Tag: Lee Harris

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‘Bluff City Law’ Will Shoot in Memphis with $4.25M Incentive Package

CREDIT: NBC

NBC

NBC will shoot “Bluff City Law” in Memphis and Shelby County, according to Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, after winning a multi-million-incentive package from local agencies.

After shooting a pilot here earlier this year, it wasn’t immediately clear whether or not the show would be filmed in Memphis. But NBC was given a $4.25-million incentive package to secure Memphis as its location. The network got $2.5 million from the state, $1.4 million from both the city of Memphis and Shelby County and $350,000 from Memphis Tourism.

Here’s what Strickland had to say about the news:

“Welcome home, ‘Bluff City Law!’ This is a tremendous opportunity to showcase our city every week on the national stage starting this fall. I’m very excited about having the show filmed here and am even more thrilled about the economic implications it will have. Many thanks to all those involved to make this happen.”

Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris:

“More great news for Memphis and Shelby County with ‘Bluff City Law’ shooting right here in the Bluff City. This is a great opportunity to show off the talented men and women in the local film scene and our famous hospitality. I look forward to the partnership and shots of our one-of-a-kind skyline.”

Kevin Kane, president and CEO of Memphis Tourism:

“Memphis can’t be duplicated and authenticity is the heart of this city that moves to its own beat. Viewers will get to see that with ‘Bluff City Law’ shooting on location in our vibrant city, which was visited by nearly 12 million travelers last year. Memphis Tourism views this as an opportunity to leverage this visibility to grow new visitor demand and the visitor economy while creating unique awareness for our travel destination to millions of viewers on a weekly basis.”

Reid Dulberger, president and CEO, Economic Development Growth Engine (EDGE):

“’Bluff City’ Law has found its rightful home in Memphis. The show will mean hundreds of jobs for Memphis film production crews and increased revenues for local business. It will also be a greater advertising tool for the community.”

Here’s a description of “Bluff City Law” from NBC:

Coming from a famous Memphis family known for taking on injustice, brilliant lawyer Sydney Strait used to work at her father Elijah’s celebrated law firm until their tumultuous relationship got in the way.

After barely speaking to him for years, Sydney is suddenly thrust back into the family fold when her philanthropist mother passes away unexpectedly. In the wake of her loss, hoping to reconnect with the daughter he loves, Elijah asks Sydney to rejoin his firm.

She agrees because despite her lingering resentment and distrust, she knows that working alongside her father is her best hope at changing the world … if they can ever get along.

The cast includes Jimmy Smits, Caitlin McGee, Scott Shepherd, Barry Sloane, Michael Luwoye, MaameYaa Boafo, Stony Blyden and Jayne Atkinson.

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Politics Politics Feature

Harris’ Shelby County Budget Likely to be Impacted by Vouchers

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

On Monday, Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris hastily scheduled an appearance before the Shelby County Commission to present an addition to the day’s agenda — his proposed budget for fiscal 2020. Harris proposes to spend $1.3 billion, including $6 million for education programs, the largest such expenditure in the county’s history. Paired with matching funds from various other sources, notably state and federal, the total educational outlays will be “well over $10 million,” Harris said.

Other mayoral priorities include increased attention to the mayor’s criminal justice reform and re-entry programs (“helping more people with a criminal history”), more emphasis on workforce development, a crash program to produce technology start-ups, and pay raises for county employees (with the percentage of the pay raise decreasing as the pay scale rises, or, as Harris put it, simply enough, “Those who earn the least will get the largest increase.”)

Harris could not have thought the commission would be ready to process his request in the course of a single evening, of course. And given that he is asking for increased expenditures in several significant areas of county government, he must have known that he had merely taken the first step in the proverbial 1,000-mile journey that will at some point culminate in a county budget for 2020.

Justin Fox Burks

Lee Harris

In the preceding administration of Mayor Mark Luttrell, negotiations between the commission and the mayor’s office amounted to a war of attrition. The election of 2018 brought in a new mayor and, with eight new commissioners out of the 13, virtually a new legislative body. Moreover, relations between Harris and the commission have at no time resembled the power struggle they were in the preceding eight years.

But still, even without the carry-over experience of the returning five commissioners, this is a legislative body that is aware of its prerogatives and disinclined to roll over for any chief executive. And some of the commission’s newest members are capable of taking a firm line — notably District 9 Commissioner Edmond Ford, who came over from eight contentious years on the Memphis City Council.

“I never saw a budget approval by any mayor that said, ‘Approve, right now,'” said Ford at the start of the meeting. If that message needed no interpretation, it got some amplification anyhow later in the meeting when Ford, a former city schools teacher, got stern with a representative of Shelby County Schools who was there to seek approval of a redesignation of SCS spending — one that didn’t call for an addition to the school budget.

