Tag: Julian Bolton

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Aspirants to Cooper Seat Queue Up

Rep. Barbara Cooper (Source: Tennessee General Assembly)

With a qualifying deadline set as soon as December 15, would-be candidates are rushing to get  their petitions for the state House District 86 seat made vacant by the recent death of longtime legislator Barbara Cooper, who died in October at the age of 93.

With more names expected, the list of would-be candidates as of early Monday — all Democrats so far — include Julian Bolton, Tanya Cooper, Clifford Lewis, Will Richardson, and Justin Pearson.  

Bolton served several terms on the Shelby County Commission, Tanya Cooper (Barbara Cooper’s daughter) was a recent candidate for General Sessions Court Clerk, Lewis is an activist, Richardson was Barbara Cooper’s unsuccessful opponent in the 2022 Democratic primary, and Pearson was the youthful leader of the successful 2021 anti-pipeline movement in South Memphis.

Primary date for the special District 86 election is January 24, with the general election scheduled for March 14.

The name of Barbara Cooper, the longest-serving Tennessee legislator, remained on the November election ballot, and received enough votes to certify her as the winner. Governor Bill Lee issued a writ of election for the vacated seat on November 28.

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Politics Politics Feature

Dueling Visions

The voices of Shelby County commissioners audiby changed during the course of Monday’s special meeting — a  marathon affair that had been called to deal with a budget that was already past its July 1st deadline. Toward the end of a meeting that started at 3 p.m. and adjourned at 10:15 p.m., the commissioners sounded either strident (maybe “strung out” is closer) or exhausted.

What had not changed was the substance of what they were saying. The commissioners — or at least what seems to be a working majority of them — remained fixed on a course that will give their constituents a tax cut of from 1 to 3 cents on a still-to-be-determined tax rate.

Mayor Mark Luttrell, who was as edgy as anybody on Monday, went with the flow and reluctantly consented to budget amendments that cut close into what he sees as a necessary fiscal reserve. But he is clearly resolved to do what he can between now and the fixing of the tax rate to either scale back the amendments or keep the rate close to the level of 4.13 cents, a status-quo figure adjusted to the latest county property assessment and designed to generate the same amount of revenue as the current pre-assessment rate of 4.37 cents.

Luttrell made it clear that he wants to have enough of a discretionary fund on hand to deal with exigencies. That was the case also two years ago, when the administration and the commission had a similar disagreement, one that ultimately saw a win for the mayor in the slowing down of what had been a pell-mell move toward a tax decrease and then the aborting of that tax-cut initiative altogether.

Luttrell had held the line back then, pleading that the county had infrastructure needs (it plainly did), and the tax rate held firm. The mayor’s victory proved to be a pyrrhic one, however — especially as the county’s general fund, even with a good deal of overdue paving and other infrastructure work taken care of, turned out in an ad hoc audit to have a significant and unforeseen surplus: upwards of $20 million. That was enough, contended the commission’s tax relief advocates, to have underwritten the gift to the taxpayers that they had intended but, ultimately, under pressure from the administration, had backed away from.

That was essentially the casus belli for what has turned out to be a two-year power struggle between the mayor and his commissioners. The commission, with two fired-up Republicans, Heidi Shafer of East Memphis and Terry Roland of Millington in the lead, and with a sufficient number of other suburban Republicans, along with fellow-traveling inner-city Democrats, following, began campaigning for new commission perks, including a greater share in budgetary decisions, and to that purpose, the acquisition of an independent commission attorney so as to augment its own oversight.

The commission ultimately got a lawyer approved, former commissioner Julian Bolton, though both his title and his function are more tightly circumscribed than the commissioners preferred. And the battle goes on, with both sides taking as much as they can and giving up as little as they have to. Right now the $4.10 tax rate seems to be holding, but sans a vote, some or all of that hard-earned three-cent discount could vanish in further negotiation, as could other budget goodies voted on on Monday. (More details this week in Politics Beat blog.)

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Politics Politics Feature

Dark Ages Coming?

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Memphis Congressman Steve Cohen‘s cell phone rings in telephone calls to the theme song of the old Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson? Who knew?

