednesday was that of committee assignments made by chairman-elect James Harvey. Normally, the commission’s approval of such assignments is pro forma, and it may turn out to be that way when the commission holds its next public meeting on Monday.

But Commissioner Walter Bailey, a Democrat, fired a shot last Wednesday across the bow of fellow Democrat Harvey, who on Monday will formally accede to the chairmanship, which he won in large part with Republican votes.

Bailey objected to the appointment of Republican Heidi Shafer as budget committee chairman and sought instead to amend the appointments resolution to reappoint Melvin Burgess as budget chair. Shafer objected, as did GOP commissioners Terry Roland and Chris Thomas, and Bailey’s motion was defeated, with the full commission due to consider the issue next week.

What is involved is something more than mere honorifics. Shafer was a vociferous opponent of the increases in the county budget and tax rate sought by county mayor Mark Luttrell and approved this year after a protracted struggle. She is known for close line-by-line study of budgetary matters and sees herself as a watchdog against overspending.

Burgess, who works as director of internal audit for the Unified School District, is meanwhile still under attack by Roland, who unsuccessfully sought to have Burgess disqualified from voting on the budget and tax rate because of his employment with an agency receiving county funds.

As the interviews with candidates for the school board were being held on Wednesday, Roland apprised the Flyer of his intention to challenge Burgess’ right to vote on the matter on Monday. “Melvin can’t do that,” Roland said. “He’s trying to vote [to select] his own boss.”

• The list of candidates who met last Thursday’s filing deadline for a special election in state House District 91 indicates that name identification may play a major role in determining the winner. The seat was held for some four decades by the late, revered former House speaker pro tem Lois DeBerry, and the surname DeBerry is represented twice in the field of 11 candidates.

Dwight DeBerry, a political newcomer, is a cousin of Lois DeBerry, while Doris A. DeBerry-Bradshaw is the sister of District 90 representative John DeBerry (no relation to Lois). The extended Ford family figures in with the filing of Kemba Ford, daughter of former state senator John Ford, who is making her second electoral effort after running unsuccessfully for the city council in 2011.

Other candidates in a fairly nondescript field are Raumesh Akbari, Joshua R. Forbes, Terica Lamb, Clifford Lewis, Kermit Moore, Gregory Stokes, Mary Taylor Wright, and Jim Tomasik. All except Tomasik, an avowed libertarian and an independent, are running in the October 8th Democratic primary. No Republicans filed in District 91. The general election is November 21st.

• Stephen Fincher, a member in good standing of the congressional Tea Party caucus and an unabashed member of the Republican Party’s right wing, struck some unwontedly moderate-sounding notes last Tuesday night as the featured speaker at the annual Master Meal event of the East Shelby County Republican Club.

Noting that he was “the first Republican to hold this seat,” the 8th District congressman from Frog Jump in Crockett County called for unity among all Republicans of whatever faction. “This is a two-party system. We cannot eat our own. We must stay united if we’re going to beat Barack Obama and the Democrats,” he said.

And Fincher, who spoke before a packed house at the Great Hall of Germantown, urged caution regarding a proposal by some Republicans to force a shutdown of the government rather than allow the funding of Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act).

“If we do a CR [continuing resolution] without Obamacare, [Senate Democratic leader] Harry Reid is going to put it right back in and send it back to the House,” Fincher said.

Then, after asking for a show of hands over the proposition that “the president will be right back on the campaign trail, and IRS scandals and Benghazi and all that will be swept under the rug, and he will use this to keep control of the Senate in 2014,” Fincher said, “I think that’s what’ll happen. … I think he’s baiting us, he’s trying to divide us.” The congressman advocated instead a strategy of delaying the onset of aspects of Obamacare.

But Fincher made it clear that, in proposing discretion, he was not advocating that Republicans surrender their principles. “If we fall, it won’t be because of the Democrats. It’ll be because of the Republicans not standing up.”

