Tag: Lee Harris

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Politics Politics Feature

Unfinished Shelby County Business: Aquifer, EDGE, and Weed.

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

The issue of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s drilling wells into the Memphis Sand aquifer may not be a done deal, after all. Though TVA’s application to complete four wells into the aquifer to acquire water to use as coolant for its forthcoming natural-gas plant was seemingly given the go-ahead in November by the Shelby County Board of Water Quality Control, concerns remain in important political places — on the Memphis City Council and the Shelby County Commission — and in the Tennessee General Assembly.

A bipartisan duo of state senators from Shelby County — Democrat Lee Harris of Memphis and Republican Brian Kelsey of Germantown — last year made a point of expressing solidarity with local environmentalists on their fears of possible contamination of the aquifer and the need to resist the TVA drilling. On Tuesday, in tandem with a media contingent, they began a “fact-finding trip,” which began at the Center for Applied Earth Science and Engineering Research at the University of Memphis and included stops at MLGW’s Sheahan Pumping Station,and the current coal-burning TVA plant on President’s Island and TVA’s soon-to-be natural-gas plant there.

Jackson Baker

Ward Archer and state Senators Lee Harris and Brian Kelsey at site of new TVA plant

 • The final form of the Shelby County Commission’s legislative agenda, to be presented to the General Assembly by the county’s lobbyists, was achieved on Monday, with the unanimous approval of a brief addendum, apropos the city-county EDGE board, which is responsible for making industrial-development decisions. The resolution called for “a member of the governing body of the municipality where the Industrial Development Board (IDB) was created to serve as a voting board member of the IDB.” Currently, the city council and county commission each have a non-voting member on the EDGE board.

Conspicuously absent from the final legislative agenda, due to unresolved discord, was a previously floated item calling for approval of medical marijuana and a “second chance” policy for persons arrested for possession of minor amounts of pot. The General Assembly is expected to take up the issue of legalizing medical marijuana.

Put off again were two resolutions having to do with the Shelby County Board of Education’s efforts to balance its books. One resolution was to receive and file the board’s first quarter report for the year ending June 30th. Another would ratify and approve amendments to the board’s budget for fiscal year 2017, adding on expenditures of $217,389. Neither had achieved any consensus from the commission’s education committee last Wednesday.

• Citing what he said was a “critical need” for infrastructure improvements in the county and its municipalities, Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell endorsed Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam‘s  proposed seven percent increase in the state’s gasoline tax in an appearance at the commission’s Monday meeting. The proposed tax hike would enable work to begin on a backlog of $10 billion worth of infrastructure projects that Haslam and Commissioner John Schroer of the Tennessee Department of Transportation deem long overdue but undone for lack of funding. 

Along with new fees on electric vehicles and rental cars, the proposed tax increase would pay for an overhaul plan, which the governor has given the name “The IMPROVE Act” (“Improving Manufacturing, Public Roads, and Opportunities for a Vibrant Economy”). 

The governor’s proposal calls for the gasoline-tax increase to be accompanied by a half-cent reduction in the state sales tax on groceries, by $113 million in cuts to the state’s business taxes, and by cuts to the Hall Income Tax.

Luttrell said that Haslam’s proposal called for more than $9 million to be spent in Shelby County and in the county’s several municipalities. “There will be some opposition to it in the General Assembly,” Luttrell cautioned, adding that he would be coming back to the commission seeking “a more formal resolution for support” once the proposed measure was in its final form.

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Politics Politics Feature

Kelsey, Harris: Bipartisan Effort on Aquifer Issue

“There’s no point in trading bad air to get bad water.”

That was a comment made this past weekend by state Senator Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown) in support of his intention to make common cause with fellow state Senator Lee Harris (D-Memphis). The two legislators — one an ideological Republican of the hard right, the other a self-professed progressive and the leader of his party in the Senate — agree on very little, but they share a concern about the impact of five proposed Tennessee Valley Authoirity wells being drilled into Memphis’ Sand aquifer.

Brian Kelsey and Lee Harris

Although it wasn’t immediately obvious just how the aquifer issue could be affected at the state legislative level — a fact granted by both Kelsey and Harris — the prospect of a bully-pulpit effort across political lines could not fail to hearten the sizable (and growing) corps of environmentally conscious citizens opposing TVA’s drilling plans.

Technically the issue has already been resolved in TVA’s favor, as the result of a hearing two weeks ago by the Shelby County Water Quality Health Board affirming the authority’s right to drill the final two wells of the five it envisions in order to acquire a supply of water for coolant purposes at its forthcoming natural-gas power plant on Presidents Island. In 2018, that plant is scheduled to replace TVA’s current coal-burning plant (the source of the “bad air” mentioned by Kelsey).

Scott Banbury, conservation program coordinator for the Sierra Club in Tennessee, had filed an appeal with the board in September to block the two wells after learning that permits for the first three proposed wells had already been granted by the Shelby County Health Department and that a 15-day period for appealing them had already passed. Contending that there had been no public notice of those wells, he resolved to act on the final two, which were still eligible for appeal.

