Tag: Jim Strickland

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

UPDATE: De-annexation Bill Killed for Session

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

NASHVILLE — In a surprise action, the state Senate’s State and Local Committee has voted 5-3-1 (with chairman Ken Yager voting aye) to approve a motion by Senator Bill Ketron (R-Murfreesboro) sending the controversial de-annexation bill (HB 779/SB 749) to summer study.



Voting in the minority on the motion were the bill’s Senate sponsor, Bo Watson (R-Hixson) and Senator Mark Green (R-Clarksville), a key co-sponsor. It was Green’s absence on Tuesday that had postponed a vote until Wednesday’s reconvening of the committee.



The action means that all possible action on the bill is over with until, at earliest, the legislative session that begins in January 2017.



“We really had no idea this was going to happen. But it was the best possible result, obviously. This is really a victory for the entire state,” said Phil Trenary, the Greater Memphis Area Chamber of Commerce head who had been in Nashville last week and this week opposing the bill.

Though the suddenness of the committee’s action took Trenary and other onlookers by surprise, it had become obvious that the bill was in for rough sledding once it hit the Senate committee, where chairman Yager (R-Kingston) supervised a systematic vetting of its contents and numerous witnesses had criticized it in detail.

Some indication of what was to come was the fact that numerous amendments weakening the bill’s force were passed in committee on Tuesday by lopsided votes.

Though six witnesses on Tuesday testified to the commmittee in favor of the bill, it had become obvious from previous testimony of bill opponents last week that resistance to it was serious, influential, and in depth.

Not only Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland but the mayors of two other affected cities, Chattanooga and Knoxville, had warned of the bill’s potentially ruinous effects, fiscal and otherwise, on targeted cities. Representatives of the state’s business community, including Pitt Hyde of AutoZone, and two ranking officers of First Tennessee Bank, seconded that point of view.

Even senators considered friendly to the idea of allowing urban de-annexation procedures had visibly cooled to the provisions of the de-annexation measure sent over from the House after swift ands lopsided passage there.

Those provisions had limited the bill’s effects to only five urban areas which had pursued state law in annexations that the bill, in a provision whose constitutionality was in doubt, considered “egregious.”

Other objectionable provisions included the bill’s allowance of a low ceiling — 10 percent of an annexed area’s population on a petition — to call a de-annexation referendum.

PREVIOUSLY (3-29-16): The ongoing debate in the General Assembly on a bill to allow de-annexation by areas of Memphis and other Tennessee cities that were annexed since the passage of Public Law 1101 in 1998, was renewed Tuesday in the state Senate’s State and Local Committee.

Two amendments to the House bill were approved last week by the Senate committee — one clarifying certain issues of debt obllgations remaining for any de-annexed residents and another expanding the reach of the bill to all municipalities statewide, not just Memphis and the four other urban areas alleged to have pursued “egregious” annexations since the 1998 date.

Both those amendments were regarded as concessions to the delegation that testified in the committee against the bill last week — which included Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke, and Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero, as well as AutoZone founder Pitt Hyde and two officials of First Tennessee Bank.

Jackson Baker

Phil Trenary

Last week’s testifiers made the point that the de-annexation bill received by the House was overly punitive and potentially financially ruinous to the cities affected. (Strickland testified that de-annexation by all the areas annexed by Memphis since 1998 could cost the already cash-strapped city the loss of property tax revenues ranging from $27 at minimum to a maximum of $78 million.)

Chairman Yager began the renewed hearing on Tuesday before a standing-room-only audience, noting that the witnesses against the bill last Wednesday had been opposed to it and professing a desire “to be fair-minded on an issue this polarizing,” then announcing that six new witnesses favoring the bill would be heard.

The first was Patricia Possel of South Cordova, who said, “The city of Memphis tried to silence us,” and went on to note that her area had been annexed July 1, 2012, more than four years before the next scheduled election in South Cordova.

She called the situation “taxation without representation,” and spoke, in a trembling voice, of the murder of a neighbor, Susan McDonald, in 2015 — clearly, an indication to her that crime had followed upon her neighborhood’s annexation by the city as something of a direct consequence.

Finally, she said, there had been “no disclosure” of any kind to her or other homeowners, at the time of their purchasing property, that they were located within one of Memphis’ annexation preserves, about to lose its independence.

Next up was Terry Roland, the chairman of the Shelby County Commission, who announced that he had heard “bad numbers” being testified to by representatives of the city last week and wanted to present “the straight skinny.” According to his own figures, the de-annexation from Memphis of South Cordova and Windyke-Southwind, the last two areas annexed, would result in a financial gain to Memphis of $3 million — not, as had been claimed, a deficit of $13 million.