“I see a lot of items on here that aren’t correct,” said Ford after looking over an information sheet.

Regardless of who the mayor and the commissioners are as individuals, a factor assuring that this budget will be a hard time coming is that, as Harris said frankly at the very start, property tax collections for the year were well beneath advance expectations. The battles between Luttrell and the former commission, for the most part, were about what to do with a surplus. Whatever disagreements occur between Harris and the newest commission will be over what to do with a condition of scarcity.

The commission and Harris agreed on a provisional deadline for resolution suggested by commission chair Van Turner: The commission will meet on Wednesday, June 18th, to render its judgment on the budget request. Meanwhile, there will be beaucoup study.

Adding to the uncertainty was a matter that was, at mid-week, still pending in Nashville, at a state General Assembly that was getting ready to close up shop. The one matter that remained potentially intractable was one that could have, as several commissioners noted on Monday, profound consequences for Shelby County and its budget realities, in particular.

This had to do with a potential stalemate between the assembly’s two chambers, Senate and House, over the last remaining hot potato of the 2019 legislative session — school vouchers, or, as Republican Governor Bill Lee, who did a considerable amount of arm-twisting on their behalf, calls them — “educational savings accounts” — allowing significant numbers of parents to enroll their sons and daughters in private schools at taxpayer expense.

Each voucher, to a maximum of 7,500 students, will be worth $7,300, and, though Lee’s original version of the bill promised to compensate any school district in kind for each student lost to a private school, debate in both chambers caused the compensation amount to be considerably lowered.

Other changes were made in the legislation, all of them prompted by a need to coax enough majority support to pass the measure. In the House, this resulted in a dramatic day of debate last week in which the GOP Speaker of the House, Glen Casada, held voting open long enough to persuade a reluctant member, Representative Jason Zachary (R-Knoxville) to vote aye. Zachary’s consent was reportedly bought via a promise that Knoxville schools would be kept out of the bill. A peculiar aspect of debate on Lee’s voucher measure was that enthusiasm for it was inversely proportional to the likelihood that it would affect a given legislator’s district.

By this week, both chambers had voted for the bill, but the Senate version and the House version were different in several key particulars, and the House on Monday, even as the Shelby County Commission was meeting 210 miles away, refused to accept the Senate version.

Pending a conference on the matter, this left the matter of passage uncertain, but, as the Shelby County commissioners noted, any version will have a serious impact on Shelby County Schools and on county government in general. Inasmuch as both Davidson County (Nashville) and Shelby County schools (and potentially only Davidson and Shelby) are affected by either version of the voucher bill, both school systems have threatened the state with a lawsuit in case of passage.

“We may need to join as well,” opined Commissioner Eddie Jones on Monday. “We’ll be fighting for our most precious commodity here, our children.” Chairman Turner said, “We’ll have to consult with County Attorney [Marlinee] Iverson and the legal department. We may need to have an attorney-client meeting next Wednesday.”

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Politics Politics Feature

Shelby County Democrats: The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight. Again.

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

In August, 2016, Tennessee  Democratic Party chair Mary Mancini announced that the state party executive committee had voted to disband the Shelby County Democratic Party, a hopelessly fractious organization that, as Mancini noted, had experienced “many years of dysfunction.”

One year later, in August 2017, a reconstituted local party took shape at a convention that crowned months of focus-group activity in tandem with the state party. Corey Strong, a Shelby County Schools administrator and a military reservist, was elected chair of a new body that possessed both an executive committee and a larger “grassroots” council.

Coupled with the revived Democratic activism that, in Memphis as elsewhere, fueled a “resistance” movement to President Donald Trump, the moment looked promising indeed for local Democrats.

But now, a year and a half later, in the aftermath of party successes at the ballot box in 2018 and on the threshold of a presidential election year, the Shelby County Democratic Party is freshly riven by a dispute that seemingly has racial overtones but may actually be the consequence of warring ambitions and an internal power struggle.

Months ago, Strong had indicated that he would not seek re-election, and for a long time only one potential successor made his leadership desires public. This was Jeff Etheridge, a retired businessman (Dilday’s TV Sales and Service) and an activist who had pulled his oar in many a party drive and political campaign.

Jackson Baker

Michael Harris for the (self-)defense.

Etheridge’s home base was the Germantown Democratic Club, a racially diverse organization whose membership encompassed large sectors of Shelby County well beyond the enclaves of East Memphis and the county’s eastern suburbs. More than most Democratic groups, it had been responsible for organizing the Shelby County party effort, from the reactivation effort onward. Its president, David Cambron, had, with his wife Diane and other core members, taken the lead in making sure the party had a full roster of candidates in the 2018 election.