Virtually overnight, a sizeable movement under the name of Protect the Aquifer and led by Memphis advertising executive Ward Archer, sprang up to back Banbury’s appeal. The group held several public-information sessions and turned up en masse for the appeal, held November 30th.

But the appellant group saw themselves impeded by procedural rules preventing them from presenting their expert witnesses but allowing TVA ample scope for its own experts. They felt hampered too by the hearing’s focus on checklist matters rather than the specific issues raised by the environmentalist coalition — namely, that the Memphis area’s long-treasured supply of pure drinking water might be endangered in numerous ways by the intrusion of the TVA wells.

The appellants pointed out that TVA itself had first proposed to use treated water from the nearby Maxson wastewater plant as its coolant agent but had discarded that plan as overly expensive and had not considered another option, that of using water from the Mississippi River’s alluvial aquifer. Drilling into Memphis’ Sand aquifer, they said, meant risking the seepage into it of polluted water through unstable adjacent clay layers.

The board, however, citing the adherence by TVA and the health department to the aforementioned checklist procedures, turned down the appeal, leaving opponents two further options — appealing to Chancery Court and petitioning the Shelby County Commission to alter the rules governing permits for future drilling into the aquifer.

Add to that whatever other options might come from what both Kelsey and Harris see as a bipartisan coalition to raise public consciousness on environmental consequences of the TVA drilling and to explore alternative procedures — both short- and long-term — for vetting water issues. In an interview with Channel 24, broadcast on Sunday, Democrat Harris made public his partnership with Kelsey on the matter and declared, “We have to say that some things are sacred, and our water supply is one of them.”

• Youthful activists from all across America turned up in Memphis over the weekend for the annual Young Democrats of America Winter Conference, hosted this year by the Tennessee Young Democrats. As a bonus, they got a first-hand look at U.S. Representative Keith Ellison (D-MN), who is regarded as the front-runner to become the next chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

Ellison, a diminutive fireplug of a man, had previously impressed Tennesseans at this year’s Democratic convention in Cleveland with a breakfast address to a joint meeting of the Tennesse and Minnesota delegations, and the rousing remarks he delivered on Friday night at the conference’s welcome reception at Bluefin Restaurant on South Main did not disappoint the gathered Young Democrats and a sizeable group of local attendees.

Introduced by Tennessee Young Democrat president London Lamar of Memphis and by Louis Elrod of Atlanta, president of the Young Democrats of America, Ellison called for an “all-hands-on-deck moment” and for a “24/7, 365-days-a-year” effort to revitalize Democratic Party efforts. “As bad as you may have felt on election day, you can feel just that good in 2018, if we get out and organize right now,” he said to the assembled YDs. He likened them to “the young people who fought the civil rights movement” and told them that they and “no chair, no big shot from Washington” would determine the shape of the future.

“What we really need is solidarity,” he said. “Men for women, straights for gays, and all working together for economic justice and for ‘our revolution.'”

Ellison confirmed reports that he had decided, if elected DNC chair, to relinquish his Congressional seat in order to devote full time to DNC leadership efforts.

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Politics Politics Feature

Break in the Weather

The political situation, locally as well as statewide, might appear to be in something of a lull, but the apparent calm could well presage something of a storm.

That would certainly seem to be the case at this week’s committee meetings on Wednesday of the Shelby County Commission, where at least two of the agenda items are sure to generate sparks.

One is a referred-back-to-committee item on funding the Shelby County District attorney general’s office to deal with car and body cameras employed by law enforcement; the other is a Shelby County Schools audit report and a discussion of SCS’ capital improvement needs. 

The request by D.A. Amy Weirich‘s office for $143,378 to pay for “additional personnel and equipment to process in-car and body-worn cameras” got a turndown two weeks ago by what amounted to a skeleton crew of commission members meeting under the rubric of the commission’s law enforcement committee.

It fared little better when presented to the full commission at last Monday’s regular public meeting. Though there were advocates to go ahead with the funding matter, there was significant opposition as well, particularly relating to the body-cam issue, which turned out to have enough jurisdictional, philosophical, and fiscal overtones to justify a 10-1 vote for another committee go-over — this one sure to be more fully attended.

The SCS matters are sure also to generate some close attention as the commission swings into the initial stages of its budget season. This is especially so, given the school district’s emergency request for an additional $40 million to stave off Draconian cuts, accompanied by some heated exchanges back and forth between the commission and the SCS administration and board.

• The 2016 legislative session of the Tennessee General Assembly is formally over, but questions regarding what it did and didn’t do are still provoking serious — and, in some cases, heated — reactions.

Mary Mancini, the chair of the Tennessee Democratic Party, scheduled a press conference for Tuesday of this week “to discuss the recently ended legislative session and the upcoming elections.”

