Tag: Justin Ford

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A Truce Prevails on the Shelby County Commission

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

With the apparent reaching of a compromise on Monday between feuding factions of the Shelby County Commission, a lawsuit may have been resolved and a modus vivendi of sorts achieved, but the ideologically polarized body still has issues.

It took a while, both in the long run (two and a half months since the standoff began, in the immediate wake of the August 7th election) and in the short term (two hours of mind-bending intricacy at Monday’s climactic public meeting), but the commission’s simmering power struggle finally ended — or seemed to — with a win-win solution.

Both of the warring party-line-plus-one factions were claiming victory, in any case — the one composed of six Democrats and one Republican (Steve Basar), and the one containing five Republicans and one Democrat (Justin Ford).

The solution involved a willingness by the D-Plus-Ones to give up their ongoing Chancery Court lawsuit against Chairman Ford (for his seemingly high-handed control of what could be placed on the commission agenda) in return for the R-Plus-Ones’ agreement to drop their appeal of an adverse decision by Chancellor Jim Kyle, coupled with Ford’s acceptance of majority rule in determining agenda items.

Ford and his Republican allies claimed victory because they had fended off what Republicans Heidi Shafer and Terry Roland saw as an effort by the D-Plus-Ones to “overthrow” Ford’s chairmanship. The Democratic coalition — whose ad hoc leaders were newbie Van Turner and the veteran Walter Bailey — claimed victory because they had forced Ford to yield on his arbitrary control of the agenda.

Virtually lost sight of in the two-sided celebration (which followed an exhausting and repetitious squabble settled evidently in an off-to-the-side chat by competing lawyers Turner and Ron Krelstein) was the origin of the dispute, in the chairmanship election held on September 8th by a freshly elected commission with six new members.

Basar, who had been vice chair in 2013-14, had expected to be elected chairman and was shocked when the majority of Republicans opted instead for the candidacy of Roland, then switched to Democrat Ford when the Millington Republican seemed obviously about to fall short.

Ford was ultimately elected on the basis of his own vote and that of the commission’s six Republicans (including the stunned Basar, who would shortly have a change of mind). Bailey, the commission’s senior Democrat, was meanwhile outraged by his second-place finish to Ford, whose long-term chumminess with Republicans and openness to their agenda were no secret.

At the commission’s next meeting, on September 22nd, Bailey and five other Democrats, along with Basar, voted together to block the committee appointments made by Ford. Weeks later, Ford would get his way on the committee matter, but in the meantime, the battle had shifted to the matter of an agenda item that Basar kept proposing and Ford kept rejecting.

That agenda item, which proposed a rules change allowing agenda items to be added on the basis of simple majority votes and not by a two-thirds super-majority, became the basis of a Democratic coalition lawsuit against Ford’s alleged violations of commission rules via his persistent rejections.

Two weeks ago Chancellor Kyle declined to rule outright on the suit, finding instead that the commission had no rules because it had adopted none for the new body and directing commissioners to adopt new rules or to readopt the body’s former rules.

Hence a motion for an amended rules package presented as an add-on by Basar on Monday, igniting another round of the ongoing factional dispute — partly tedious, partly fascinating — and going over all of the same old issues dividing the body.

The amended rules package contained new clauses calling for the majority-rule principle and essentially removing the chairman from any control over agenda items. Deleted from the package, on a finding by County Attorney Marcy Ingram that it conflicted with the county charter, was a clause declaring that the chairman served “at the will and pleasure of the commission.”

When the deal finally came sometime after 6 p.m. on Monday, the two sides had agreed (on a motion by Ford!) to defer the rules matter to the next meeting of the general government committee, to drop their respective legal actions, and to do the trade-off indicated above: Ford can feel secure in his chairmanship, though he has had to sacrifice the power over the agenda that he had previously claimed and employed.

Either both sides won or both sides lost. The question now becomes: Do the two party-line-plus-one coalitions continue to cohere, or do they break apart, a major part of their raison-d’être having dissolved.

• An indicator of whether the coalitions might hold was implicit in another vote taken by the commission on Monday. Two votes, actually, on related ordinances proposed by Roland — to strike language in existing ordinances requiring that contractors with the county observe living wage and prevailing wage standards, respectively.

Roland’s premise is that the existing ordinances are inconsistent with legislation passed by the Republican dominated General Assembly establishing state standards in such matters and prohibiting local requirements that might clash with them. The issue, both in Shelby County and in Nashville, has been a clear divider between Democrats and Republicans.