Roland also spoke, as he has for years, of the constant departure of citizens from Memphis because of high and unreasonable property taxes. He said that 68,000 people had left Shelby county for DeSoto County, Mississippi in the years 2001-2010.

Roland did concede that if all 10 areas annexed by Memphis since 1998 were able to de-annex themselves (as the original House bill provided), the city would end up the loser, financially, but he made it clear he considered that prospect far-fetched.

The two Shelby County witnesses were followed by John Emerson of Alamo (who had been introduced by Yager earlier as “the father of de-annexation” and who pronounced it absurd that representatives of cities habitually spoke as if there a law of nature that urban municipalities could only expand and never contract.

Three residents of Chattanooga suburbs that had been annexed followed, with variations on some of the themes already addressed. (One of them announced that he did not turn on TV to watch “baseball, football, or Dancing With the Stars,” but was a regular watcher of congressional hearings and stayed up late to watch them. He had determined from that practice that public political debates and processes were essentially shams.)

From that point, the stream of amendments that was interrupted by the close of last Wednesday’s hearing ensued again — the first of them authorized by chairman Yager himself and directly addressing the complaint that Strickland had made of the original House bill — that, while it did require newly de-annexed citizens to continue paying their share of the city’s general obligation debt on a pro rata basis, it did not stipulate anything regarding residual pension and OPEB obligation on the part of those residents.

The Yager amendment would include pensions and OPEB obligations on a pro-rated basis.

Senator Bo Watson of Hixson, a suburb of Chattanooga, and a sponsor of the de-annexation bill, challenged the logic of including those debts, which Watson suggested were “pay-as-you-go” by their nature and that ex post facto assessments would be improperly doubling up on charges to the residents.

He was backed up on those allegations by Senator Todd Gardenhire, another Chattanoogan, who testified from his point of view as a former member of a U.S. Department of Labor committee on pension obligations. In the course of seconding Watson’s assertions that including the new assessments would be double-billing de-annexed residents, Gardenhire got off a series of negative observations regarding the past fiscal performance of the city of Memphis.

Most of those observatios recapitulated criticisms made by state comptroller Justin Wilson about city bookkeeping practices during the administration of former Mayor A C Wharton. “The city of Memphis was not run like a business,” Gardenhire said.
Even so, the amendment was passed by the committee 6-1. It began to seem possible that the optimism for a favorable resolution expressed last week by Strickland and Chamber of Commerce president Phil Trenary might be justified.

That sense was furthered somewhat by discussion later of other new amendments, notably including one by chairman Yager that would raise from 10 to 20 percent the percentage of residents necessary to validate a petition for a de-annexation referendum. This one ultimately passed 7-0, and among those committee members agreeing with Yager that “the bar should be raised” on requirements for a de-annexation petition was state Senator Mark Norris (R-Collierville), a nominal supporter of the bill’s intent.

Not everything was roses. An amendment from state Senator Reginald Tate (D-Memphis) limited the Memphis areas eligible for de-annexation to South Cordova and Southwind-Windyke failed for lack of a second. And another, contemplated by Yager, requiring 66 percent, rather than a simple majority, for passage of a de-annexation referendum, was withdrawn by the chairman.

Asked afterward to assess Tuesday’s actions on the bill, the Trenary said the amendments made the bill “more realistic” but said he still continued to oppose it and was hopeful that the legislature as a whole ultimately would.

Roland’s reaction was one of satisfaction also, and he expressed the hope that the effect of the bill might still be limited to the two recently annexed areas of South Cordova and Southwind-Windyke. “They’re the only ones that are organized,” he pointed out.

An ultimate vote by the committee on the amended bill was delayed out of courtesy to the bill’s main sponsor, state Senator Mark Green of Clarksville, who was absent. (It was Green who last week compared the alleged “egregious” annexations by Memphis and other cities to a Russian occupation of Poland, and Norris wondered somewhat archly on Tuesday how the residents who moved to “Poland” in recent years should be counted in determining the right ceiling for a referendum petition.)

It is hard to imagine Green being altogether favorable to the amendments accepted Tuesday, but, in any case, whatever his opinion or the committee’s vote on the bill, the bill is not likely to be headed to the floor of either House or Senate anytime soon.

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News The Fly-By

State Considers De-annexation and De-funding Bike Lanes

Memphis had a lot at stake in Nashville this week as key votes were expected by the Tennessee General Assembly on several bills that would have direct and deep impacts here.

De-annexation

Memphis could lose Hickory Hill, parts of Cordova, and nearly $80 million in tax revenue if legislators approve a bill that would allow some areas to de-annex from cities.

The bill passed the House on Monday, and now it’s headed for the Senate.