According to Spencer Bowers, the TNDP communications director, actions to be discussed (which is to say, deplored) at the event, scheduled for the steps of the War Memorial Building, include the passage of a bill allowing professional counselors to reject gay and transgendered clients on the basis of “sincerely held principles” and another allowing college and university employees to carry weapons on campus, along with Governor Bill Haslam‘s refusal to veto the bills. The agenda for the Democrats’ press conference also included mention of an expanded list of Democratic candidates running in congressional races and in legislative races across the state, to challenge the Republicans’ current super-majority status in the General Assembly.

On Wednesday, three prominent Shelby County Republican members of that selfsame General Assembly will present their own takes on the legislature’s deeds, misdeeds, actions, and omissions at a noon luncheon of the National Federation of Independent Business at Regents Bank on Poplar Avenue.

The legislators are state Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris of Collierville, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Brian Kelsey of Germantown, and House Education Committee chair Mark White of Memphis. The trio will surely have both satisfactions and disappointments in the wake of the late session. Their complaints are likely to be in an opposite direction from those of Mancini and the Democrats.

• There is, however, one lament in which the official statements of the two parties are close to being on the same page. This is in regards to the matter of Measurement, Inc., the North Carolina company entrusted with preparing and grading testing materials for the state’s new TNReady program of student/teacher evaluations.

Days after public statements by Haslam disparaging the performance of Measurement, Inc., the Tennessee Department of Education revoked its contract with the company, which failed to generate workable materials for online testing and then failed to deliver printed testing materials as well, for any but grades 9 through 12.

In a press conference at the Raleigh legislative office, state Representative Antonio Parkinson (D-Memphis), state Senate Minority Leader Lee Harris (D-Memphis), and SCS School Board member Stephanie Love slammed the unreadiness of the TNReady program. Parkinson called for a three-year extension of the current moratorium on expansion of the state’s Achievement School District and for scrapping of any official testing procedure until a satisfactory one might be developed.

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Tennessee Black Caucus Releases Bipartisan Criminal Justice Reform Package

The Tennessee Joint House and Senate Black Caucus have released a bipartisan package for criminal justice reform. Caucus members identified sentencing and rehabilitation, discrimination by law enforcement, and re-entry as three key areas of focus.

State Senator Lee Harris

“This legislative package from the Black Caucus is about changing our criminal justice system to rebuild lives torn apart by crime, drugs, and systemic injustice,” state Rep. Brenda Gilmore said in a statement. 

Among the 11 proposals from the Caucus are legislation to remove the $350 fee required to expunge criminal records, add certain property thefts to the list of offenses that can be expunged, and remove conviction-related questions on job applications for employment with certain job agencies and political subdivisions. Additionally, the legislation would prohibit state employers, under certain circumstances, from asking about an applicant’s criminal record on an initial application.  

“We have too many Tennesseans wasting away in jail for non-violent, minor crimes that involve either drugs or simply an inability to pay fines,” Senate Minority Leader Lee Harris said in a statement. “By and large, these crimes disproportionately affect black Tennesseans. It is an injustice when lives are irreversibly ruined by crimes of substance abuse and crimes of poverty.”

Tennessee’s adult recidivism rate was 46.5 percent in 2009, according to research conducted by a subcabinet for Gov. Bill Haslam in 2012. The subcabinet found that services and resources are hard to access for inmates reentering communities after leaving prison. And, targeted to the right offenders, drug treatment programs can reduce addiction, halt crime, and save state and local communities incarceration costs.

Gov. Haslam’s recently released Public Safety Act of 2016 includes plans to reduce recidivism through drug treatment — as well as develop alternatives to prison sentences for nonviolent offenders wrestling with addiction and mental health issues. 

In an effort to build upon Gov. Haslam’s bill, The Black Caucus wrote a letter to the governor urging his support for various reforms. This includes a rise in expungement values to mirror Haslam’s proposed threshold increase for property theft. The Caucus also proposed that violations of drug-free school zones that occur when schools are not in session for five or more consecutive days are not subject to enhanced and mandatory minimum sentences. 

“Gov. Haslam has put together a well-intentioned legislative package for criminal justice reform, but it’s just a start,” Rep. Gilmore said. “We need a comprehensive program.”

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Politics Politics Feature

Lee Harris Out, Steve Basar In?

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Though University of Memphis law professor and state Senate minority leader Lee Harris seems to have opted out of a contemplated Democratic primary challenge this year to incumbent congressman Steve Cohen for the 9th District congressional seat, a replacement of sorts may be in the wings.

That would be Shelby County Commissioner Steve Basar, a Republican, who confided to the Flyer on Monday that he is actively considering making a race for the seat. 

For decades, no Republican has finished higher than the low 40-percent range in congressional elections in the 9th, but Basar points out, for what it is worth, that in 2014 District Attorney General Amy Weirich, the Republican nominee, outpolled former Judge Joe Brown, the Democratic nominee, among the district’s voters.

If Basar should end up in a race against Cohen, that would create a situation whereby not only would the two main contestants in this predominantly black district be white, they would both be Jewish as well.

Harris has not yet been reached for comment, but the Flyer learned last week that he had changed his mind about running and had so informed Cohen, who confirmed receiving such a voice mail to that effect from Harris. The congressman said he would defer to Harris concerning any further statement on the matter.