But there were other party power centers, as well. One of them was the Young Democrats of Shelby County, a group that tilted more toward the urban precincts of Midtown and the inner city. Its president, Danielle Inez, had been Lee Harris‘ campaign manager during Harris’ successful 2018 campaign for Shelby County mayor, and she had become his primary assistant in the reconstituted county government, someone hugely influential in staffing and logistical decisions.

Inez and the YDs were also feeling their oats and looking to make further contributions. They cast about for one of their own to bear the hopes of the younger generation for party leadership, and — for reasons best known to them — settled on one Michael Harris, a young man who had taken an active role in party outreach activities.

Those were the two known candidates when the party met Saturday before last at White Station High School to hold its preliminary caucuses for the convention to be held this past Saturday. In the nomination process other names were put forward — Erica Sugarmon and Allan Creasy, two impressive candidates from the blue wave year of 2018 — but these nominees withdrew, leaving only Etheridge and Harris.

There matters stood until the beginning of last week, when Etheridge began communicating with party leaders, complaining of “pressures” and stress he was getting from backers of Harris — some of it, he indicated, with racial overtones (Etheridge is white, Harris black). He had meant to be a unifying force, not a divisive one, he told his auditors, and he saw his opportunity to build bridges being undermined by a whisper campaign.

Jackson Baker

Harris supporter Danielle Inez and nay-voter David Upton muse over the outcome.

Simultaneously, word was getting out about difficulties Harris had experienced as a young and inexperienced lawyer.

As it turned out, there was evidence on the public record that in June 2017 Harris had been suspended for five years from his legal practice by the Board of Professional Responsibility of the Supreme Court of Tennessee. He was accused by the board of “lack of diligence and communication, excessive fees, improper termination, failure to expedite litigation, failure to perform services for which he was paid, unauthorized practice of law, dishonesty, and conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice.”

As a precondition to consideration of listing his suspension, the board ordered Harris to “make restitution” in the total amount of $22,975 to nine clients whose cases he was considered to have mishandled.

Knowledge of these facts emerged more or less at the same time that word of Etheridge’s withdrawal was getting out. On Wednesday of last week, which was the formal deadline for any post-caucus applications of candidacy, news was put out that two Memphis state representatives, London Lamar and Raumesh Akbari, had filed petitions to run for local party chair. Both were well-regarded young African Americans, seen as scandal-free legislative stars with wide appeal to all segments of the party.

Later Wednesday, stories were hitting the state media to the effect that Lamar had become the consensus choice. In actual fact, both she and Akbari had been desperation hotbox choices and would end up declining to pursue the chairmanship, pleading the press of business in Nashville. That objection was on the level, as anyone who has seen the demanding legislative process at first-hand can attest, but the swirls of internal discontent in Shelby County party circles had become all too obvious by now and were clearly another factor.

During the brief period when Lamar’s name was being floated as a consensus choice, Harris was confronted by party elders (former chairman David Cocke and Shelby County Commission chair Van Turner among them) who suggested that he yield the chairmanship to Lamar, thereby saving himself and the party the obvious public embarrassment that would come at Republican hands when his background was publicly vetted, as inevitably it would be.

In appreciation of his own efforts and ambition, Harris, now working as a compliance officer for Advance Primary Care, might serve for a year as a party vice chair, using that interval to make amends for his legal derelictions and refurbish his personal credentials. Harris said he’d think about it. He thought about it, said no, and meanwhile so did Lamar and Akbari.

That was the background of events going into Saturday’s party convention at Lindenwood Christian Church. As an ironic complement to the confusion, the party had agreed weeks earlier to conduct the chairmanship vote by the process of Ranked Choice Voting, a method of resolving multi-candidate races by reassigning the votes of trailing candidates in subsequent rounds of recalculation.

Given the fact of there being only one candidate (Harris), it was hard to see how the method of RCV could be applied, but Aaron Fowles, a local adherent of the process, provided a methodology which was announced to the voting membership by outgoing chairman Strong. Inasmuch as RCV (also known as IRV,  for “instant runoff voting”) required that a winner ultimately receive 50 percent of the vote “plus one,” Harris, as the sole nominee, would be matched against votes for “none of the above.”

Should Harris be outvoted by that formulation, it was agreed beforehand, Strong would continue to serve as party chairman until a new convention (hopefully, one with multiple candidates) could be held.

Those were the circumstances when what seemed an artificially relaxed buffet feed was concluded, and the delegates elected a week earlier at White Station filed into the church sanctuary, accompanied by a fair number of curious onlookers.

Harris had arrived late and had worked the crowd. Now it was his time to take the stage and face the voters and the accusations that hung over him.

