Tag: Mark Billingsly

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Politics Politics Feature

Shelby County Commission Ponders Matters of Time

CREDIT: Reginald Milton

Toward the end of Monday’s meeting of the Shelby County Commission, second-term member Mark Billingsley, looking out from his seat on the stage of the Vasco Smith County Administration Building, swept an arm out toward the auditorium’s row of seats, all virtually empty, as Billingsley pointed out, save for a few isolated staff members.

Billingsley went on to suggest  to his colleagues that the commission’s recent decision to change the start time of its meetings from 3 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. — ostensibly, on the initiative of new member Mick Wright, to enable more members of the general public to attend meetings — had failed, and that maybe the commission ought to revert to its previous start time.

A couple of things struck at least one observer as unusual: 1) that the effective half-hour difference did not seem all that consequential; and 2) that it had been Billingsley himself, at the beginning of his first term, four years ago, who had moved for a change in the body’s start time, from 1:30 p.m. to 3 p.m. And his reasoning back then? That such a change would enable more members of the general public to attend meetings.

In one sense, given the number of reasonably significant matters that have occupied this commission in its first couple of months, the matter of starting time might have seemed relatively unimportant. But is it? Commissioner Wright, who represents Bartlett, had originally suggested an even later start time, 6 p.m., but that was shaved back during later consideration, on the grounds that, while the public might indeed be freer to attend in the evenings, staff members — whose presence on many matters is essential — would be inconvenienced by having to stick around.

There is no perfect time for a public body to meet, of course. The Memphis City Council’s start time for its Tuesday public meetings has, for several years, been 4:30 p.m., a time that strikes something of a mean between the needs of public and city government staffers, but seems mainly to be of advantage to the 10 o’clock newscasts of local television stations, by providing them with relatively fresh newsbreaks.

On Monday, Wright earned a bit of teasing from colleague Edmund Ford Jr., who noted that several of Wright’s initiatives involved clock time, including another matter up for discussion on Monday — that of Daylight Saving Time. Wright had suggested that the back-and-forth shifting — back an hour at one time of year and up again later on — creates unnecesary dislocation in people’s lives.

Wright first proposed including the state’s abandonment of Daylight Saving Time as an item in the commission’s recommended legislative package for the General Assembly but later said he’d be satisfied with the imposition of year-long Daylight Saving Time. The idea in either case, with or without DST, was to maintain a year-long consistency.

Ultimately, the commission approved an amended version of Wright’s resolution, one that would urge the General Assembly to reconsider the issue of Daylight Saving Time without recommending a particular course.

• As befits a local legislative body, perhaps, the incidence of partisan disagreements is not large, but it does exist. It showed itself on a few matters Monday.

One instance concerned the meaning of a resolution asking the General Assembly to amend the state’s Basic Education Program (BEP) “to fund additional school Resource Officers, Social Workers, and Counselors.”

A debate of sorts erupted over the meaning of the term “Resource Officers.” Amber Mills, the resolution’s original sponsor and a Republican, wanted the term construed to denote security officers. Or, at least, she accepted commission Chairman Van Turner‘s paraphrase of her intent to mean something such-like.

Other commissioners, including the body’s Democrats, wanted a looser definition, and they prevailed in a party-line vote, in which Wright, Billingsley, and Brandon Morrison, all Republicans, sided with Mills on the losing side. The final  resolution, with the looser definition intact, then passed 12-0.

Another Mills resolution asked the General Assembly “to avoid the adoption of Legislation, Policies, Rules of Regulations requiring the implementation of unfunded mandates.” This one, arguably reflecting a traditional Republican concern, was approved unanimously once it was reworded to specificy “unfunded education mandates” — which Mills accepted as expressing her basic intent.

A third matter reflected this commision’s apparent inclination to skirt possible divides in the interests of unity. This was regarding an ordinance, up for the second of three required readings, to amend the requirements of the Shelby County Minority and Women Business Enterprise Program (MWBE).