Defeating the bill is the biggest legislative priority for Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, who headed to Nashville this week to talk to lawmakers about it. Strickland said money saved by not servicing those areas would not equal the tax money lost, which is about 12 percent of the city’s budget.

“In the short term, it would be very difficult to avoid a property tax increase to help cover that lost revenue,” Strickland said. “Remember, it’s already a challenge just to balance our budget with current revenue.”

The bill’s sponsors said they want to stop cities from annexing areas to capture tax revenue but then de-annex roads, bridges, or anything else they’d have to pay to maintain. Similar legislation died on the last day of the legislature’s session last year.

Strickland said that while he is open to shrinking the size of the city’s footprint, he’d want to do it more slowly, deliberately, with stakeholders involved, and “not as part of a messy financial crisis.”

Areas Memphis has annexed since 1998

Bike lanes/pedestrian paths

A bill that bicycle and pedestrian advocates call “dangerous” was slated for key votes on Tuesday, possibly clearing major hurdles on its way to becoming law.

The bill would prohibit cities and counties from spending state gas tax funds on bike lanes, pedestrian walkways, and “other non-vehicular facilities.” The bill is sponsored by Rep. Mike Carter and Sen. Todd Gardenhire, both from the Chattanooga area.

The Senate bill headed to the powerful Senate Finance, Ways, and Means Committee this week, but it arrived there with a negative review from a sub-committee that oversees state revenues.

The chairman of that sub-committee, Sen. Doug Overbey (R-Maryville) said concerns about the bill from constituents have “filled up my inbox.” Gardenhire laughed and told him “that’s what they make that delete button for.”

Portions of the state gas tax are required to go to cities and counties. Those governments sometimes use the funds to build bike lanes or for matching dollars to get federal money for bike and pedestrian projects.

Gardenhire said legislators would likely be asked to consider a gas tax hike next year, and his constituents want the money spent on bridges and roads, “not for recreational use,” noting that cities that want bike lanes “need to pay for it themselves.”

Skunks as pets

Having a skunk as a pet remains a Class C misdemeanor in the state after House members voted down a measure that would have made it legal.

Lawmakers were concerned that loosening the law could lead to the spread of rabies. State Senators didn’t think so, though. They passed the bill in February on a vote of 27-3.

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News News Blog

Director Chosen for New City Office of Minority and Women-Owned Business Development

Joann Massey

Southwest Tennessee Community College project manager Joann Massey has been appointed to lead the new city office of Minority and Women-Owned Business Development, Mayor Jim Strickland announced on Monday morning.

The new city office was the result on consolidating the former city Office of Contract Compliance and the Memphis Office of Resources and Enterprise. The goal of the new office is to boost the city’s minority and women-owned enterprise (MWBE) development. In 2015, only 12 percent of the city’s contract business went to minority or women-owned businesses. 

“We mean business about minority and women-owned business development,” Strickland said. “Joann Massey is uniquely qualified for the challenge of growing MWBE performance within city government.”

Massey currently works in grants management for Southwest, and she also owns a corporate consulting business called Lewis Massey Associates. Before that, she worked as a project manager in the Memphis & Shelby County Office of Economic Development, as an associate vice-president at Morgan Keegan, and as a legal supervisor with the Shelby County Trustee’s Office.

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News The Fly-By

Church Proposes New Jobs Program for Panhandlers

CREDIT: Vladislav Pavlovich | Dreamstime.com

What if, instead of giving panhandlers a dollar or some spare change, we gave them a day’s work? That’s what Calvary Episcopal Church is proposing with a new program aimed at getting panhandlers off the streets and into odd jobs picking up litter or clearing out weeds.

Earlier this week, Calvary hosted a summit for area homeless agencies, business leaders, and government officials in the hopes of gaining both financial support and a commitment from city and county leaders to partner with them on their Willing to Work Memphis program.

Willing to Work would be modeled after a successful program in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in which a volunteer drives a van around town picking up panhandlers and offering them temporary work provided by that city’s public works department. Those who participate make $9 an hour. Since Albuquerque’s program launched last September, 17 participants have transitioned into full-time jobs, and 11 people have been enrolled in mental health services.

Vladislav Pavlovich | Dreamstime.com

The Rev. Christopher Girata of Calvary Episcopal said a similar program could be launched in Memphis for $150,000, which he said would cover the cost of the van, gas, lunches, and storage for participants’ belongings (and even pets) while they work. Ideally, Memphis’ public works department would identify work sites, and payment for the day’s work would be donated by partnering agencies.

“No one agency or church needs to shoulder this burden alone. We can do it together,” Girata said.