He began with the device that might have been expected. “Those of you who have never made a mistake, raise your hands,” he asked. Unsurprisingly, there were no takers. He then went on to give a brief bio of his life, admitting at this point, without specifying, that he had made his share of mistakes, and exhorting his audience to think in terms of unity. “We shouldn’t be turning on each other,” he said. “We should be turning up the heat on the Republicans.”

Harris said he took responsibility for his actions and cited his generally creditable past performance as vice chair of the party’s outreach efforts. Still, he faced questions. How many elections had he voted in, he was asked. He could not recall in any detail, but said, “I’m an active voter now.” Inevitably, the questions came about his legal issues.

Asked how much money was still owed to the past clients, Harris was vague on the amount and slow to acknowledge that much, perhaps most, of what had been dispensed was paid out by the Tennessee Lawyers Fund for Client Protection or other legal-support organizations. The bottom line: He would still need to compensate the organizations that made the payments.

“I am not a thief!” Harris insisted, despite the fact that misappropriations of his clients’ money was one of the prime allegations against him.

“He has paid his dues,” said supporter George Boyington. Inez praised Harris’ “courage” and what she considered the deftness of his responses, though others, like Danielle Schoenbaum, one of the party’s corps of surprisingly effective suburban legislative candidates in 2018, didn’t think as highly of them: “2020 is very important,” Schoenbaum said. “If you put self first, before party, you’re not fit to be chair.” It was a theme expressed by others, as well.

And there was the matter of the detailed evidence against Harris. One speaker noted that people had been foreclosed on and lost their homes because of his ineffective or even nonexistent representation.

Inevitably, in days to come, pages from the case reports against Harris would surface. As one summary said, “Mr. Harris repeatedly took money but did not provide the most basic of services. He took desperate clients, who came to him as a last hope, and did nothing for them. It is not that he took difficult clients and fought the good fight but lost. He took people’s money and did not complete the most basic of tasks. He did not respond to basic discovery requests or summary judgments (ever). He literally did not fight at all.”

Interestingly, given the job to which Harris was aspiring, that of leader and figurehead of one of the county’s two major political parties, the opposing lawyer in several of the cases for which Harris was cited by the Board of Professional Responsibility was one Lang Wiseman, a former county Republican chairman and current deputy governor of Tennessee. This fact underscores the truism that none of Michael Harris’ legal misadventures are unlikely to remain unknown in the public circles he will inhabit as a party chair.

And a party chair he is, as of Saturday. Of the 76 eligible Democratic voters present, 72 actually cast ballots, and Michael Harris received 37 of those votes, versus 35 for “none of the above.” He had received precisely 50 percent plus one — the bare minimum needed for election.

Harris’ supporters are optimistic that he can unify his party and lead it to a victorious election year in 2020. His detractors fear the worst, a public catastrophe and implosions yet to be imagined. And the state party, having interceded so dramatically in 2016, is not in the best position to do so again.

Chairman Harris and his executive committee will be meeting again soon to determine who the rest of the party’s officers will be. That’s the next round of decisions that will loom large in the Shelby County Democratic Party’s future.

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Politics Politics Feature

Commission Splits on Party Lines on Minimum-Wage Proposal Vote

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

There was a moment at Monday’s meeting of the Shelby County Commission when county Mayor Lee Harris seemed to be at variance with his adopted policy of a $15-an-hour minimum wage for county workers. It came as the commission took up a “resolution in support of all public sector employees in Shelby County earning a minimum wage of at least $15 an hour.” A positive vote for the resolution would put the commission, policy-wise, on the same page as the mayor.

Among those praising the resolution was Commissioner Tami Sawyer, a candidate for Memphis mayor, who was one of several commissioners who asked to be added as a co-sponsor. Commissioner Reginald Milton asked on as well, sharing an emotional recollection of doing janitorial work in an office building along with his widowed mother, from the time he was in the sixth grade until his graduation from high school, in order to help pay the bills for his family.

Jackson Baker

Newly named Shelby County Public Defender Phyllis Aluko, flanked by her mother and members of the Shelby County Commission.

At no time during that extended period, Milton noted, was the minimum wage for this labor raised. “It is abhorrent, it is a sin,” he said, “for people to make a living off the backs of other people and still use the word ‘Christian.'”

Commission chair Van Turner was next to comment, and he asked Harris if a summer jobs program the mayor had announced would also meet the $15 minimum-wage standard. “No,” Harris answered, and began to explain.

The program, which offers temporary blight-control jobs to teenagers, was a continuation of a program launched by former Mayor Mark Luttrell, Harris said. He added that he had decided that, for one summer, which would be coincident with the forthcoming bicentennial celebration of Memphis, the number of participants would be increased from 125 to 200, with wages running from $10 to $12 an hour. Six individuals, serving in managerial roles, would get $15 an hour.