Other speakers at the annual East Shelby GOP affair included Luttrell, Shelby County Republican chairman Justin Joy, and state Republican chairman Chris Devaney of Nashville. Devaney defended a decision by the National Republican Committee to keep NBC and CNN out of the GOP’s future televised-debate plans as the penalty for those networks’ pursuing program projects relating to potential Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

• Shelby County chancellor Arnold Goldin, who has figured in several important cases in recent years — notably the challenge by several Democratic losing candidates to the county election of 2010, which he denied — is one of three judges appointed last week by Governor Bill Haslam to fill appellate-court vacancies a year from now.

Goldin will replace Judge Alan Highers, who is retiring, on the Court of Appeals, Western Section.

The other judge-in-waiting appointments are those of Nashville lawyer Neal McBrayer to the Court of Appeals, Middle Section, to succeed Judge Patricia Cottrell, and Criminal Court judge Robert Montgomery of Sullivan County to the Court of Criminal Appeals, Middle Section, to succeed Judge Joseph Tipton.

The unusual situation is the result of the General Assembly’s failure during the 2013 legislative session to renew the state’s Judicial Nominating Commission, which has had the duty of recommending candidates to fill appellate vacancies. Mindful of the situation, Judges Highers, Cottrell, and Tipton gave the governor early notice of their intention not to be on the August 2014 retention ballot.

The Judicial Commission, which expired at midnight on June 30th, did its part to fill the procedural gap, meeting in the two or three days prior to that and making its last recommendations to Haslam for the three positions.

The November 2014 statewide ballot will contain a constitutional amendment empowering the governor to fill such appellate vacancies on his own, subject to the legislature’s confirmation.

Meanwhile, another Memphian, state Supreme Court justice Janice Holder, has also announced that she intends to retire when her term expires on August 31, 2014, and, since the Judicial Commission expired without making recommendations for her successor, Haslam is in something of a quandary as to how to proceed.

 

• Memphis Democrats used to getting emails from the Daily Buzz newsletter, published by Trace Sharp and former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mike McWherter of Dresden, will be getting a bonus from now on.

The Daily Buzz email, reconfigured as the Crockett Policy Buzz, will now incorporate investigative and analytical efforts of the newly formed Crockett Policy Institute, whose executive director is Sharp.

As she wrote, in a message to subscribers, “It is time for reasonable and educated discussions on policy, reaching out for common sense solutions that can change our state for the better. … The Crockett Policy Buzz which will come to your emails each morning will continue to focus on news of the day as well as looking at how we can problem solve effectively the tests we face in our society right now.”

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Editorial Opinion

Wonderland

CREDIT: Danziger

“I see a way to have no tax increase. I see a way to have no layoffs and no reduction in services. I don’t know how I see that, but I see that.”

That verbatim snatch was the de facto campaign speech on Monday of newly elected Shelby County Commission chairman James Harvey, who made the statement in one of the typically rambling speeches he makes on issues of the day. In this case, the question was whether or not to support the $4.38 tax rate arrived at by county mayor Mark Luttrell to balance out the dramatically enlarged needs of the newly merged city/county school system and the other basic needs of a community where declining property value assessments are about to cause a drastic drop in revenues.

As Luttrell was at pains to remind members of the commission on Monday, he is a conservative Republican who made his pre-mayoral reputation as a budget-pruning sheriff and who had been “compelled” by current realities to propose a tax rate that was just barely enough to keep county government functioning. He made a special effort to reach his fellow Republicans, who, with the exception of Mike Ritz, ended up rejecting his tax-rate proposal. It was the same proposal that the commission had initially approved weeks ago, when it approved Luttrell’s budget, the same budget for which, as of July 1st, the county has been disbursing funds on the basis of the $4.38 tax rate.

The same set of Republicans voted against both budget and tax rate on first and second readings, so it was no surprise to see them vote no again on Monday, though some of their reasoning had turned Alice in Wonderland bizarre.

At one point GOP commissioners Wyatt Bunker and Heidi Shafer made a formal motion to keep the county’s property tax rate at $4.02, the same rate as last year, when property assessments were notably higher. The state of Tennessee calculates something called a “certified tax rate,” which is the bare-bones figure a given local jurisdiction must employ to continue its existing level of revenues. For Shelby County, the figure was $4.32 — a mere 6 cents lower than Luttrell’s request. So what Bunker and Shafer were proposing was, in effect, a slashing of county funding of almost $60 million, requiring something like 800 to 1,000 county jobs.