Whatever the answer was before, the updated answer is: Everyone who attended the 9th District U.S. Representative’s annual public issues meeting for constituents, held on Monday in his third-floor office at the Federal Building downtown.

The bouncy chords of the Paul Anka-composed tune that used to signal “Here’s Johnny” rang out once during the nearly two hours of Q-and-A between Cohen and his overflow crowd, and that sound lasted just long enough for the congressman to put the phone on hold and stash it away.

Cohen himself was as accessible and upbeat as the tune suggested, and both were ironically at odds with the basic message the congressman had for his constituents. That was summed up in his statement: “We’re going into a new Dark Ages that will make Dwight Eisenhower look like a progressive.”

That’s understating the case a bit. Eisenhower, a tough but genial presence known to his generation as “Ike,” was the Allied Supreme Commander in Europe during World War II, and his popularity never sagged very much during the two terms he served as president from 1953 to 1961.

Historians, in fact, have already begun to locate Eisenhower on the moderate end of the political spectrum. In Cohen’s forecast of things to come, the administration of President-elect Donald Trump might well make such past Republican conservative figures as Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan look like progressives.

Reviewing Trump’s cabinet appointments, for example, Cohen called Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions “the wrong person to be attorney general.” He regarded the president-elect’s designates for such agencies as the EPA, Energy, and Education as uniformly “awful,” enemies to the legitimate aims of their departments and cases of “the fox in the henhouse.” And, said Cohen, all the other appointees are “just billionaires.”

Said the congressman: “He’s cut out the middlemen; he’s put the billionaires in charge, which is called oligarchy. That happened in Russia, and it’s happening here.”

Cohen eased up only a bit for Elaine Chao, Trump’s Transportation Secretary designate. The congressman, a member of the Transportation Committee, said “I’ve met her; I know her. I’m going to try to get projects from her. Let’s leave it at that.”

The essence of Cohen’s forebodings was that the combination of a Republican Congress and President Trump would mean less money for desirable public programs, more privatization for the gratification of special interests, and an erratic foreign policy.

Cohen expressed some hope that a minority of relatively moderate Republican senators might be open-minded in forthcoming Senate hearings on the cabinet nominees. He named them as Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine, and John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona. “And, hopefully, Corker and Lamar” (Tennessee Senators Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander.) 

Asked if he had hopes of being able to have a useful conversation with Trump himself, Cohen said, “Dr. Shea has passed away,” a reference to the late Dr. John Shea of Memphis, famous for his work in improving or restoring faulty hearing.

“What Trump has done is unleashed people so they feel it’s a cool thing to be mean and that it’s okay, and it’s not a cool thing to do at all.”

The congressman noted the occasional strains that have occurred between Trump and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. “He could get Paul Ryan upset. … He’s the guy who can bring an impeachment.”

Cohen had opened his meeting with constituents with a tease: “There’s an announcement coming.” He said that “in about three weeks, I’m going to be receiving a leadership position.” When that moment comes, Cohen said, it would mark the first time in 30 years that a Tennessean would be in the Democratic leadership.  

Jackson Baker

State Senator Randy McNally (R-Chattanooga) (center) was sworn in Monday as Tennessee’s new Senate Speaker and Lieutenant Governor.

• By a 7-4 vote on Monday, the Shelby County Commission approved another year’s appointment of former Commissioner Julian Bolton as special legal advisor to the Commission at a stipend of $65,000 a year. There were four nay notes — from David Reaves, Mark Billingsley, George Chism, and Steve Basar. The commission also approved a legislative package to present to the current session of the General Assembly.

• Deidre Malone, founder and CEO of the Carter Malone Group, a public affairs, advertising, and consulting firm, has been named chairperson of the Memphis chapter of the NAACP and will be installed as such in a ceremony on January 22nd. Malone is a two-time candidate for Shelby County mayor, a former Shelby County Commissioner, and a long-time eminence in civic and Democratic Party affairs, having served the last extant version of the local party as a vice chair. She also logged several years at WLOK-AM as a news reporter and anchor and at WMC-TV, Action News 5, as a producer.

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Politics Politics Feature

Election Commission Zigs; County Commission Zags

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Jackson Baker

Rich Holden

The announcement Monday by Rich Holden of his decision to retire as Shelby County Election Commission administrator at the end of the year belongs to the category of events that are both surprising and instantly seen as inevitable, once they occur.