UPDATE News of state Senator Harris’ change of mind regarding a race for the 9th District congressional seat, which was first noted by the Flyer last week, was made formal this week with Harris’ release of the following statement:

Late last year, I was approached by several Memphians who want to see a new generation of leadership. Their faith in me is humbling and, at their request, I promised that I would consider running for Congress. I have had an opportunity to serve my community in the Memphis city council, in the Tennessee senate, and as one of the top Democrats in the state, all of which have been honors that I never could have expected. However, after careful consideration, I have decided that now is not the time for me to run for Congress. I will continue to serve this community in the Tennessee senate, do my best to bring Memphians together, and continue to focus on getting things done
.

Tennessee Senate Minority Leader Lee Harris (D-Memphis)

• As was the case of its two previous full meetings in January, the Shelby County Commission managed on Monday to minimize the controversies — the main one being an ongoing power struggle with the administration of county Mayor Mark Luttrell — that have flared up regularly during the year or so since the election of 2014. 

As was the case on Monday, the meeting of January 11th had owed much of its briskness to the relative sketchiness of its agenda, though the main reason why it moved along so fast may have been simply the determination of its presiding officer, chairman Terry Roland, to get things out of the way in time for everybody to be home to view that night’s NCAA collegiate football championship.

In fact, that meeting had literally concluded with Roland intoning the words, “Roll, Tide!” — an exhortation not to be found in Roberts’ Rules of Order, but one that was properly consummated later on by the University of Alabama’s convincing win over the Clemson Tigers in the championship game.

Football fanships aside, some fundamental disagreements do remain — even if in relatively muted form.

A subsequent special meeting of the commission last Thursday, held to announce and ratify the body’s legislative agenda for 2016, had also been a relatively pro forma affair — though four suburban Republican commissioners — David Reaves, Mark Billingsley, Heidi Shafer, and George Chism — dissented from a resolution requesting a three-year moratorium on further expansion of the state’s Achievement School District. 

In December, the ASD announced plans to take over four more “failing” schools from the Shelby County Schools District, bringing to 30-odd the total number, most of which are located in Memphis. That resulted in protests from SCS, which operates its own i-Zone program for under-performing schools, and in proposed legislation to limit ASD’s powers or even to terminate it.

Monday’s commission meeting, though it was free of any extended dustups, as well, contained one clear disagreement of sorts that was barely spoken to. This was in the form of a resolution to award some $6,500 to the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center to support activities on behalf of the homeless.

Like several other grants on Monday’s agenda, this one lumped together financial outlays from several of the commissioners, each of whom has a de facto budget for such contributions, which do require approval by the full body. The grant was sponsored by Commissioners Reginald Milton and Walter Bailey. 

Commissioner Justin Ford, chair of the general government committee, which initiated the grant, and, like the two sponsors, an urban Democrat, added another $1,500 from his district kitty, bringing the total of the MGLCC grant up to $8,000.

Just before the vote was taken, Basar made a point of reminding his fellow commissioners that, when the vote was taken during last year’s budget session to provide each commissioner with a $100,000 fund from which to make individual contributions, the expected protocol would be for the commission as a whole to honor the request. His own vote would be in line with that expectation, he said.

That may have been Basar’s way of voting to approve the grant while partly dissociating himself from it. A few other commissioners — again, suburban Republicans — were more direct. Reaves voted no, while Billingsley and Roland abstained. Another Republican, Shafer, had left the meeting. There had been no public discussion as such, but, asked later on for his reasoning in opposing the grant outright, Reaves said he doubted that his constituents would be in favor of awarding funds to the designated recipient.

Thus it was that a social issue, one that in previous years, even some recent ones, might have aroused some uncomfortable debate, had diminished to the point of being a relative blip on the radar screen. But a blip it still is.

For the record, there was one moment of complete public harmony at Monday’s meeting. It occurred as the first order of business, with a special resolution honoring Memphis Police director Toney Armstrong, soon to be director of security for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, for “27 years of exemplary service in local law enforcement.”

The vote for that resolution was unanimous, and all 13 commission members happily gathered themselves around Armstrong later for a group portrait.

• Though it is almost certainly going nowhere, a bill has been introduced in the General Assembly that would prohibit presidential candidates who are not “natural born” from being on a Tennessee ballot or from receiving the state’s electoral votes. The sponsors of the measure, clearly aimed at Texas Senator Ted Cruz, are state Senator Jeff Yarbro and state Representative Jason Powell, both of Nashville.

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Politics Politics Feature

Pending Matters in Shelby County

Newly inaugurated Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland kept himself on solid ground with the electorate, and may have expanded his beachhead somewhat, with a post-swearing-in address on New Year’s Day that added significant new terms to the lexicon of his political rhetoric.

More so than in his campaign speeches, which hewed to his themes of public safety, action on blight, and employee accountability, Strickland made a conspicuous effort to broaden his constituency. His key passage: “Here on this day of renewal, this time of celebration, we must recognize that we are a city rife with inequality; it is our moral obligation, as children of God, to lift up the poorest among us.”  