It wasn’t just the Republicans who did the damage on Monday. It was three Democratic defectors who finished things off: Justin Ford, who offered no explanation for his apostasy; Sidney Chism, who has allowed himself to be cowed by conflict-of-interest accusations from Republican Terry Roland and has recused himself on all tax-rate matters of late; and Harvey. Not even he could imagine how to deliver on the giddy promise quoted in the first paragraph above. But such rhetoric was enough finally to earn him a coalition of tax-rate opponents and to break a stalemated race for the chairmanship.

“A land full of wonder, mystery, and danger! Some say to survive it: You need to be as mad as a hatter. Which luckily I am!” Lewis Carroll’s Mad Hatter said that. Shelby County government would appear to be his kind of place.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Confronting the Unknown

Even as the fate of Shelby County’s schools was an inevitable and implicit backdrop to budget and tax negotiations on the Shelby County Commission (see below), six suburban municipalities were launched on their second effort to approve the separate suburban school systems that they are already collecting taxes for.

The municipalities of Germantown, Collierville, Bartlett, Lakeland, Arlington, and Millington all voted in 2012 in favor of establishing separate school systems for themselves in conformity with legislation in Nashville, as well as for the half-cent sales-tax increases to pay for them. The taxes would remain, but the school votes were nullified when U.S. district judge Hardy Mays found the authorizing legislation to be unconstitutional.

In this year’s legislative sessions, state senator Mark Norris and state representative Curry Todd, both Collierville Republicans, recast their former bills as applying statewide, and the suburbs were entitled to try again.

All six suburbs are expected to vote yes as before, in an election process that began with early voting last week and will conclude next Tuesday, July 16th.

For the time being, though, the Shelby County Unified School System holds sway throughout the county’s boundaries, though it shares its jurisdictional and geographic space with an array of charter schools and state-controlled special districts.

The old Memphis City Schools system officially expired on July 1st, and Shelby County Schools has expanded and metamorphosed into the (temporarily) unified system.

Though everyone expects the six new municipal districts to be in existence a year from now, with plans for eventual coalescence into some combination vaguely like the old SCS system, numerous issues remain unresolved — including the means of making over existing school properties to the suburbs, the fate of students in unincorporated areas, and the reshuffling of employee rosters when de-merger becomes necessary.

Commission chairman-elect James Harvey

• The fate of Shelby County’s schools was very much involved with the unforeseen developments and unexpected outcomes that marked the resolution of two vital matters by the county commission this week. These were the fate of county mayor Mark Luttrell‘s proposed $4.38 tax rate, which was rejected by the commission on third reading; and the selection of a new chairman for 2013-14, dark horse contender James Harvey.

The chairmanship issue was first on the agenda but ended up being deferred until a decision on the tax rate had been reached. That the two issues were related was clear, and Harvey’s victory, in a multi-ballot contest with current chairman Mike Ritz and Commissioner Steve Mulroy, undoubtedly owed something to his vote against the tax rate proposal.

The meeting had gotten under way with the nomination of Ritz, Mulroy, and Harvey, and, after several ballots had been taken on the chairmanship, it became obvious that the commission’s 13 votes were so evenly and unchangeably distributed among the three contenders that no immediate resolution was likely.

Though there were modest fluctuations from ballot to ballot, the votes conformed to a fairly rigid pattern.

Ritz, a Republican who during his year at the helm had essentially presided over a coalition with the commission’s seven Democrats, had solid commitments from Democrats Walter Bailey, who nominated him; Vice Chair Melvin Burgess; and Sidney Chism, along with Republican Steve Basar.

Democrat Mulroy, though he has in his two terms carved out a reputation as the commission’s leading liberal, began the voting with a solid corps of supporters from the body’s Republican right wing — Heidi Shafer, who nominated him; Chris Thomas; and Wyatt Bunker.