For years Holden has borne the brunt of virtually nonstop criticism for a seemingly endless series of glitches and issues that have bedeviled the county’s electoral process. These have run the gamut from the issuance of ballots improperly matched up with the appropriate districts to snarls in vote-counting to what critics charged was a disregarding of quirks in the county’s voting machines.

At various times, Holden was the recipient of sanctions from the Election Commission itself, votes of no confidence by the Memphis City Council and the Shelby County Commission, and demands by local elected officials for federal investigations of his office.

Holden’s problems began as far back as the time of his appointment in 2009 by a commission that had become newly majority-Republican in the previous election cycle, when the state House of Representatives tipped over to GOP control.

Since the Senate had already come under a Republican majority, that made the GOP the state’s official majority party, and Tennessee law provides that not only the state Election Commission but each of the 95 county election commissions shall consist of a 3-2 majority in favor of the party which controls the legislature.

For decades, that fact resulted in anomalies like the presence of pretend-Democrats in control of election commissions in several ancestrally Republican East Tennessee counties where there were as many actual Democrats as there were aardvarks.

In Shelby County, however, the two parties had for some time coexisted in a condition of rough equivalence, and the change-over from Democratic to Republican control in the administration of elections had the potential of controversy under the best of circumstances.

And that fact was accentuated in 2009 by a fast-track post-election effort of the new GOP majority on the county Election Commission to transition Holden, who had been a Republican member of the commission, into the administrator’s job, which had long been held by Democratic CAO James Johnson.

The move was initially staved off by a statement of caution from former state Attorney General Robert Cooper, but would eventually come to pass, with Holden acceding to the position of administrator and Johnson becoming a Democratic commission member.

The newly configured commission hit a bump with the 2010 county election, the first major partisan election under the new management, when an apparent electronic glitch erroneously recorded thousands of potential election-day voters as already having cast ballots in the early-voting period, with hundreds of them being turned away before the problem was discovered and corrected.

Given that the slate of Republican candidates swept that election over their Democratic opponents, the losing Democrats thought they smelled a fish and sued to have the results overturned. They were supported by a series of itemized charges— some of them alleging chicaneries that seemed fanciful enough for a James Bond saga — from Black Box Voting, an out-of-state watchdog organization.

The list of allegations was pruned down to a series of possible technical irregularities before trial, and then-Chancellor Arnold Goldin dismissed the plaintiffs’ suit as not meeting the standards for declaring the election result “incurably uncertain,” as required for the trial to be pursued. The numerical gaps between winner and loser had, in any case, seemed far larger than could have been affected by the election-day glitch.

But the seeds of suspicion had sprouted, and the almost dependable eruption of new glitches in election after election ever since has done little to restore trust between the two parties vis-à-vis the election process.

The basis of contention shifted in the course of time from suspicion of fraud to simple negligence or mismanagement, and the spotlight shifted away from members of the commission itself to Holden. Following the mismatching of thousands of races to precincts in ballots issued in the August 2012 county election, the commission members, Democrats and Republicans alike, agreed to put Holden on six-month probation.

He emerged with his job intact, but allegations and complaints continued, from Democratic members of the commission and self-appointed watchdogs like Steve Ross and Joe Weinberg. Most recently, Weinberg made a point of publicizing a new case of apparent wrong ballots being issued to specific voters, this one based on a challenge originally raised by John Marek, one of the losing candidates in the recent election for the Memphis City Council’s District 5.

And state Representative G.A. Hardaway had of late gone so far as to call for a criminal investigation of Holden.

There often seemed to be a good deal of overreach by Holden’s critics, and no doubt partisan motives played a role in his tribulations, as did a general need to find a scapegoat for problems and circumstances beyond the province of a single individual. And, though generally good-natured and uncomplaining, the husky ex-Marine sometimes evinced a stubbornness in the face of complaints that others found frustrating.

In any case, Holden is at last off the hot seat. The five-member Election Commission, so often at odds with itself, will now have to agree on a successor.