The mayor’s implicit commitment to social action was reinforced by specific promises “to expand early childhood programs,” “to provide greater access to parks, libraries, and community centers,” and “to increase the number of summer youth and jobs programs.”

• The year-end resignation of long-beleaguered county Election Administrator Rich Holden creates an opening that the Shelby County Election Commission must fill. Final deadline for applications to the newly vacated position is next Wednesday, January 13th, according to Janice Holmes, deputy administrator of Shelby County government.

One of those actively campaigning for the position is Chris Thomas, an employee of the Redwing public strategies group who has served previously as Probate Court clerk and as a Shelby County commissioner.

• In the ongoing movie series based on the fictional boxer Rocky Balboa, there was a never-ending stream of new challengers to Rocky’s championship title, each one with a plausible case to make for beating the champ, each one a loser finally, though usually after a bruising and suspenseful struggle.

The difference between Balboa and 9th District congressman Steve Cohen, who, since first winning his congressional seat in 2006, has also faced a different contender for his title in each successive election season, is that Cohen has hardly ever been forced to raise a sweat in disposing of his opponents.

Nikki Tinker in 2008, Willie Herenton in 2010, Tomeka Hart in 2012, Ricky Wilkins in 2014: Each of these would-be Democratic primary claimants to the 9th District seat came into the race against Cohen with a show of credentials and a fair degree of ballyhoo. Each went down hard in the end, with Cohen’s edge against them on election day usually turning out to be somewhere between four to one and eight to one. (Wilkins fared better, losing only 2 to 1.)

Now here — as first reported in the Flyer‘s wrap-up edition of 2015 — comes another worthy looking to take the seat away from Cohen: State Senator Lee Harris, who previously served most of a term on the Memphis City Council and who had been, Cohen says, formally endorsed by the congressman both in his 2011 council race against Kemba Ford and his 2014 win over then-incumbent state Senator Ophelia Ford.

Harris has confirmed his interest in seeking the 9th District seat. If he runs, it would be his second try for the office. The University of Memphis law professor was, along with Cohen and a dozen or so others, a Democratic primary candidate for the seat in 2006, the year incumbent congressman Harold Ford Jr. vacated it to run for the U.S. Senate.

Harris didn’t fare so well in that maiden effort, finishing near the bottom among the 15 primary contenders, but his status was considerably enhanced by his council and state senate victories, the latter allowing him to become leader of the five-member Democratic Senate caucus.

If he enters the race, Harris has indicated his campaign would be of the generalized it’s-time-for-a-change variety, though he has taken issue with Cohen on the matter of the congressman’s opposition to Governor Bill Haslam’s Tennessee Promise program of subsidies for community college students, funded by using proceeds of the Hope Lottery. Cohen, who objected to the diversion of funds as favoring higher-income students over lower-income ones, was the guiding force behind the creation of the state lottery as a longtime state senator.

• The ongoing power struggle between the administration of Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell and an apparent majority faction of the county commission was apparently not subject to any time-outs during the holidays. Indeed, it seems to have intensified over the break — to the point of open warfare.

Two matters in December have pushed the combatants to the brink: 1) a December 18th hand-delivered letter from commission chairman Terry Roland to Luttrell  threatening the mayor with “removal procedures” if he persisted in resisting a commission resolution appointing former Commissioner Julian Bolton as an independent attorney responsible to the commission; and 2) a bizarre circumstance whereby a Roland resolution seeking a transfer of the county’s budget surplus — a disputed amount running somewhere from $6 million to $20-some million —from the administration to the commission’s contingency fund reached the state comptroller’s office in a form that seemed to call for the transfer of the county’s entire fund balance of some $108 million.

The latter situation is being denounced by allies of Roland as nothing short of forgery committed somewhere in the administration before being transmitted to Nashville. After Sandra Thompson of the state comptroller’s office responded to Luttrell that the resolution featuring the larger sum was illegal, Roland sent a letter to Thompson charging that alterations had been made in his resolution, not only in the amount sought in the transfer, but in the enabling language of the resolution.

Roland’s letter included copies of both his original resolution, which — given a longstanding dispute between Luttrell and the commission — omitted any sums whatever, and what Roland called a “blatantly altered” copy that was sent to the comptroller’s office, which seemed to spell out a request for the transfer of the entire fund balance, which would be an astonishing demand, and which, noted Thompson, would leave the county without cash available to support spending in its General Fund and in potential violation of state law.

According to Roland’s letter, “When the altered document was brought to my attention I immediately contacted Harvey Kennedy, CAO, to address the issue and clarify my intentions. Mayor Mark Luttrell confirmed via a conversation with me that he was aware the document was altered. … I would never place Shelby County in [a] position where insufficient resources would be available to provide the cash flow needed for operations.”

Meanwhile, conversations and correspondence have flowed back and forth between commissioners and the administration, with the latter contending that a clerical error accounted for the apparent alteration in the resolution and Commissioner Heidi Shafer, a Roland ally in the struggle, concurring with the chairman that conscious skullduggery was involved.