This odd-looking allegiance was based on those Republicans’ wish to have done with Ritz, from whom they are estranged, along with a sense that the victory of a Democrat, together with his support for restoring the pattern of alternating annual chairmanships between Republicans and Democrats, was desirable.

Democrat Harvey, an independent-minded eccentric with a spotty attendance record and a habit of making rambling speeches on issues during which he seemingly changes his position back and forth, was something of a variable. He was nominated by Terry Roland, the gonzo Republican from Millington, who nurses grievances against both Ritz and Mulroy, and got support from Democrats Henri Brooks and Justin Ford, two other freebooters famous for keeping their own counsel.

Once the fact of impasse was recognized and the commission shelved the chairmanship matter temporarily to deal with the tax rate, discussion turned rancorous, with Democrat Bailey denouncing opposition to the Luttrell formula as ideologically driven “political posturing” and actually proposing an additional 4 cents for the schools, while Shafer and Bunker took turns mocking what they characterized as a faux annual funding urgency and proposed a return to the previous year’s $4.02 tax rate, based on overall property-value assessments that have since declined.

The key moment in the debate came early when Harvey made it obvious that, as he had indicated in a recent committee meeting, he would not support the Luttrell tax rate, which he had favored on its initial reading last month. What had once appeared to be a slam-dunk prospect of passage for the tax rate unraveled further with the unexplained opposition of Justin Ford, another prior supporter.

There might still have been a chance of passing the $4.38 tax rate, which Luttrell, in a plea to the commission’s GOP contingent, characterized as consistent with responsible Republican conservatism, in that Basar, an on-the-fence Republican, was presumed to be willing to be the seventh vote for the tax rate if a sixth could be found.

But with Harvey and Ford both opting out, there remained only abject recuser Sidney Chism, who, concerned about conflict-of-interest charges being pressed against him by Roland on the basis of Chism’s receiving county wraparound funds for his day-care center, has declined to follow the defiant example of colleague Burgess, a consistent tax-rate supporter who was similarly accused by Roland on the basis of his receiving a county-funded school salary.

Thus it was that on the final tally the Luttrell tax rate failed, mustering only five votes and laying a serious challenge to the commission, which, as Ritz pointed out, has already begun the new fiscal year, committing funds that were budgeted on the assumption of the $4.38 tax rate — which is now at least temporarily defunct.

Between now and the next public meeting of the full commission on July 22nd, the commission must somehow find a new resolve — and a new coalition — on behalf of the Luttrell tax rate or arrive upon a new tax rate and, along with it, a hastily revamped budget.

One possibility, discussed late in Monday’s session and known to be advocated by Basar, is a tax rate of $4.32, the amount of the state-formulated “certified tax rate,” a formula which, given the latest property assessments, would provide the same amount of funding as the previous year’s. As Basar sees it, Luttrell’s proposed school funding would remain intact, with deductions in the county’s general fund amounting to some $10 million.

Ritz, now a lame-duck chairman and a supporter of the original Luttrell proposal, will bend his efforts to getting the best deal he can, while his successor, Harvey, awaits his moment of authority, which will come in September.

In a nutshell, once the tax-rate vote had been taken and the commission’s attention had returned to the chairmanship matter, the same deadlock prevailed as had been in place before, with neither Ritz nor Mulroy, the presumed main contenders, willing to yield. Finally, the impasse was broken in a chain reaction started by Basar, who switched off Ritz to go for Harvey, who only moments before had seemed an also-ran about to be eliminated.

Meanwhile, the corps of conservatives, who were determined above all to spurn Ritz and who had consistently supported Mulroy, a firm supporter of Luttrell’s tax-rate proposal, had apparently begun seeing Harvey, who had voted their way on the tax rate, as a plausible alternative and followed Basar’s lead.

There was a brief sequel to the chairmanship vote in a three-way contest for chairman pro tem between Mulroy, Shafer, and Basar. When Mulroy, who clearly was half-hearted about that office, which clearly is no longer a prelude to a next-year’s chairmanship, withdrew, Basar triumphed 7-6 over Shafer.