Since this was the second reading for both Roland ordinances, and since the commission was girding for the later clash on the rules matter, it was tacitly agreed that there would be no extended debate and that any knock-down, drag-out clash between factions would be postponed until the crucial third reading of the ordinances, at the commission’s next full public session.

Both the Roland ordinances got a tentative okay by the margin of 7-6, with Basar voting along with other Republicans and Democrat Ford voting with them as well.

On that evidence of Ford’s continued solidarity with his Republican supporters, coupled with Basar’s reversion to ideological form on a power-neutral issue, it would seem that the GOP may have come out ahead in the power struggle. It remains to be seen how long that state of affairs exists.

• One other matter of both short- and long-term significance was taken by the commission on Monday. This concerned a resolution from GOP member David Reaves putting the commission on record as wanting to see the matter of a court-ordered payment to Shelby County Schools (SCS) resolved as a precondition for any vote to approve a city-sponsored Fairgrounds Tourist Development Zone (TDZ) proposal by city housing and community development director Robert Lipscomb.

The TDZ proposal, outlined by Lipscomb to the commission during its committee sessions last week, had been favorably received in general. The commission’s approval of the proposal is not required but would clearly assist the TDZ’s chances in being okayed by the Tennessee Building Commission, where the submitted proposal has lingered for at least a year.

The matter of the city’s debt to SCS — inherited from a 2008 default of $57 million owed to the former Memphis City Schools system — has periodically accounted for controversy between the city of Memphis and Shelby County governments, inasmuch as the county is now responsible for all public-school funding including the delinquent maintenance-of-effort amount incurred by the city.

Reaves’ resolution passed 8-4, with four Democrats — Bailey, Turner, Reginald Milton, and Eddie Jones — dissenting and another Democrat, Willie Brooks, abstaining.

• A former Memphis media personality had a role in a controversy that flared up last week regarding the possibility that Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges may have flashed a gang sign while posing for a news photo with a volunteer in a get-out-the-vote campaign during the week before the November 4th election.

The picture shows Hodges and the volunteer, who has something of a criminal record, pointing at each other, as a sign of solidarity on the GOTV effort. An official of the Minneapolis police union, noting that both Hodges and the volunteer had raised thumbs while pointing, charged that they had thereby exchanged a known gang greeting.

The charge has been the source of much derision in the national media, a good deal of which was directed at KSTP-TV, an ABC affiliate that first aired it. Bill Lunn, a former longtime anchor with Memphis’ Channel 24, was a co-anchor of the KSTP broadcast.

In an exchange of texts, Lunn told the Flyer that Hodges may have “unknowingly” flashed the gang sign while reciprocating the volunteer’s gesture but, without elaborating further, said the station had done a good deal of “vetting” before airing the original segment.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

County Commission, Chairman Ford Cut a Deal on Power-Sharing (Finally)

CREDIT: JB

JB

Attorney Krelstein and Justin Ford confer just prior to chairman Ford’s agreeing to deal with plaintiffs

It took a while, both in the long run (two and a half months since the standoff began, in the immediate wake of the August 7 election) and in the short term (two hours of mind-bending intricacy at Monday’s climactic public meeting), but the Shelby County Commission’s power struggle finally ended — or seemed to — with a win-win solution.

Both of the warring party-line-plus-one factions were claiming victory, in any case — the one composed of six Democrats and one Republican (Steve Basar), and the one containing five Republicans and one Democrat (Justin Ford).

The solution involved a willingness by the D-Plus-Ones to give up their ongoing Chancery Court lawsuit against chairman Ford (for his seemingly high-handed control of what could be placed on the Commission agenda) in return for the R-Plus-Ones’ agreement to drop their appeal of an adverse decision by Chancellor Jim Kyle, coupled with Ford’s acceptance of majority rule in determining agenda items.

Ford and his Republican allies claimed victory because they had fended off what Republicans Heidi Shafer and Terry Roland saw as an effort by the D-Plus-Ones to “overthrow” Ford’s chairmanship. The Democratic coalition — whose ad hoc leaders were newbie Van Turner and the veteran Walter Bailey — claimed victory because they had forced Ford to yield on his arbitrary control of the agenda.

Virtually lost sight of in the two-sided celebration (which followed an exhausting and repetitious squabble settled evidently in an off-to-the-side chat by competing lawyers Turner and Ron Krelstein) was the origin of the dispute, in the chairmanship election held on September 8 by a freshly elected Commission with six new members.

The GOP’s Basar, who had been vice-chair in 2013-14, had expected to be elected chairman and was shocked when the majority of Republicans opted instead for the candidacy of Roland, switching to Democrat Ford when the Millington Republican seemed obviously about to fall short.