As outlined by Shep Wilbun, chief county diversity officer, the ordinance went into minute detail defining the terms, numerical and otherwise, that either permitted or encouraged the awarding of contracts in greater numbers to firms owned by women and/or African Americans. In the end, there appeared to be general agreement on the commission that the accretion of new detail was such as to make an already abstruse process even more “cumbersome” — an adjective supplied by Commissioner Morrison.

And thus the ordinance was routed back to committee to undergo a process of simplifcation.

• Last weekend saw a visit here by Tennessee Democratic Party chair Mary Mancini, one of several planned for statewide under the head, “Analyze, Organize, Mobilize,” to discuss party affairs and strategy. A group of 30 to 50 local Democrats met with Mancini at the headquarters building of U.S. Pipefitters Local 614 in Arlington.

On hand to assist in the process, in the wake of what has been a highly successful year or two for the party, was Shelby County Democratic Party chair Corey Strong, who confided that he intends to focus on his job as special project director at Shelby County Schools and does not plan to seek reelection in March, when local Democrats meet in convention.

The forthcoming convention will re-inaugurate a cycle that was interrupted when the Shelby County party, having fallen into disunity and ineffectiveness, was dissolved by Mancini in 2016.

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Politics Politics Feature

Defining the Divide on the Shelby County Commission

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

In the month and a half that the current version of the Shelby County Commission — the one in office as of the August 2nd county general election — has been meeting, it has become clear that serious division of opinion exists on the body, more or less along party lines.

But, so far, no open antagonism has manifested itself. That fact would distinguish this commission from its two immediate predecessors — the commission of 2010-2014, which saw animosities flare between members, and the one of 2014-2018, which saw open warfare between a bipartisan contingent on the commission and the county mayor’s office.

Two key votes at the commission’s Monday meeting indicated the divides of this commission. One vote was to approve a vote of no confidence in the recent decision by the U.S. Department of Justice to terminate a Memorandum of Agreement with Shelby County providing continued DOJ oversight of problems with Juvenile Court.

Jackson Baker

As Democrat Tami Sawyer (right) speaks to a no-confidence resolution on end of DOJ oversight of Juvenile Court, Republican Brandon Morrison looks on disapprovingly.

Both a commission majority and County Mayor Lee Harris have publicly disapproved of the decision to end oversight, and on Monday the vote on the no-confidence resolution, co-sponsored by Commissioner Tami Sawyer and Commission Chair Van Turner, both Democrats, passed by a 7-4-1 vote, with the four opponents being four of the commission’s five Republicans — Brandon Morrison, Amber Mills, David Bradford, and Mark Billingsley — while the fifth GOP member, Mick Wright, abstained.

A second resolution, this one co-sponsored by Sawyer and Edmund Ford Jr., requested that the Memorandum of Understanding between four major law-enforcement branches — the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office, the Memphis Police Department, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, and the Shelby County District Attorney General — be amended “to include TBI’s investigation of critical injuries” resulting from law enforcement shootings.

The resolution’s essential point was to enlarge TBI oversight of such incidents. The vote was similar, another 7-4-1 vote, with Wright joining the dissenters this time and Bradford abstaining.

This basic divide, along party lines, is likely to continue, especially on issues of social significance.

• Tom Perez, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, made a stop in Memphis on Saturday at the National Civil Rights Museum for an installment of the DNC’s “Seat at the Table” tour, designed to galvanize the involvement of African-American women in the party.

In his farewell message to attendees, Perez took note of one of the major issues on the November 6th ballot — the referendum for Memphis voters on repeal of Ranked Choice Voting, a method for determining winners, sans runoffs, in multi-candidate races in which no candidate has a majority.

“I’ve spent a lot of time on that issue,” said Perez, after giving a hat-tip to Steve Mulroy, the University of Memphis law professor and former county commissioner who has been a major proponent of RCV (aka Instant Runoff Voting), scheduled to be employed in the 2019 city election, unless repealed.

Perez suggested that “the Republicans” were “trying to take it away,” though in fact it was incumbents of the nonpartisan Memphis City Council who implanted the repeal referendum on the ballot.