Shafer sees a silver lining to the imbroglio, however. She believes that publicity concerning the matter has put the administration so clearly on the defensive that Luttrell will be willing to compromise with Roland on the independent-attorney issue — despite his statement, in a November 19th letter to Roland that he would stand by “a clear, unambiguous opinion from the county attorney that Resolution #16A [calling for Bolton’s appointment] violates the county charter.”

Roland and his supporters on the commission maintain that the charter mandates that the mayor is bound to implement the requirements of the resolution, which Luttrell vetoed but which was sustained in an override vote by the commission. The case of the altered resolution has earned itself a place for “discussion” on the commission’s committee agenda for Wednesday.

And at some point, even should the independent-attorney issue be resolved in compromise, the original point of rupture between the contending branches of government remains — a suspicion on the part of the commission that the administration is playing fast and loose with the fiscal totals it issues and refusing to submit to regularly scheduled audits.

That issue was apparently at the root of Roland’s wish for the transfer of surplus monies to the commission’s contingency fund.

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News The Fly-By

Pinch District Keeps Historic Designation

The Pinch District won’t lose its listing on the National Register of Historic Places any time soon.

In January, the Pinch was in the crosshairs of the Tennessee Historical Commission (THC) to be removed from the register. The commission said the area had lost many of its buildings, and “has lost the significance for which it was listed and no longer retains integrity of location, setting, design, materials, workmanship, and feeling.”

But the THC deferred a decision on the removal in January. In a letter to state Senator Lee Harris, E. Patrick McIntyre, executive director of THC and the State Historic Preservation Office, said “I have deferred consideration for the de-listing of the Pinch District indefinitely.”

View of the Pyramid and Pinch District

Harris said Pinch constituents asked him to get involved in the decision just as he was taking office in January. Since then, he said he’s been in talks with the THC and planned public meetings on the topic.

“For now, that fire is out,” Harris said in a Friday meeting with Pinch stakeholders.

But he warned that things could change if the THC gets new board members or a new executive director.

Listing on the National Register goes beyond words on a plaque. June West, executive director of Memphis Heritage, said Friday the degeneration allows building owners to leverage historic tax credits to renovate their properties.

“If it had been de-listed, each individual property owner would have had to nominate their building as an independent, self-standing building to be on the National Register,” she said. “In some cases, some of the buildings probably would not be allowed to do that on their own because they may not have the significance that the National Register might require.”

The news comes as Pinch neighbors and business owners prepare for the MEMFix event (the city’s ongoing series of neighborhood revitalization festivals) happening there on Saturday, April 11th. Friday’s MEMFix meeting at the Crowne Plaza Hotel brought together stakeholders and volunteers to get the Pinch ready for hundreds of visitors expected at the event.

John Paul Shaffer, Livable Memphis program director, looked down at the Pinch from an 11th story window in the hotel. He pointed to lots of vacant properties there but noted the many opportunities for development. From the window, it was hard not to notice the huge, silver Bass Pro Shops sign on the Pyramid and just how close it is to the Pinch.

“The thinking on the part of the Pinch stakeholders was to get out in front of Bass Pro,” Shaffer said. “to bring attention to the Pinch to say, ‘We’re here. We’ve been here. We’ve been waiting for this for a long time. Now’s our opportunity to show everyone where we are on the map’.”

Many of the vacant lots in the Pinch got that way by lack of restrictions on surface parking lots when the Pyramid was built. So many buildings came down as property owners looked to cash in on Pyramid parkers.

In fact, the original nomination to the National Register was comprised of 41 buildings or sites in the Pinch. The figure was bumped up to 43 in 1990 in an administrative correction. But in the time of the Pyramid’s construction and its closure, only 19 of the buildings remain in the Pinch.

“The expanse of vacant lots is distressing for what once was the cradle of the City of Memphis,” the THC petition says.

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Politics Politics Feature

It’s a New Year in Politics, Too

As the second week of the New Year began, the aura of the holidays finally began to fade, and politics per se moved into high gear, locally, statewide, and nationally.

In Memphis, the city council stumbled over an early deadline that left a majority of applicants ineligible for a council vacancy, including a putative favorite, then recovered its balance with a fresh interpretation of the city charter by attorney Allan Wade that gave all seven hopefuls more time to complete their petitions.

In Nashville, the 2015 General Assembly convened to take on such key issues as health care, educational standards, changes in taxation, and legislation designed to exploit the constitutional changes effected by the state’s voters in the November 2014 election. In the cases of educational standards and “Insure Tennessee,” Governor Bill Haslam‘s proposal for Medicaid expansion, the trick will be to back into the essential structures of Common Core and the Affordable Care Act (ACA), respectively, with improvised Tennessee-specific substitutes.

Nationally, Tennessee’s two Republican U.S. Senators, Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker, attained new levels of influence as a consequence of the GOP’s capturing a majority in the Senate. Alexander became chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, and Corker ascended to the chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee.