He said some aspects of the program would require city or county oversight, such as how to handle background checks for the temporary workers and training for the van driver to be able to “roughly evaluate a person’s capacity for employment.” He recommended that drivers not Breathalyze potential workers but rather determine sobriety by monitoring a person’s behavior.

At the summit, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland and Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell both voiced support for the program. Strickland said he’d talk with the city’s public works department about the proposal. Luttrell said the county appropriates funds annually for blight remediation, and he thought those funds might be able to help support the program.

Kevin Kane, CEO of the Memphis Convention & Visitors Bureau, said his organization would offer some financial support as well.

“We have visitors who come here from all over the world, and they’re often alarmed by our aggressive panhandlers,” Kane said.

But Kane cautioned that some panhandlers around town are part of a network of people who aren’t actually homeless, and he advised that the program should include some way to screen out people who don’t actually need the services.

Girata told those at the summit that, when he first moved to Memphis, he was struck by all the “No Panhandling” posters in downtown windows.

“Rather than punitively saying ‘You can’t do that,’ why don’t we give them an option instead of panhandling?” Girata asked.

Calvary will host a follow-up meeting on Wednesday, February 24th at 4 p.m. for homelessness agencies, business groups, downtown stakeholders, and anyone who would like to help support the program.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

The Winds of War

“Nice little trees you got there. Be too bad if something were to happen to them.” — Nicky “Big Panda” Flacco, Memphis Zoo press secretary

After years of simmering unrest, tension has been racheted to a fever pitch in Memphis’ Midtown district, specifically in the long-troubled region known as Overton Park. The natural areas of the park are controlled by the Overton Park Conservancy, but the park is also home to the Levitt Shell, the Memphis College of Art, the Brooks Museum of Art, and the Memphis Zoo.

In recent years, the Zoo has been flexing its muscle, annexing portions of the OPC-controlled zone known as the Greensward for overflow parking, and doubling down by charging money to its customers to park there. The OPC has filed several complaints with local authorities against the Zoo’s actions, and has gone so far as to put picket lines of volunteers at its border to stop the invasion of foreign vehicles. This has led to minor skirmishes: cars bumping protestors, angry complaints to local police, etc.

There had been an uneasy peace in recent weeks, but in the waning days of the Wharton administration, the Zoo obtained a letter from city council attorney Allan “Wood Chips” Wade that it claims gives it the right to annex the Greensward for parking. Then, without warning, the Zoo removed 27 trees that had been planted near the Zoo border in 2012 by the OPC.

A local faction supporting OPC called Get Off Our Lawn (GOOL) reacted vociferously, staging a plant-in, complete with a marching band, signs, and flags. Emotions were at a boiling point. There was open talk of war.

Then things really got out of hand …

Secret Zoo documents obtained by GOOL leaders were released showing that the Zoo had designs on annexing Rainbow Lake for a proposed “AutoZone Crocodiles of the Nile” exhibit, and also had plans to take over portions of the Old Forest for an interactive “Jack Links Messin’ With Sasquatch” diorama.

The Zoo responded by saying it had uncovered evidence that GOOL operatives had infiltrated its Northwest Passage exhibit via the Lick Creek aqueduct and planted kudzu, privet, and poison oak. GOOL denied the charge but did not rule out the possibility of future guerrilla planting raids. “We have thousands of seedlings,” said a GOOL spokesperson. “We would hate to have to use them, but the Zoo may force our hand.”

Then, on Monday, 87-year-old golfer Myron “Stroky” Teitlebaum was taken hostage by the Zoo after he bladed a 7-iron across the “Geezer Strip” into Zoo property and tried to retrieve his ball. An anonymous GOOL spokesperson told a WMC Action News 5 reporter that “getting a few meerkats out of there wouldn’t be that difficult,” and that such an action might be necessary in order to arrange a prisoner exchange. “Stroky is not in good health,” she added. “He needs his fiber pills.”

The Zoo then announced that it would begin a program called “Free Tank Parking Tuesdays” on the Greensward, and that it had made a deal with Sunrise Pontiac GMC to open a dealership on the land now occupied by the Overton Bark dog area.

“We get a million visitors a year,” said Zoo president Chuck “You and the Horse You Rode In On” Brady. “We’ll do whatever we have to do to keep them happy, if you get my drift.”

Alertly sensing that there just might possibly be a problem in Overton Park, the new Strickland administration announced that Secretary of State John Kerry would arrive in Memphis this week to try to bring all parties to the table for peace talks.

That’s where things stand as of this writing. We can only hope that cooler heads will prevail and that lasting peace can somehow be achieved in this turbulent region. Our children’s futures depend on it.

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News The Fly-By

Q&A with Gina Sweat

In December, newly elected Mayor Jim Strickland appointed longtime Memphis Fire Department employee Gina Sweat as the new director, replacing former Director Alvin Benson.