Ford was ultimately elected on the basis of his own vote and that of the Commission’s six Republicans (including the stunned Basar, who would shortly have a change of mind). Bailey, the Commission’s senior Democrat, was meanwhile outraged by his second-place finish to Ford, whose long-term chumminess with Republicans and openness to their agenda were no secret.

At the Commission’s next meeting, on September 22, Bailey and five other Democrats, along with Basar, voted together to block the committee appointments made by Ford. Eventually, weeks later, Ford would get his way on the committee matter, but in the meantime the battle had shifted to the matter of an agenda item which Basar kept proposing and Ford kept rejecting.

That agenda item, which proposed a rules change allowing agenda items to be added on the basis of simple majority votes and not by a 2/3 super-majority, became the basis of a Democratic coalition lawsuit against Ford’s alleged violations of Commission rules via his persistent rejections.

Two weeks ago Chancellor Kyle declined to rule outright on the suit, finding instead that the Commission had no rules because it had adopted none for the new body and directing Commissioners to adopt new rules or to re-adopt the body’s former rules.

Hence a motion for an amended rules package presented as an add-on by Basar on Monday, igniting another round of the ongoing factional dispute — partly tedious, partly fascinating — and going over all of the same old issues dividing the body.

As indicated in a prior post on this site, the amended rules package contained new clauses calling for the majority-rule principle and essentially removing the chairman from any control over agenda items. Deleted from the package, on a finding by County Attorney Marcy Ingram that it conflicted with the county charter, was a clause declaring that the chairman served “at the will and pleasure of the Commission.”

[pdf-1]

When the deal finally came sometime after 6:00 p.m. on Monday, the two sides had agreed (on a motion by Ford!) to refer the rules matter to the next meeting of the general government committee, resolved to drop their respective legal actions, and to do the trade-off indicated in Paragraph Three above: Ford can feel secure in his chairmanship, though he has had to sacrifice the power over the agenda which he had previously claimed and employed.

Either both sides won, or both sides lost. The question now becomes: Do the two party-line-plus-one coalitions continue to cohere, or do they break apart, a major part of their raison-d’etre having dissolved?

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Ford’s Appointments Approved, as the Rebellion Against Him Finally Evaporates

CREDIT: JB

JB

Commission chairman Justin Ford

Realistically, the battle for leadership on the Shelby County Commission is over for the time being — or at least in remission. By a vote on Monday of 11 for, 1 opposed, and 1 abstaining, the Commission formally sustained Chairman Justin Ford’s choices for committee chairs on the Commission and thereby ended any immediate prospect of a challenge to his leadership.

Monday’s vote was a reprise of a preliminary vote in Ford’s favor at last Wednesday’s committee meetings.

Given that last week’s vote had been similarly lopsided, there was very little fighting left to do at Monday’s regular Commission meeting, and Democrat Walter Bailey, who had been the chief Ford resister, was content on Monday to cast his no vote, the only one against the appointments, as quietly and uneventfully as possible. The only other break from unanimity was an abstaining vote from Democrat Van Turner, chairman of the general government committee which handled the appointments matter.

The lack of drama on Monday reflected the currently anti-climactic state of a controversy that had seen Ford’s appointments blocked and referred back to committee by a 7-6 vote — six Democrats and Republican Steve Basar — on a motion made by the disgruntled Bailey at the regular Commission meeting of September 22.
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And the relatively matter-of-fact denouement on Monday occurred despite some serious prodding from others, on both sides of the issue, who evidently thought the contest was still on.

Over the weekend, Norma Lester, a vocal Democratic representative on the Shelby County Election Commission, released the text of an “open letter” to fellow Democrats. The letter expressed Lester’s view that Ford, , who was elected chairman of the reconstituted commission last month on the strength of his own vote, plus those of six Republicans, had subsequently fulfilled GOP wishes in the manner of the committee chairmanships.

Lester echoed Bailey’s charge that a “deal” had been cut on the chairmanship appointments between Ford and the GOP members who supported his chairmanship bid. Particularly controversial was the naming, for the second year in a row, of Republican member Heidi Shafer as chair of the Commission’s budget committee.

Bailey had slammed what he called “political machinations” involved in both Ford’s election and his subsequent naming of committee chairs.

Lester’s weekend letter seconded Bailey’s accusations of deal-making and “getting in bed with Republicans” and made a charge of “blatant betrayal, which is what happened with young Ford and the basis for the contempt amongst fellow Democrats.”