“If I were living here, I’d vote no on that referendum, because you’ve already voted for it,” said Perez, who referred to a previous referendum, in 2008, when Memphis voters approved the process by a 70 percent majority. “It forces candidates to talk to everyone, instead of just that one base. It fosters civility because you can’t ignore 70 percent of the people.”

Perez went on: “Talk to them! What a radical concept. That’s why y’all voted for it, and that’s why they don’t want it.”

• Three weeks after Mike Stewart of Nashville, the Democrats’ caucus chairman in the Tennessee House of Representatives, came to Memphis to investigate Republican House candidate Scott McCormick, Stewart returned to reveal his findings.

What he’d been looking for was the absentee record from Shelby County Schools board meetings of McCormick, who is trying to unseat Democrat Dwayne Thompson, the upset winner in 2016 of the District 96 House seat.

Back on October 10th, Stewart and fellow Democrat Marjorie Pomeroy-Wallace spent an afternoon in the county Board of Education building waiting in vain for McCormick’s attendance records.

That was then. On Monday, Stewart and Wallace were back in front of the Board of Education building — but this time with a large standing chart showing, line by line, the apparent actual record of McCormick’s attendance on the board committees he has belonged to.

The chart purported to show that McCormick had missed “at least 72 of 94 committee meetings,” which translates into an absentee rate of 76 percent. “It is a record of chronic absenteeism,” said Stewart. “He consistently missed critical meetings on critical subjects.” Stewart gave as an example the issue of academic performance, which has been the focus of much concern in regard to Shelby County Schools.

“Of 25 meetings on academic performance, Scott McCormick attended just five. What can we expect when he gets into the legislature and nobody’s watching? He was AWOL and obviously should not be promoted to a new assignment. What are you going to do in Nashville when nobody’s supervising you?”

Stewart said the SCS office had not furnished him with written attendance records, but only with recordings, from which he and others had determined McCormick’s attendance record from listening to roll calls. “We had to listen laboriously to every one of them,” he said.

Asked for a reaction, McCormick said Stewart’s figures were misleading. “First of all, committee meetings on the school board aren’t like those in the legislature, which conform to a fixed, predictable schedule.” The School Board meetings were arranged around members’ convenience and availability according to ad hoc questionnaires, he said.

Moreover, said McCormick, “no action is taken at the committee meetings, nothing is voted on,” and any material developed in them is made available to board members in the monthly work sessions that precede by a week the board’s public business sessions. McCormick claimed an attendance rate of 22 out of 23 public business meetings at which votes were taken. And, he said, his attendance record at the evaluations committee, which he heads, was 100 percent.

McCormick said, in effect, that the focus on his attendance record was a red herring and that the main issue of the House race should be the matter of who best could benefit Shelby County in pushing for advances in education and economic development. He said that, as a member of the legislature’s majority party, he was better poised than Thompson to be effective in those regards.

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Politics Politics Feature

Is Terry Roland a Bully?

Tempers flared during Monday’s regular meeting of the Shelby County Commission. Big time.

And the surface turbulence led to the uncovering of a behind-the-scenes matter involving a claim by several other commissioners that commission chairman Terry Roland has engaged in threatening behavior toward them.

The precipitating issue was the commission’s consideration of a proposal from former Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton to build two educational residence facilities for convicted juvenile offenders in Frayser and in Millington.

The commission voted 8-2 to endorse the project, a sort of combination charter school/incarceration model that would locate juveniles in a dormitory situation close to their families. Called the NewPath Restorative Campuses, the proposed facilities would be run by a nonprofit group and would be privately funded, for the most part, requiring no outlay of county money.

The project would be boosted by an allocation of state funding — some $17.5 million that is now going to the Wilder detention facility in Fayette County — and that fact was cited by Roland as a reason for his support.

“He’s not asking us for any money,” Roland noted about Herenton, a former school superintendent who is now executive director of the W.E.B. DuBois Consortium of Charter Schools and who would direct the facilities’ educational operations. “They’d be spending $47 million for each facility,” said Roland, and would be generating 600 jobs for his own community of Millington.

The commission’s vote of approval indicates that most commissioners bought into that reasoning. Commissioner Walter Bailey was one who did not, however.