Sweat, the department’s first female director, has been a firefighter for 23 years, rising through the ranks since 1992. Strickland noted that Sweat was chosen for the job “on her merits and her dedication to service” in a press conference announcing her position. The Flyer was able to catch up with Sweat for her thoughts on the new job.

— Alexandra Pusateri

Gina Sweat and Mayor Jim Strickland

Flyer: How does it feel being the first female fire director?

Gina Sweat: To be honest, it’s quite humbling. It wasn’t my goal to set off to be the first female fire director. I was just one of those people who came to work. My parents taught me from a very young age the value of hard work, that you earn what you get by working hard and applying yourself. That’s really been my whole approach to my career, because it was hard being a female and not being as physically strong as the men. So you have to find ways to work smarter. They could muscle through things, and I couldn’t.

I never set out to be a role model for women. I just set out to be the person who came to work and did what I was supposed to do. By doing that, and always applying myself, I find myself in this position today. It just shows you can work your way to the top. I think anyone can do what I’ve done. I’ve just been fortunate to have been in the right place at the right time and making sure I was making the right decisions.

Are you hoping to tackle any specific issues as fire director?

We have a great fire department here in the city of Memphis. We’ve had some morale issues, and some of those things I can’t do anything about. But I am going to listen to what’s going on in the field to try and find things I can do. Even if they’re small [things], just to let the firefighters know that I am paying attention and hearing them, just trying to find some little wins to let them know that I have their back.

I do want to find ways for us to become more engaged with the community, which is going to fall in line with the recruitment efforts we do. We’re looking at ways to engage our youth and introduce them earlier to these career opportunities that are open for them, putting them on a path so they’ll know how to become a firefighter.

Once we recruit the right people, we have to make sure they stay on the department. We are losing more firefighters than we have in the past, but I think if we can head that off before it gets out of hand, we’ll be in a much better place.

Where will you be focusing your recruitment efforts?

We’re going to focus our initial efforts in the city of Memphis and the metro area. I think it’s important to recruit people who have some ownership in the community: people who have family and ties to the community, their churches, schools. I think that’s going to help us with the retention part.

In the past, when they did go outside of the city, we got firefighters, but a lot of them didn’t stay. They got the experience here and went back home. Some of them did stay and became Memphians, but I feel strongly that we have people here in the city [who could work for the fire department]. We need to invest in our youth a little better, and we can find quality people here in our hometown.

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News News Blog

Police Body Camera Rollout Delayed

The rollout of body cameras for every Memphis Police officer has been pushed back indefinitely, a decision announced by Mayor Jim Strickland at a Friday afternoon press conference.

Back in September, Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong announced that 2,000 cameras would be deployed and operational by the end of 2015. He said 50 officers a day were being trained to use them.

But today, Strickland said his office felt it necessary to delay their deployment until the Shelby County District Attorney’s Office can update their technology to deal with the data that will be coming from the cameras. He also said city government would need additional manpower to handle public records requests for camera footage.

“I’d rather do the right thing than do the fast thing,” Strickland said.

Armstrong told those at the press conference today that the police department would also need more staff to screen and redact information from the videos.

“Someone has to sit down and view all of that video. It’s labor-intensive, and information has to be redacted so citizens’ private information doesn’t go public,” Armstrong said.

Shelby County District Attorney Amy Weirich said her office wasn’t given advance notice by Mayor A C Wharton’s administration about his 2015 deadline for getting the cameras operational.

“No one in my office had been trained [on what to do with the footage] before the announcement was made [last September],” Weirich said.

She said the police camera footage was “evidence, not entertainment” and that the contents would need to be handled carefully.

Strickland said he does support body cameras and said he voted for them when he was a Memphis City Councilmember. But he implied the previous administration rushed the deployment of cameras.

“I can’t speak to what happened before January 1st, but I think people were overly optimistic,” Strickland said.

Strickland would not speculate on when the city would be ready to roll out cameras.

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Politics Politics Feature

Capitol Serendipity

Between the time these words are written on Tuesday morning and the time they are read, Wednesday (when Flyer copies first hit the street) or thereafter, Memphis officials will have made their presence known in Washington.

This is true in both a literal and a figurative sense — literal, in that both Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell and Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland are sure to have seen by a national audience; figurative, in that, in the nation’s capitol, in the state capitol of Nashville, and (not least) back home, the sighting(s) will create a positive vibe for various public purposes of importance to Memphis and Shelby County.

As has been well publicized, Luttrell was expressly invited to sit in the box of First Lady Michelle Obama during the State of the Union address by President ObamaTuesday night.