• The Shelby County Commission, another local body accustomed to a fair amount of contentiousness, eased into its annual holiday break with a Monday meeting that lacked any of the clashes between members that have become routine, and, for the time being, avoided as well any resumption of the commission’s ongoing conflict with the administration of county Mayor Mark Luttrell.

And, as a result of the defeat at Wednesday’s committee sessions of a resolution from Commissioner Steve Basar requiring approval by the county commission and city council of any potential merger of the city/county Economic Development and Growth Engine Board (EDGE) with the Community Redevelopment Agency, Basar had withdrawn his resolution from Monday’s agenda.

The main order of business for the commission on Monday was to approve further incremental grants to community organizations, projects, and charities deemed to be deserving by members of the commission acting under their recently adopted license to dispense such lagniappes on a district-by-district basis.

One indication of Monday’s laid-back pre-holiday mood came in the form of a quip from commission chairman Terry Roland to Luttrell’s CAO, Harvey Kennedy, who had previously complained that the microphone at his desk in the well of the commission auditorium was malfunctioning.

“Well, Cap, you see we got your button fixed, and you don’t even need to use it,” cracked Roland, during a lull in proceedings. (The breeziness of addressing Kennedy, a former Navy captain, as “Cap” was an interesting indicator of the commission’s relations with the administration, as well.)

The lack of action Monday on either the EDGE issue or the conflict between the commission and the administration does not mean that either is a closed matter, of course. There will doubtless be further actions on the commission (and on the city council, as well) to revise the terms of the relationship with EDGE so as to give members of the legislative bodies more active say on industrial recruitment matters than their presence on the EDGE board as ex officio members currently allows.

And there are ongoing discussions behind the scenes to break the stalemate over the commission’s wish to complete the installation of former Commissioner Julian Bolton to act as an independent attorney on behalf of the commission. Basically, the commission insists on the basis of the County Charter that it has that right; Luttrell and County Attorney Ross Dyer insist on the basis of the self-same charter that they do not.

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Politics Politics Feature

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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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Commission Reschedules Independent-Attorney Showdown for Wednesday

CREDIT: JB

JB

The contending parties at a recent weekend retreat: L to r: County CAO Harvey Kennedy; Mayor Mark Luttrell; Commission Chairman Terry Roland; and Commissioner Heidi Shafer

All systems are still go on Wednesday for the showdown between a rebellious Shelby County Commission and the administration of Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell over the issue of an independent counsel to serve the Commission only.

Resolution of the matter was to have occurred at a special Commission meeting called for last Thursday by Commission chair Terry Roland, but Commissioner Willie Brooks had duties rolling out a new pay station for FedEx on Thursday and had to be excused — thereby taking his vote out of the occasion and making for a more marginal circumstance.

At Brooks’ request, his colleagues agreed on an alternate formula whereby action on the independent-counsel matter could be accomplished on this Wednesday’s committee day in the County Building. As Commissioner Heidi Shafer, one of the leaders of the independent-counsel action said, the Commission plans to adjourn its committee work midway of the session and would go downstairs to the Commission auditorium to hold a special meeting of the full Commission on all the matters pertaining to the counsel controversy.

“Then back up to finish committees,” Shafer explained, in imagining a finish for Wednesday that would be bound to feel anti-climactic.

The counsel controversy had been germinating for some time but achieved full bloom during the Commission’s budget season in the spring when the Commission bi-partisan majority developed suspicions that Luttrell and his CAO, Harvey Kennedy, had been disingenuous in handling a pending fiscal surplus, low-balling an estimate of it in the amount of $6 million rather than what later investigation revealed to be perhaps as much as $21 million and working to frustrate any effort by the Commission to carve a one-cent sales tax decrease out of the surplus.

The Commission’s desire for an independent counsel of its own to help it evaluate fiscal realities of this kind and other policy matters became an immediate goal — not merely as an end in itself but as a first step in underscoring the commissioners’ feeling that they, and not the executive branch, are the supreme ruling entity in Shelby County government.

On behalf of the Administration, County Attorney Ross Dyer issued a ruling, based on his reading of the county charter, refuting the viability of a permanent independent attorney for the Commission, suggesting only that the Commission, with his concurrence, could employ “special” attorneys for specific and limited ad hoc purposes.