Alexander, who is behind legislation to revise the Bush-era “No Child Left Behind” act, is widely regarded as a possible liaison between Republicans and Democrats in the highly fractionated Senate. Corker indicated, in a conference call with Tennessee reporters last week, that he intends to bring a new activist focus to what he regards as a drift in the Obama administration’s foreign policy. For that, he has been touted by columnist George Will as potentially “the senator who matters most in 2015,” though Corker has drawn more attention of late for his proposals to raise the federal gasoline tax.             

• The city council imbroglio and subsequent fix stemmed from the revelation late last week that only former Councilmember Barbara Swearengen Holt Ware and local Democratic Party Chairman Bryan Carson had met what appeared to be the council’s deadline for filing a petition bearing 25 valid signatures of voters in District 7.

That would have meant that five others — including former interim Councilman Berlin Boyd, regarded in some circles as the favorite — could not vie for the right to succeed Lee Harris, now a state senator, in the vacated District 7 seat. Most of the five, including Boyd, were credited with 23 or 24 valid signatures — one or two short of the total needed — though all five had met the filing deadline of noon, last Thursday.

The situation was repaired with a hastily issued opinion from council attorney Allan Wade, who interpreted the city charter as giving additional flexibility on the deadline for submitting valid voter signatures. The new deadline was established by Wade as being Thursday, January 15th — a date that would seem to give the other candidates enough leeway to qualify.

Of the five, Boyd and Curtis Byrd Jr. had already submitted 23 signatures deemed valid by the Shelby County Election Commission (whose chairman, Robert Meyers, had noted that it was the council, not the commission, which had applied the signature requirement for regular elections to the instance of filling vacancies). Audrey Jones and David Pool had 24, and Charles Leslie had 15.

The council will choose a successor to Harris from among the ultimately eligible candidates next Tuesday, January 20th.

• At a farewell dinner last week for Harris, who was recently elected by his party colleagues in the Senate to be Democratic leader there, the new state senator got off a memorable quip: “Within this month, I’ll be drawing three government checks — from the city council, from the state Senate, and from the University of Memphis Law School. That proves I’m a Democrat!”

• The council does not lack for quipsters. Councilman Kemp Conrad, who was the host for a massively well-attended holiday party over the break, responded to someone’s suggestion that he might consult city planning czar Robert Lipscomb for help in building a parking garage to accommodate excess traffic. “A TDZ!” Conrad proposed.

• It would appear that the forthcoming session of the General Assembly in Nashville will not lack for controversy. The formal convening of the legislature, at noon on Tuesday, was preceded by a 10 a.m. “Women’s March on Nashville,” whose participants included another new state senator from Memphis, former Tennessee Regulatory Authority member Sara Kyle, who was elected in November to succeed her husband, Jim Kyle, now a Shelby County chancellor.

The rally was called to address several matters, including health, wage, and poverty issues, but a central concern of it was to counter a proliferation of bills in the legislature to impose new restrictions on abortion in the wake of the narrow passage of Amendment 1 by state voters in November.

Tennessee Right to Life, an organization that supports the proposed restrictions, indicated in advance that it had plans for a counter-demonstration.

Besides the abortion measures, other expected controversies include a renewed fight over proposed Common Core standards and efforts by several Republicans, including state Senator Brian Kelsey of Germantown, to abolish the Hall Income Tax in the face of resistance from Governor Haslam, who considers the potential loss to state revenues to be prohibitive.

But the major battle will take place in a session within the session. Haslam has called a special session, to begin on February 2nd, dealing with his “Insure Tennessee” proposal for accepting Medicaid expansion funds under the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare).

The governor’s plan, which apparently is assured of a waiver from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, provides for a two-track structure in which persons eligible under poverty-level guidelines could either accept vouchers to purchase private health insurance plans or come under TennCare, the state’s version of Medicaid, through acceptance of modest co-pays and premiums.

Funding could amount to as much as $2 billion annually, with the federal government absorbing the full costs for two years and 90 percent of them after that period. The state Hospital Association, which has been lobbying tirelessly for the Medicaid expansion funds, has indicated it would assist with the remaining financial obligation after the two-year period.

Haslam has made a special appeal to the General Assembly’s Democratic minority to help him pass enabling legislation for Insure Tennessee. A bill spearheaded by Kelsey and other opponents of Medicaid expansion to require legislative approval of any administration plan under the ACA was passed in the last General Assembly. And, though Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey has expressed a degree of open-mindedness, Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris of Collierville and several other GOP members seem reluctant to endorse Insure Tennessee.

The sentiment of six GOP legislators from Shelby County who addressed the Republican Women of Purpose group at Southwind TPC last week varied from lukewarm to defiantly opposed to the governor’s plan.

State Representative Curry Todd prophesied “a lot of blood-letting” in the special session regarding the plan; Kelsey insisted Republicans needed to “shrink the size of government, not … expand the size of government,” and cast doubt as to whether the federal government would or the state Hospital Association could pay its pledged share in two years’ time. State Representative Jim Coley lamented the plan’s “dependence on the federal government” and said he “hope[d] to persuade the governor this is not the most appropriate plan.”