Luttrell’s presence was accounted for in a White House statement regarding all of the First Lady’s boxmates: “The guests personify President Obama’s time in office and, most importantly, they represent who we are as Americans: inclusive and compassionate, innovative, and courageous.”
In particular, Luttrell apparently was included because of his work on criminal justice reform — the subject of an address the county mayor delivered to a White House conference last year and one which Obama is keen to address, in light of several volatile and sometimes fatal incidents nationwide that have scarred citizen relations with police and with the legal system at large.
Prior to his elections as Shelby County sheriff and county mayor, Luttrell’s background had been in penal administration.

After the Luttrell invitation was made public, 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen evidently thought the newly inaugurated Strickland should be in on the action as well, and invited the mayor to the State of the Union address as his guest.

Strickland should not necessarily expect to get as much air time as his county counterpart Luttrell, but that prospect should not be discounted, either. There probably has not been a single State of the Union telecast since Cohen was first elected to Congress in 2006 at which the irrepressible Memphis congressman has not figured prominently, both before and after the speech itself, in proximity to the President.

Assuming that congressional protocol allows Strickland, at least at some point, to join Cohen on the floor of the House of Representatives, where members of both congressional chambers convene to hear the address, the Memphis mayor is fairly sure to get his share of the limelight.

While in Washington, Strickland has also scheduled visits to the offices of Cohen and U.S. Representative Stephen Fincher (R-8th), as well as to those of Tennessee’s two Republican Senators, Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker.
Cohen’s invitation to Strickland, while a thoughtful gesture under the circumstances, also has obvious political ramifications for both men. It gives Strickland some useful exposure beyond his own bailiwick, and it provides Cohen with a practical opportunity to cement relations with the new mayor after an election in which the congressman publicly endorsed Strickland’s major opponent, then-incumbent Mayor A C Wharton.

Luttrell’s trip to Washington as the First Lady’s guest has already paid some specific dividends to him locally, earning the mayor both a respite from his ongoing power struggle with the Terry Roland-chaired Shelby County Commission and perhaps even a temporary truce.

Roland took to the well of the auditorium of the Vasco Smith County Administration Building at Monday’s regularly scheduled county commission meeting to read into the record a resolution of congratulations to the mayor from Commissioner Walter Bailey, adding some gracious words of tribute of his own and thereby making a point of associating himself with Luttrell’s enhanced persona and White House honor. 

It was one of the few moments of emotional unity in Shelby County government since sometime last year, when the commission, more or less as a whole, fell out with Luttrell over the administration’s fiscal accounting and what commissioners saw as an over-proprietary role vis-à-vis the commission. The resolution received unanimous approval.

The fact is, though, that Luttrell, who had left the county building to make his plane to Washington and could not respond directly to the commission’s resolution, is not out of the woods yet. Just before he received his invitation from the First Lady and the fact was publicized, the mayor had been involved in a developing imbroglio.

Roland and the chairman’s main commission ally, Heidi Shafer, had accused the administration of doctoring a commission resolution prepared by Roland and routing the doctored version to the state comptroller’s office in Nashville by way of embarrassing the chairman.

Roland’s resolution, clearly intended as a salvo in the running argument between an apparent commission majority and the mayor, sought to have the county’s fund surplus — the amount of which has been a matter of dispute between the commission and the mayor — routed from the administration’s financial office to the commission’s contingency fund.

Such a resolution, if passed, would not only put points on the board for the commission in its contest with the mayor, it would in theory give the commission an independent set of eyes in determining just exactly what the county’s surplus for 2014-2015 had been — whether $6 million, as the administration had first reported in advising the commission against a property tax decrease, or somewhere in the neighborhood of $21 million or even higher, as commissioners came to believe on the basis of late-breaking information.       

Before the resolution could be acted on by the full commission, however, a copy of it went to the comptroller’s office, and where there had been a blank for the amount of the imagined surplus intended for transfer, there was now entered an amount of $107,772,795.00 — which was the amount of the county’s entire fund balance!

As the comptroller’s office promptly notified all the local parties, such a transfer would be illegal and impossible, since it would deprive the county of its entire operating monies for any and all purposes. When that response went public, Roland cried foul, and he and Shafer suggested that nothing short of forgery could account for what he called a “blatantly altered” document.

A planned “discussion” of the matter was on the commission’s agenda for its committee sessions on Wednesday, but Roland said it was being withdrawn pending further “investigation” of the matter.
Asked for his response to the matter on Thursday, Luttrell recalled that, during a recent weekend budget summit between the administration and the commission, there had been a dispute over the issue of who should have supervision of the county’s surplus funds.

“That alarmed us,” said Luttrell. “And then when this draft resolution came down, we said, ‘Okay, we really need to get some clarity from the state comptroller’s office. Let’s just go to the comptroller, so we’ll know where we stand.’” That accounts for the dispatching of a copy of the resolution to Nashville.