This explanation seemed to be at variance both with the mayor’s announced policy of a $15 minimum wage for county employees, and with the vote about to be taken by the commission. But Turner expressed satisfaction with the mayor’s answer, noting that the terms of the mayoral-sponsored jobs program were consonant with the terms of the commission’s own summer-jobs program.

As Turner explained later to the Flyer, it was appropriate to consider temporary jobs for teenagers in a different light than permanent jobs held by adults, for whom the $15 minimum-wage figure would be universal and mandatory. Asked for his opinion, Milton concurred.

After this interlude, the commissioners resumed their discussion of the resolution mandating $15. Commissioner Brandon Morrison objected to the resolution, saying that a positive vote would create a “slippery slope,” and that she was “not convinced of the outcome.”

She abstained, while four other Republican members — David Bradford, Amber Mills, Mark Billingsley, and Mick Wright — voted no on the resolution, which passed by a vote of 10-4-1, with all commission Democrats in support. It was a reminder that, while party-line votes do not happen often on the commission, they do occur.

In other action, the commission approved without dissent Harris’ nomination of Phyllis Aluko to be the new Shelby County public defender, and passed on third reading an ordinance committing the county to its fiscal share of a city-county pre-K educational program.

• It’s the spring of a city-election year, and events involving candidates are beginning to fill up the calendar. Last Thursday saw four concurrent fund-raisers, three for city council hopefuls (Cody Fletcher, running for the District 9, Position 1 seat, Chase Carlisle, running for a District 9 seat, with position number not yet selected, and Britney Thornton, District 4 council candidates). Eighth District Congressman David Kustoff was the beneficiary of a fund-raiser the same night.

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News News Blog

City Council to Take Final Vote on Pre-k Fund

CREDIT: bbbskw.org

bbbskw.org

The Memphis City Council is scheduled to take its final vote Tuesday on an ordinance solidifying funding for county-wide, universal-needs pre-Kindergarten here.

The joint ordinance between the council and the Shelby County Commission would call for the appointment of a fiscal agent to manage and raise additional dollars for the pre-k fund. The fiscal agent will also be tasked with creating high-quality pre-k classrooms.

The move comes as a 2014 grant totaling $8 million which funds 1,000 county pre-k seats in 50 classrooms is set to expire at the end of June.

Now, city and county officials want to invest $16.6 million in pre-k by 2022, which will sustain the existing 1,000 seats and create 1,000 new seats. Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said the funding will have an “enormous” impact on the community.

“Nearly a year ago, we worked with city council, previous Shelby County administration, and county commission to find a way to provide funds for pre-k, and I’m proud to say we did it,” Strickland said in a Monday statement. “This vote solidifies future funding that will have an enormous impact on our community. Thanks to Mayor Harris and his administration for helping continue this progress.

“Pre-k means literacy in 3rd grade. If every 3rd grader can read at grade level, they have a 90 percent chance of graduating, even if they grew up in poverty.”

Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris said the funding will allow every child who qualifies for pre-k to have access to it for free, which city council chairman Kemp Conrad said is one of the most important things we can do for the future of children.

“There are academic, physical, and social-emotional advantages when a student arrives in Kindergarten ready to learn,” Conrad said. “Pre-k provides that foundation.”

Officials said pre-k funding will increase by $5 million in 2020, $6 million in 2021, and then $5.6 million in 2022, totaling $16.6 million. This will fund a total of 8,500 ongoing seats beginning in 2022.

The city began looking at funding county-wide pre-k last year, putting $3 million of excess city revenue as seed money into a dedicated fund. Additionally, a portion of city property tax revenue and taxes paid by companies whose PILOT (pay-in-lieu-of-taxes) incentive has expired began going to the fund.

The council will take its third and final vote on the ordinance during its meeting Tuesday (today), which begins at 3:30 p.m. at city hall. The county commission is scheduled to vote on a similar ordinance on March 25th.

The fiscal agent will be selected by Harris and Strickland pending the final approval from both bodies.

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News News Blog

Juvenile Judge Declares “Mission Accomplished”

CREDIT: Toby Sells

Toby Sells

Memphis and Shelby County Juvenile Court Judge Dan Michael declared “mission accomplished” during his annual state of the court address Friday.

Memphis and Shelby County Juvenile Court Judge Dan Michael declared “mission accomplished” during his annual state of the court address Friday, touting last year’s ending of federal oversight.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) ended its six-year review of the court in October. The oversight began in 2012, after an investigation found that the court discriminated against African-American children, violated due process laws, and that the detention center was dangerous.