Julian Bolton, a lawyer and former Commissioner, had been named by the Commission to serve as its attorney, but Dyer has indicated he would refuse to sign the necessary contact to legitimatize Bolton’s position, and Luttrell subsequently issued a veto to the resolution that is subject to override by simple majority vote of the Commission.

Voting that override is one likely action for Wednesday, and Roland has suggested that the Commission, as a bargaining tool, might also exercise an option to dispossess Dyer, an appointee of Mayor Luttrell who, like all such mayoral appointees, is subject to Commission approval. The Commission could theoretically reverse its prior approval of Dyer’s hiring with a simple vote of reconsideration.

Roland and Shafer had previously released a lengthy opinion by Bolton, acting as an ad hoc attorney, in favor of their hiring an independent commission attorney.

They have subsequently released additional supporting legal opinions from three former members of the Shelby County Charter Commission. Below are excerpts from these opinions:

George F. Higgs
former member, Shelby County Charter Commission:
…The legislative body is not limited, except by budgetary limitations, and it was the intention of the Charter Commission that traditional separation of powers doctrines be observed. Independent and separate legal counsel is necessary to ensure that the executive and legislative branches exercise independence and separation from one another, thus creating a balance of power. Therefore, in my opinion, the proposed resolution is appropriate….

Dr. Coby V. Smith
former Shelby County Charter Commission member
…The language was intended to allow the Shelby County Commission the freedom to solicit, select, and retain any talent or resources within their budgetary limits that they felt was essential to performing their legislative duties. This language specifically identified special (legal) counsel because of its importance and because of discussions regarding the various conflicts that occur between the Shelby County commission and the executive branch of Shelby County government…..
I have reviewed the proposed resolution, and have no hesitancy in recognizing that it is consistent with what the charter commission envisioned the Shelby County Commission should be empowered to do….

Herman Morris Jr.
former chairman of the Shelby County Home Rule Charter Commission
…The intention and plain meaning of the language, in my opinion, is to allow the Shelby County Commission to employ special legal counsel to assist it, in carrying out its legislative functions. The wording of the section is broad and does not limit the power of the legislative branch, in any respect, except in the event of budgetary constraints…..

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Politics Politics Feature

Showdowns in Shelby County

CREDIT: JB

JB

Council runoff candidates at Hooks forum were (l to r) Jamita Swearengen (District 4); Worth Morgan and Dan Springer (District 5); and Anthony Anderson and Berlin Boyd (District 7)

As early voting ends this Friday and the final runoff election date of November 19th, next Thursday, beckons, most attention has been focused on two of the five district city council runoffs: District 5 (Midtown, East Memphis) between newcomer Worth Morgan and youthful activist Dan Springer, and the District 7 race (North Memphis, Frayser) between interim incumbent Berlin Boyd and challenger Anthony Anderson.

District 5 lies astride the Poplar corridor power nexus and is also the bailiwick of current Councilman and Mayor-elect Jim Strickland. Both Morgan and Springer are Republicans, though Springer, who has worked for both Senator Bob Corker and County Mayor Mark Luttrell, won the formal endorsement of the Shelby County Republican Party during the regular election process, in which seven candidates overall vied for the seat.

Morgan, who led by far in fund-raising, with receipts of more than $200,000 to Springer’s $60,000 or so, had the support of the city’s business elite. Now, both he and Springer have solicited support from the camps of losing candidates. 

A meet-and-greet for Morgan last week hosted by fifth-place finisher Charles “Chooch” Pickard, drew a diverse group including avowed Democrats, African Americans, and members of the city’s gay community. Springer, for his part, has actively pitched across party lines as well and has won the formal support of Democrat Mary Wilder, among others. 

Overall, Springer leads in formal endorsements of various kinds. Morgan finished ahead on October 8th, however, with 32 percent of the vote to Springer’s 23 percent.

At a forum last week at the Hooks Central Library for candidates in Districts 4, 5, and 7, Morgan and Springer differed only moderately on issues, though Morgan, who has seemed more at ease in debate formats, gave answers that were both more glib and more expansive. He spoke of having transcended several difficult illnesses as evidence of his resolve, while Springer emphasized his experience.