A letter last week from Kim Hackney, deputy CAO, to Roland supplies further explanation of the incident from the administration’s point of view. The letter suggests that the alteration of the amount sought for transfer occurred inadvertently as copies of the resolution were passed back and forth between deputy County Attorney Marcy Ingram, commission administration assistant Quoran Folsom, and county financial officer Mike Swift.

The details, as set forth in the letter, seemed plausible enough as a defense of the altered number as an unfortunate accident, but even this de facto apology, forthrightly stated for the most part, contained a hint of reproach: “[W]e regret that our office and your office were not working directly with each other on this matter. Perhaps some confusion would have been eliminated.” 

For all the public kumbaya of this week, the power struggle seems likely to continue.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Another Year, Another Myron Lowery Prayer Breakfast

CREDIT: JB

JB

Myron Lowery says goodbye to attendees at this year’s prayer breakfast, his 25th.

Although there were some early fits and starts, as is the case with most politicians, the political career of Myron Lowery began, more or less, in 1991 — the same year as the epochal election of Willie Herenton as Memphis’ first black elected mayor. And it would seem to have ended on Friday, January 1, 2016, when the Super District 8, Position 3 City Council seat Lowery decided not to pursue again in last year’s city election was filled with the swearing-in of Martavius Jones.

That’s 24 consecutive years, a considerable run and a record for an African-American official in Memphis, and if son Mickell Lowery had prevailed, as expected, in his election contest with underdog Jones, a former School Board member, the seat might have remained in the family for yet another generation.

The senior Lowery had to have had that prospect in mind a year ago, when in his 24th consecutive “Myron Lowery Prayer Breakfast,” he looked on as son Mickell moderated the festivities at the airport Holiday Inn in his stead. Lowery’s first prayer breakfast had been held on January 1, 1992, the day that both he and Herenton, the guest of honor at the breakfast, had been sworn in.

On that first occasion (held at The Peabody), as on the 24th, the breakfast — a fundraiser whose proceeds would be shared out with various deserving local causes as the event evolved — attracted an overflow crowd of politically influential guests. Except for a brief spell, a decade or so back, when Herenton began holding his own New Year’s prayer breakfast, more or less in competition, the Lowery breakfast always had the city’s mayor — first Herenton and then A C Wharton —on hand, along with most other local politicians of any consequence.

The breakfast became, as they say, a tradition, often a news-making one, depending on the candor and intensity of the speeches by political figures, which were interspersed with musical selections from local choirs and celebrated church singers and with, well, prayers.

It was a tradition that could have been expected to continue for a while except for that hitch in the outcome of the 2015 election. Not only was Mickell Lowery, the projected host of future breakfasts, upset in his Council race, but his father had rolled the dice and lost in his support of the reelection of then incumbent Mayor A C Wharton.

It wasn’t just that Councilman Lowery had backed the loser in the mayoral race. He had done so in the most conspicuous — and, to eventual mayoral winner Jim Strickland, most offensive — way possible. At last year’s breakfast, Lowery had asked Strickland, his longtime Council mate, to stand, and, after beginning with praise of Strickland, then not only proceeded to confer his public endorsement on Wharton (whom Lowery himself had opposed in the special election of 2009) but basically called out Strickland, at some length, for what Lowery deemed a premature challenge.

Rather than stand and continue to listen as Lowery went on with remarks that may not have been intended as patronizing but certainly sounded that way, Strickland walked out of the room.

He wasn’t there for Friday’s breakfast, although, in a preliminary mailing sent out to advertise this year’s prayer breakfast, Lowery had mentioned Strickland as one of the dignitaries invited to speak. Such speaking as Strickland had in mind to do was apparently reserved for the new mayor’s own inauguration address later that morning at the Cannon Center.

Strickland’s counterpart, Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell, was there Friday and spoke to a crowd that was still respectably sized, if obviously diminished from previous years. So was 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen, the featured speaker, who — as he usually does — provided a few verbal sparks.

Cohen’s most newsworthy statement may have been his blast at the Shelby County grand jury that recently failed to return an indictment in the shooting death, at the hands of a Memphis police officer, of a black youth, Darrius Stewart. After ter
JB

Rep. Cohen

ming the grand jury’s inaction “a mystery’ and wondering out loud why no indictment was returned, Cohen said, “Police need to think twice before taking lives” and dilated on a reform bill he is sponsoring which calls for federal funding to investigate such cases and for handling them in jurisdictions other than the one in which they occur.