”I thank you, personally, for your all of your outstanding efforts over the past year, and declare mission accomplished,” Michael said at the Shelby County Crime Commission office Friday. “The Department of Justice has placed us in compliance with the memorandum of agreement to the point of its completion and ended federal monitoring of the juvenile court of Memphis and Shelby County.”
[pullquote-2] The move to end that oversight outraged some in Shelby County government. During a press conference in October, Shelby County Commissioner Van Turner said that while the oversight was over, “there were items that remained to be addressed.”

“So, this whole notion that it was a successful closure, I think is somewhat fabricated,” Turner said.
[pullquote-1] Michael said the court is recognized nationally as a model court by the National Council of of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, of which Michael is a board member.

”We’ve earned this not only by exhibiting care and compassion on a daily basis, but we also strive to become better by taking risks,” Michael said. “A model court doesn’t mean we’re a stand-out. It means that we experiment. If something doesn’t work, we move on and find something that does work. That’s what makes us a model court.”

Michael outlined five key components — made in collaboration with DOJ officials — that will carry the court forward.

Two of these were groups that will meet continually to improve the court. The strategic planning committee and the county-wide Juvenile Justice Consortium will have “access to the courthouse and the families we serve,” Michael said. The group will be able to “see our successes and aid us in shaping any shortfalls we may encounter.”

A community outreach program “will allow every citizens to get the answers to their questions about what we do and how we do it.” For this, the court will hold public meetings throughout the county.

Michael said the court will also continue to work with two consultants hired by Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner and Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris to help the court ”maintain best practices” and to “reduce (disproportionate minority contact.”

Michael said he fully supports Mayor Harris’ and the county commission’s project to build a new juvenile court facility.

In a line that seemed to be aimed at court employees, Michael said, “let’s use criticism and unfair judgments about us as step-in stones that ahead of this court.”

Michael ended his address with a quote from industrialist Henry Ford:

“Coming together is a beginning,” Michael said. “Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.”

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Myron Lowery for City Council (Again)?

CREDIT: JB

JB

FATHER-SON COMBO: Once and possibly future City Councilman Myron Lowery (l) with current County Commissioner Mickell Lowery, his son, at the Lowerys’ annual New Year’s prayer breakfast.

The Memphis City Council took some serious licks Tuesday at the annual New Year’s prayer breakfast, presided over for a quarter-century by former Councilman Myron Lowery, and this year, by County Commissioner Mickell Lowery, his son.

The upshot was that several of the event’s principal speakers — 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen, Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, and finally former Councilman Lowery himself — expressed some of the negative views that have been circulating in the community at large during weeks of gridlock over the appointment of new council members, following months of other questionable actions by the council.

Part of the fallout was the suggestion by the senior Lowery at the event’s conclusion that he had given thought to putting his name up for appointment to the “fractured” council, now three members short. Lowry went on to say he had discarded the idea, but added, as a parting tease: “I am giving consideration perhaps to another run this year.”

Earlier, Cohen had included a dig at the council amid kudos for County Mayor Harris and members of the Shelby County Commission in attendance: “The county commission seems to be doing a little better than the city council,” the Congressman said.

When it came his time to speak, Harris extolled both Lowerys for their service and quipped, “Some of y’all remember when we had a city council in Memphis.”

All of which led to the piece de resistance, Myron Lowery’s floated idea of another council run.
[jump]

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Editorial Opinion

A Seasonal Summing-Up for Memphis and Shelby County

As Memphis and Shelby County headed into the heart of the holiday season, the two entities and their resident populations had much to rejoice about and many serious concerns as well.

For purposes of contrast, merely consider the rather different facts reflected in the respective circumstances of the two major local legislative bodies — the Memphis City Council and the Shelby County Commission.

It may be that the council is able to resolve the issue of filling three vacancies this week. Or maybe not. The council will need to produce a quorum even to begin untangling the circumstances of last week’s deadlocked vote to fill just one of the seats, and acquiring a quorum has been made tougher by the resignation of two council members who were present and voting prior to last week.

Bill Lee

Those two members — Janis Fullilove and Edmund Ford Jr. — are two of the trio of members who were elected to Shelby County positions on August 2nd but deigned not to resign their council seats in a timely manner that would have allowed their positions to be filled by the vote of constituents on the November ballot. The third member of this threesome — Bill Morrison — had resigned earlier by a week.

It is uncertain the degree to which the foot-dragging threesome held on to their seats for personal reasons versus retaining them on the advice, implicit or explicit, to do so by their remaining colleagues, whose demonstrated passion for replacing departed collegues by the appointment process is equaled only by their fecklessness in actually delivering on the appointments.