A visibly subdued Bailey restricted his objections on Monday to asking that the two items involving appointments issue be pulled off the Commission’s consent agenda, which meant that they were potentially subject to debate.

But all Bailey had to say was “I again voice my objection.”

That was enough, however, to galvanize a group of Tea Party audience members, who had come prepared, just in case, and, one by one, came to the dock to make statements in favor of Ford’s appointments.

Donna Bohannon made the case for Shafer’s budget-committee chairmanship and said she wanted “to see that glass ceiling lowered.” Yvonne Burton said she had never seen a chairman’s appointees resisted before and wondered, “Why are we taking so much time with this?” Brenda Taylor agreed expressing impatience with “all this to-do.” .She urged, “Let’s move on.”

Frequent Commission attendee Charles Nelson concurred. “We’re too old for this kindergarten,” he said.

Prodded to respond to the chorus, Bailey said merely, “I don’t choose to elaborate.”

The only audience response at variance with all this concord had come from Linda Nettles Harris, who made what amounted to a stand-alone accusation that GOP Commissioner Terry Roland, who had not figured in the dialogue on Monday, was a “bully” and had made improper use of the term “racist” to describe his political opponents. Roland chose not to reply.

Then came the vote, and that was that. Commissioner Mark Billingsley, a Germantown Republican, would offer kudos for the inaugural “coffee and conversation” event sponsored by Ford last Friday, which he termed the kind of “positive” news often overlooked by the media. 

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Lester, Democratic Election Commission Member, Slams Justin Ford “Betrayal”

Norma Lester

The battle over the Shelby County Commission may have come to an end with last Wednesday’s preliminary vote to accept the committee appointments of chairman Justin Ford, but with that vote, by the Commission’s general government committee, due to be ratified by the full Commission on Monday,the fallout continues in other parts of the local political universe.

Even as Republicans hashed out their internal disagreements on the appointments issue at a GOP steering committee meeting week before last, Democrats showed signs of beginning their own internal debate on the issue.

Norma Lester, a vocal Democratic representative on the Shelby County Election Commission, has issued an “open letter” to her party-mates, expressing her view that Ford, who was elected chairman on the strength of his own vote, plus those of six Republicans, had subsequently fulfilled GOP wishes in the manner of the committee appointments.

Essentially, Lester’s public missive puts her in solidarity with Democratic Commissioner Walter Bailey, who has charged that Ford’s committee assignments were made as part of a “deal” with the Commission’s Republican contingent.
The text of Lester’s letter:

My fellow Democrats, in reflecting upon recent activities, I am of the opinion it is time to WAKE UP!!

Personally, I applaud Republican Leadership in holding firm to keeping members in line, for that is as it should be. I am also a strong proponent of bipartisan decisions, HOWEVER, when Republicans court Democrats to get in bed with them but see it as taboo to get in bed with Democrats that should send a resounding wake up call!!! Carefully read the following recent statements by Republican Commissioner Steve Basar who was “bullied” for doing the exact same thing Republicans had gotten Democrat Commissioner Justin Ford to do. What a slap in the face DEMOCRATS!!!!

“Commissioner Steve Basar spoke to the “bullying” tactics of his fellow Republicans after he voted with Bailey and five other Democrats during the last commission meeting, sending the appointments back to committee, an unprecedented tactic. Basar argued that when six Republicans and one Democrat vote together, “that’s a bipartisan victory” but when a Republican sides with Democrats, the Republican should be thrown out”. (Memphis Flyer, October 8, 2014)

Getting in bed with Republicans is NOT new and not a bad thing “IF” they are willing to do likewise. I am reminded of friends who not long ago did the same thing. There is however a difference in cutting a deal and blatant betrayal, which is what happened with young Ford and the basis for the contempt amongst fellow Democrats. His behavior far exceeds that of Democratic State Senator Rosalind Kurita several years ago which resulted in her being out cast! I was in the audience the day the Ford votes were taken and it honestly looked as if the six Democrat Commissioners were in need of resuscitation! It was overwhelming being blind-sided by one someone reneging on a “gentlemen’s agreement.” Deal cutting when necessary should be for the overall benefit of those you serve NOT for personal gain. That seems to be forgotten by far too many elected officials and unfortunately without consequences. Where pray tell is the trust factor?

I refuse to accept being treated less than equal and for those in leadership positions that choose to do otherwise, the Democratic Party needs to hold them accountable and Democrats as a whole should not forget! Business as usual should no longer be acceptable. We should never settle for anything less than fair and equal treatment! To do otherwise desecrates the blood and tears of those that paved the way for us. We cannot forget!!

Democratically Yours,

Norma Lester