The congressman used the formula “3 C’s” to describe leading items on his wish list for the new session. Spelling them out, they were: “commutations,” which he wants to see more of from the federal government, especially in relation to drug convictions; “cannabis,” an increase in the liberalization of marijuana laws; and “Cuba,” the further flowering of the relationship, recently opened up by President Obama, between the United States and the island nation to our south.

Much of Cohen’s speech was given over to the theme of greater bi-partisan collaboration in Congress. He stressed the need for “collegiality and respect for [one’s] colleagues” and said that he himself was “getting better all the time” with regard to both “tools and relationships.”

On the national scene, Democrat Cohen stopped just short of congratulating the Republicans for their choice of Paul Ryan as House Speaker. On the local scene, he thanked Mayor Luttrell for being a partner in government and, while anticipating a good relationship with Mayor Strickland, made a point of expressing his appreciation for former Mayor Wharton, another absentee on Friday.

Mickell Lowery had opened up things Friday with a suggestion that the annual prayer breakfast might be continued, though in a scaled-down form. His father, when it came time to make final remarks, made a tentative effort at calling the roll of elected officials who were present, only to let that effort tail off when he realized that most of the Shelby County Commissioners, the group he started with, had already left the scene.

As for the future of the prayer breakfast, former Councilman Lowery put the question to those audience members who remained. “Should it be continued?” he asked. Most of those remaining applauded, in degrees ranging from the polite and perfunctory to the enthusiastic.

Presumably, we’ll find out next year.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

2015: The Year That Was …

It was a heck of a year, 2015. In television, we saw the departure of NBC news anchor Brian Williams, whose fanciful anecdotes became the stuff of Internet memes. Then Jon Stewart left The Daily Show and David Letterman departed CBS after decades of stupid people tricks, leaving a void on late-night screens that their replacements will be hard-pressed to fill.

Early in the year, the long-awaited 50 Shades of Grey hit movie theaters and proved that kinky sex could be boring if you cast the right actors for the job. And “Uptown Funk” became the first Memphis-produced No. 1 song since “Disco Duck,” back in the 1970s. Hopefully, some enterprising Memphis musician will write “Uptown Duck” and keep the magic alive in 2016.

This was the year that Bruce Jenner became Caitlyn Jenner and posed for the cover of Vanity Fair, putting the T of LGBT into more conversations than ever before. Shortly thereafter, the Supreme Court struck a blow for L, G, and B by ruling that gay marriage was legal in all 50 states — except for that one county in Kentucky where Kim Davis was the clerk. By refusing to issue gay marriage licenses, Davis got her 15 minutes of fame, and later, some well-deserved jail-time.

On the pervert front, Subway spokesman Jared Fogle, Josh Duggar of 19 Kids and Counting, and Bill “Dr. Huxtable” Cosby had their sexual deviances exposed and suffered varying consequences. Hopefully, we will not hear their names again, except in a court dossier.

The New England Patriots and Tom Brady survived “Deflategate” and won another Super Bowl; Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors jump-shot their way to the top of the NBA; and the Kansas City Royals won the World Series. Also, some team won the National Hockey League championship, but I’m too lazy to look it up, and you don’t care because you live in Memphis.

Unsurprisingly, we in the United States endured another year of mass shootings and mass death in churches, schools, malls, military bases, Planned Parenthood offices — and a California facility for the mentally disabled. The latter incident was perpetrated by Islamist terrorists and therefore became the incident that was the sole focus of right-wing media and the GOP candidates. They, of course, ignored the one common denominator of all the shootings, no matter the politics, religion, or mental state of the perpetrator: easy access to high-powered weapons. The NRA-owned GOP Congress then decided that even people on the terror no-fly list should continue to have access to guns. Because freedom.

Donald Trump gamed the presidential nomination process by dominating media coverage of the GOP race with his outrageous comments, each of which only seemed to increase his strength in the polls. As 2016 approaches, the GOP establishment is in near-panic mode, and will probably be forced to support Marco Rubio, the least wacky of the remaining viable candidates, and the only one they see having a chance to beat the Democratic nominee.

In Tennessee, the boneheads in Nashville played their usual tune, turning down federal money to expand Medicaid, and focusing on loosening gun laws, dumbing down our education system, fighting gay marriage, and taking on the horrific encroachment of Sharia law.

In Memphis, we elected a new mayor and got Bass Pro to fill the Pyramid with outdoorsy stuff. We learned to love Tiger football, and are struggling to learn how to live with mediocre basketball.

For more on the year just past — and predictions for the year ahead — in Memphis, check out the pages of this, our special year-end double issue.

The new year is upon us, bright and shiny and filled with hope. We at the Flyer are glad you’re with us after 26 years in Memphis, and we’re looking forward to another run around the calendar. Let’s get after it.