In any case, if the deadlock holds, the obvious solution is to call for an election, which should have been done in the first place. Only this time, the taxpayers will be footing some extra expense.

Over on the county commission, things seem a little more Christmas-y. Though there are conspicously different political points of view on display there (of the liberal-vs.-conservative sort), so far they have not created a divide. Instead, there has been a measure of peace, harmony, and compromise. The most obvious difference between the version of county government elected on August 2nd and the one preceding it is that there is no schism between the executive and legislative branches, as there was in the long-running power struggle between the former commission and then Mayor Mark Luttrell.

The current county mayor, Lee Harris, and the new commission, led by chairman Van Turner, have evinced an obvious determination to agree on as many issues as possible, and numerous disagreements of the past have been resolved, resulting in a common understanding on such issues as independent legal representation for the commission and an alignment of views on the conduct of legal action to offset the ravages of opioid distributors.

At the state level, things are a tad uncertain as of yet. While we welcome the positive aura emanating from Republican Governor-elect Bill Lee, we are disappointed by his expressed support for voucher legislation (a specter that we thought had been abandoned by the General Assembly) and his reluctance to see the good sense of long-overdue Medicaid expansion.

Even so, we’ll try to be optimistic. Happy Holidays!

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Politics Politics Feature

Candidates Vie for Vacant Norris Seat

It took a while for Mark Norris to become a federal judge. He was nominated by President Trump last year but was only recently confirmed by the U.S. Senate after numerous gridlock-imposed delays. It took a while, too, for Governor Bill Haslam to call for a special election to replace Norris in his vacated District 32 state Senate seat.

But now that things are under way, Republican candidates to fill the vacancy are wasting no time getting their campaigns under way. Former two-term Shelby County Commissioner Heidi Shafer, who was one of the first to indicate her desire to seek the seat after Norris was nominated, made haste to get out of the gate, filing to run at the Election Commission on Monday morning. She indicated later Monday that she already has three fund-raisers scheduled for the near future.

New Democratic House Leader Karen Camper

Shafer, who represented an East Memphis district on the commission and chaired that body this past year, displayed some serious legislative skills there. Even before the District 32 opportunity opened up, she had expressed a desire to run for the legislature and at one point had her eyes on a race this fall for the District 96 state House seat won in 2016 by Democrat Dwayne Thompson in an upset of then GOP incumbent Steve McManus.

The Norris seat became a more inviting target, however, and she and her husband Carl subsequently turned their Memphis home over to their college-age daughter and moved into a new Lakeland residence, well within the District 32 limits.

In something of an irony, or at the very least an interesting coincidence, one of Shafer’s rivals for the District 32 seat is the aforementioned McManus, who forwent the option of trying to regain his House seat from Thompson (who won again over the GOP’s Scott McCormick) and was himself attracted by the prospect of the Norris vacancy.

McManus, too, is off and running, having already run a commercial for his candidacy on local TV this past weekend. In 2016, he had, in the judgment of many, demonstrated a palpable over-confidence in his race against the hard-working Thompson, and his defeat then may have amounted to something of a wake-up call for his future.

In any case, he is unlikely to be taken by surprise this time around and has significant leftover campaign cash from two years ago that will stand him in good stead for the current race.

Both Shafer and McManus are counting on support in East Shelby County, the heartland of the local Republican constituency, as was demonstrated by the weight of Republican voting in last August’s primary.

Shafer’s commission work, much of it in alliance with Terry Roland of Millington, would appear to give her a headstart with the GOP voters of North Shelby County, and she is also well acquainted with the GOP base in the southern part of Tipton County, also part of District 32.

Both Shafer and McManus have to worry about a third candidate, construction executive Paul Rose of Covington, who is well known in Tipton County and moreover has significant contacts with the Shelby County Republican establishment as well.

Rose has indicated he intends to run hard on conservative themes, stressing Christian values and his support for the 2nd Amendment, a focus that should help him in the district’s rural areas.

Yet a fourth potential GOP candidate, not yet announced, is George Chism of Collierville, who served one term on the Shelby County Commission, then gambled on a run for county trustee this year but was defeated by Democrat Regina Morrison Newman, after winning the Republican primary.

So far, one Democrat, Eric R. Coleman of Bartlett, has picked up a petition to run for the District 32 seat. Coleman, a veteran of Naval service and a Wounded Warrior, is a business logistics specialist.

• Shelby Countians are prominent in legislative leaderships positions, at least among the General Assembly’s minority Democrats. In recent elections, District 87 state Representative Karen Camper was elected as the Democrats’ minority leader in the state House, thereby achieving a dual milestone as the first African-American woman to lead a major party in the legislature.