At the same forum, Boyd, too, stressed his existing connections and boasted of having brought $3.6 million into District 7. Anderson, a clergyman who is the entrepreneur behind the Memphis Business Academy charter-school network, countered with a figure of $8 million allegedly invested in MBA and with references to his numerous community involvements.

Both advocated revenue solutions involving assessments of nonresidents who work in Memphis, in the form of sticker fees (Boyd) or payroll taxes (Anderson). Both approaches would seem to require approval by the Tennessee General Assembly. The two differed most obviously on crime, which Boyd saw as a looming danger and Anderson saw as having diminished.

In the regular general election, Boyd had 26 percent of the total vote, and Anderson had 24 percent.

(Go to Politics Beat Blog at memphisflyer.com for more on these races and the three other Council runoffs: Frank Colvett Jr. vs. Rachel Knox in District 3; Patrice Robinson vs. Keith Williams in District 3; and Jamita Swearengen vs. Doris DeBerry-Bradshaw in District 4.)

The power struggle between the Shelby County Commission and the administration of county Mayor Mark Luttrell moved toward another showdown on Monday with the mayor’s veto of a recent commission resolution appointing former Commissioner Julian Bolton as its independent counsel.

Commission chair Terry Roland‘s public response was in a memo to his fellow commissioners, in which he wrote that he had in mind to call a special commission meeting for Thursday. “We must act as a body to protect our legislative duty to the people of Shelby County, Tennessee,” the memo concluded.

Roland had previously indicated privately that County Attorney Ross Dyer, who has resisted the independent-counsel idea on grounds that the County Charter does not allow it, might be confronted with a choice between altering his view and facing a possible ouster move from the commission. That could come with a vote to reconsider his hiring.

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Politics Politics Feature

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
Editorial Opinion

Shelby County Commission: A Matter of Law

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Not unexpectedly, a bid by the Shelby County Commission to hire Julian Bolton, a former commissioner, as the commission’s independent attorney has been turned back by the existing county attorney, Ross Dyer.

Jackson Baker

Terry Roland

Dyer cited the county charter in ruling basically that the new attorney — any new attorney — would have to be agreeable to him and would have to be a member of his staff. It is as if King George III determined that the 13 American colonies could function “independently,” so long as their actions were subject to approval by the House of Lords.

Those members of the commission who arrived at Monday’s meeting in a giddy state of expectation were understandably dismayed and predictably backed away from the substitute resolution that Dyer’s s staff had prepared.

Not to be foiled, the irrepressible commission chair, Terry Roland, immediately hired Bolton as a special attorney to figure out how to get around Dyer’s ruling. An odd quirk in the charter apparently allows for such ad hoc — and temporary — outsourcings.

At press time, Dyer had not responded, though he could conceivably claim to have the option of hiring Bolton himself to counter whatever move Bolton makes on behalf of the commission.

And we halfway expect to hear from somebody involved in this curious caper some variation of the ubiquitous Donald Trump punchline: “Julian, you’re fired.”

But let’s be serious. The background of this seemingly outlandish matter is a conviction on the part of a commission majority (transcending matters of race or party) that the administration of County Mayor Mark Luttrell has not played fair and square with commissioners on matters of county spending, and on the contrary has usurped the commission’s authority to approve a budget by issuing incomplete and/or misleading reports on the county’s fiscal situation, and by attempting to play commissioners off against each other by dangling now-you-seem-them-now-you-don’t “surplus” funds.

What the commission majority wants is the same wherewithal possessed by the Memphis City Council, which back in the 1990s was able successfully to engage its own permanent full-time attorney, Allan Wade, who continues in that role and is responsible to the council and only to the council. It is this capability that County Attorney Dyer, who insists he represents all county officials, administrative and legislative, maintains is denied the commission by the County Charter.

The issue of an independent attorney is by no means the only matter dividing the commission from the Luttrell administration, but it has become the lynchpin of a generalized rebellion in which the commission intends to assert itself not merely as the administration’s equal but also as its superior in matters of governmental oversight.

What has become a full-blown power struggle has come to rest on a legalistic point involving attorneys and may well end up being contested by adversary sets of attorneys and finally decided in a court of law. We know that we should be comforted by this fact, but for reasons we can’t fully explain, it is making us uneasy.