State Representative Steve McManus said it might not be so easy to opt out of the plan after two years as Haslam suggests. He contends that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services might withhold Medicaid funds entirely as retribution. “It’s like Hotel California,” he said, meaning that once you check into the plan, you can never leave.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Good Start for Lee Harris

Say this for Lee Harris: The man gathers no moss. The University of Memphis law professor and state senator-elect from District 29 is still keeping his City Council seat warm, a participant in every significant debate and hands-on in every decision reached there. And, though he doesn’t formally begin his new job as state Senate Democratic leader until January, Harris has already begun to exercise his authority on the statewide scene.    

        On Tuesday, as Presdent Obama was on his way to Nashville for a speech on the immigration issue, Harris issued a statement of greeting: “As people of a state known for its Southern hospitality, we could not be more proud to welcome those immigrants who choose to make Tennessee their home, and to welcome President Obama here today. We thank those immigrants for their many contributions to our state, just as we thank the president for sharing his views and addressing this very important issue.”

Harris’ statement of welcome was well-considered, generous,
and — most importantly — forthright on a sensitive
issue regarding
which too few public officials, either Democratic or Republican, had much useful to say during the recent election season.

As anyone who has observed City Council proceedings over the past four years knows, Harris is seldom at a loss for words. He is even prone — to tell it like it is — to jump the gun on an issue once in a while. In this case, and, we trust, in many more to come, these tendencies (which, like all other human attributes, have both a high side and a low side) will serve Harris and his constituents well, for political rhetoric in Tennessee, once a haven for redoubtable orators, has taken a distinct turn for the worse — toward the mealy-mouthed or the spiteful, depending on which side of an issue was being taken.

Witness: U.S. Representative Diane Black (R-6th) accused the president of having “chosen Nashville as a destination to publicly thumb his nose at the American electorate that just rebuked him in the last election” and said, further,”The Obama presidency has been a disaster and can’t end soon enough.” State Represntative Andy Holt (R-Dresden) said: “Enjoy your stay, and we soon hope to see you in court soon.” By comparison, the often vitriolic U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn (R-7th) was almost courtly: “I share in the frustration Americans have with this president and will continue to do everything in my power to stop his executive amnesty. Enough is enough.”

All this as a response to a presidential executive order that cracks down on the hiring of undocumented workers and strengthens border security, while it provides a path to “earned citizenship” with numerous legal hoops for serious and productive immigrants to jump through.

As for the chorus of Democratic defenders of Mr. Obama… Congressmen Jim Cooper of Nashville and Steve Cohen of our own bailiwick accompanied Obama on his trip to Tennessee. Otherwise, vocal Democratic support of the president is about as non-evident as it was during the recent fall campaign. But at least Harris didn’t keep us waiting for his appropriate and on-point remarks. Keep it up, Mr. Harris. We could use a few more politicians willing to shoot straight.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter From the Editor: Beyond Binary Thinking

There have been numerous analyses and breakdowns of the results of last week’s election in Shelby County. The bottom line is that Republicans once again waxed the Democrats in the contests for most local offices, from county mayor on down to lesser functionary titles such as assessor, trustee, and recorder of deeds.

The thing that seems puzzling on the surface is that Shelby County is majority African-American, and Democrats outnumber Republicans by a substantial margin. The Republicans ran no black candidates. So why did the GOP dominate the local ballot?

Some black Democrats blamed white members of their party for “crossing over” and voting for Republicans. They were castigated because they weren’t loyal to the party. The local Democratic party chairman said in a post-election interview that crossover voters should just go ahead and “join the Republicans.” He later apologized for that short-sighted sentiment.

This muddle-headedness is a result of old-school, binary thinking: dividing the electorate into arbitrary categories of black or white, Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative. The problem with that is that fewer and fewer of us are binary creatures. The same electorate that reelected a white Republican, Mark Luttrell, as county mayor, twice elected a black Democrat, A C Wharton, to that same office just a few years back. Steve Cohen got 66 percent of the vote in a majority black district.

Binary thinking doesn’t take into account that we’re no longer divisible into two neat, predictable packages, one black, one white. Voters are getting smarter. Ophelia Ford got trounced; Henri Brooks and Judge Joe Brown got stomped. They were rejected by thousands of Democrats and Republicans, black and white. And there’s a Hispanic vote now, which seems totally overlooked by both parties.

Sure, there are those who’d vote for a “yellow dog” if the party label is right. But the era of party loyalty trumping all else is in rapid decline. Most of us are independents with a small “i.” We don’t care what party holds the office of recorder of deeds, we just want the job done right. To turn that office over, you need a compelling candidate with a compelling message. (Suggestion: “Lemme record your deeds!”) But the fact is, if the guy in office hasn’t screwed up, he’ll likely get reelected.

In local politics, the only people still keeping that binary score of party winners and losers are those running the political parties and those who report on the process. If the Democrats want to win more elections, they need to start respecting the electorate’s intelligence. They need to find more candidates like Lee Harris and Cheyenne Johnson and Steve Cohen — and they need to stop thinking in black and white.