Shelby County Democrats dominated in leadership elections for the state Senate, capturing three of the spots available for the five Democrats in that body. Raumesh Akbari, a former state representative who won election to the Senate’s District 29 seat in this year’s election, was named caucus chair for the Democrats, while Sara Kyle of District 30 was elected vice chair, and Katrina Robinson of District 33, was named party whip.

• Local Democrats also made an impact, though one they surely regarded as less desirable, with the state Election Registry, drawing fines for late financial disclosures. Incoming freshman House state Representatives London Lamar of District 91 and Jesse Chism of District 85 were fined $8,175 and $5,000 respectively, while veteran state Representative Joe Towns of District 84, a perennial collector of fines from the registry, drew a total of $20,000.

• Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, who has demonstrated an innovative bent during his first few months in office, has announced a “Health and Fitness Initiative” to begin on Wednesday of this week, with a “City Silo Vegan Barbecue” meal to be served at noon in the 6th floor lobby of the Vasco Smith County Administration Building to members and staffers of the county commission, members of the Healthy Shelby board, and the media.

The initiative will continue in January with what is billed as a “mini” five-minute bootcamp for the commissioners and media members, conducted by Memphis Tiger basketball star Will Coleman.

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Politics Politics Feature

Starting Over

The change has come. There is a new Shelby County Mayor, Lee Harris, and he will serve along with a Shelby County Commission that numbers eight new members on the 13-member body.

And all these newcomers will inherit some old business — two issues that were apparently resolved last Monday, on the final meeting day of the old Commission, but became unresolved late Friday when outgoing Mayor Mark Luttrell — timing his action for the last possible moment so as to avoid a possible override — vetoed two resolutions.

Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris

One of these resolutions gave the go-ahead to a 390-unit subdivision, to be built in the southeastern corner of the county, adjacent to Collierville. The other resolution served to restore some post-retirement benefits, curtailed a decade ago, for county employees who serve a minimum of eight years. (Perhaps not coincidentally, eight years is the amount of time in office just served by the outgoing term-limited members of the Commission.)

In conferring his veto, Luttrell cited the expenses to Shelby County government of the two resolutions — the unspecified costs of providing county services and infrastructure in the case of the subdivision, an estimated $6 to $10 million in direct annual outlays in the case of the post-retirement benefits. The financial sum was the estimate of Harvey Kennedy, Luttrell’s CAO, and Luttrell said that, at the very least, some actuarial study ought to be given the project before final approval.

That, in a public-policy sense, was the crux of the matter as Luttrell saw it. There was, additionally, a highly private side to the disagreement between mayor and commission, and, in taking his veto action, Luttrell had managed to strike the last blow in what had amounted to a nearly three-year power struggle between himself and the commission — one that, on Thursday of last week, only a day previously, had seen him conspicuously on the losing end.

That had been the occasion of the public swearing-in at the Cannon Center of mayor-elect Harris, along with the eight new commissioners and the clerks and charter officials who had been elected, along with them in the county general election of August 2nd. The ceremony had been pointedly organized and conducted under commission auspices, after, it was said, Luttrell himself had declined to commit resources to it from the county’s general fund.

Some confusion persists on that latter point. Luttrell later maintained that he had authorized a disbursement from the general fund to pay for the ceremony, while outgoing commission chair Heidi Shafer said that commission funds had paid for it and that Luttrell’s offer of funding had come too late and only after he had received inquiries from the media about responsibility for the event.

It was Shafer — who, along with Commissioner Terry Roland, had been the chief organizer of resistance to Luttrell over the years — who was front and center for the swearing-in ceremony, and who made it clear to the large audience that the event was a commission project. She identified the outgoing mayor only as “Mark Luttrell,” sans title, when, at the request of two of the new officials, he assisted in administering the oath of office.

What was it that lay behind this schism? Political partisanship? That wouldn’t seem to be the case; while the commission’s Democrats quite often voted against the mayor’s will on particular cases, there was no doubting that the rebellion against Luttrell, a Republican, was led by Shafer and Terry Roland, both GOP members. Nor were personality differences the reason, though they existed. Ditto with govermental ideology. True, Luttrell’s main concern as mayor seemed to be that of debt retirement über alles, while commission members tended to be freer spenders. But beyond all that, what separated mayor and commissioners in recent years seemed to be honest disagreement about the balance of power between branches of government. The Commission saw itself as entitled to a greater degree of oversight, especially over financial matters, while Luttrell saw his executive responsibilities to be dependent on the kind of strong-mayor role that the county charter, as currently constituted, may not fully license.

It seems clear that, as county government goes forward with a new mayor and new commissioners, the argument is likely to rear again. Further change may be called for, and not only in two leftover resolutions.