Though he praised Herenton as an individual and a professional, Bailey demurred, citing what he said was incomplete information about the project, as well as his aversion to what was basically a privatization of functions that were traditionally public.

Herenton became visibly angry, criticizing Bailey for having “the audacity to pontificate” and telling the commissioner, an African American like himself, that 85 percent of the juveniles to be housed “look like you and me,” and would be the beneficiaries of superior educational and wraparound services currently unavailable to them.

Still steaming after the vote, Herenton was heard to mutter the word “bullshit” in regard to Bailey’s objection.

Other commissioners had misgivings, as well. Mark Billingsley, who joined Bailey in abstaining on the vote, and George Chism and David Reaves, both of whom voted no, all cited what they said was a lack of specific information about the project.

After the vote, Reaves became involved in a disagreement with Roland that resulted in an actual physical altercation. It took place off the main commission chamber in a back room that is often used for conferences.

Roland and Reaves differ in their accounts of what happened. According to Roland, Reaves approached him and “put his finger on my nose.” The commission chairman said that Reaves then accused him of “selling out my race” by supporting the Herenton proposal.

Both commissioners agree on what came next. Roland shoved Reaves.

“All I did was get him out of my face,” Roland said. “I was clearly in the right. The dude came up on me.”

“I never touched the man,” said Reaves, who further denies mentioning the word “race” in the context claimed by Roland. “I told Terry he was selling out his constituents,” said Reaves, who added that he was confident that, based on the political history of Memphis and Shelby County, people in Millington, like those in Bartlett, would object to giving former Mayor Herenton an unconditional approval for his project.

He said that if he mentioned the word “race,” it was probably to suggest that Roland, an announced candidate for county mayor in 2018, was using his support for the project to play politics on behalf of his political race.

Commissioner Heidi Shafer, who was in the back room conferring on a matter with Kim Hackney, assistant CAO for the county administration, became aware of the fracas and rushed out to locate a deputy sheriff serving as bailiff, returning with him to find the disturbance apparently over.

“I couldn’t really tell who did what to whom,” Shafer said. About Roland, she said, “Terry’s definitely not a turn-the-other-cheek kind.”

Reaves later identified Billingsley and Chism as other commissioners toward whom Roland had displayed “bullying” and threatening behavior. Both confirmed having had such experiences.

Said Billingsley: “Terry has threatened to beat me up in front of several county staffers in the hallway. He consistently displays bullying behavior. Anybody who disagrees with him about anything is met with great hostility. That’s unbelievably unprofessional. There’s no place for it in government, and it sets a very poor example for a community that already has too much hostility on its hands.”

Chism had a similar account: “Terry once lost his temper with me. He was very aggressive, and there were people in the office that heard it. It was all over a resolution that I wouldn’t co-sponsor, but he insisted he wanted my name on it.” Chism said Roland was “way over the line,” but that he “immediately apologized.”

These new claims of belligerent behavior on Roland’s part are reminders of previous circumstances involving the Millington commissioner and his colleagues. Former Commissioner Steve Mulroy said back in 2011 that Roland had cornered him in the commission library and said, “You and I are never going to agree. There’s only one way to settle things. We’re going downstairs, and I’m going to whip your ass!”

At the time, Roland said, “Aw, heck, I was just kidding with him,” and, though Mulroy still insists he believes Roland was serious in his threat, the two commissioners would ultimately let the matter subside with jocular references to a potential boxing match for charity.

In 2012, Roland was the featured speaker at a meeting of the Collierville Republican Club when several fellow GOP Commissioners, who favored another approach, began heckling him.

Interpreting a muttered phrase from then-Commissioner Chris Thomas as a disrespectful jibe about his late father (Thomas denied saying anything of the sort), Roland threatened to “knock you out of that chair.” Then-Commissioner Wyatt Bunker called the Collierville police, who arrived after the meeting was over but found nothing amiss.

On that occasion, Roland insisted he was the one being bullied, and he had similar words for his disagreement with Reaves Monday. “I’m not going to let politics get in the way of making a good decision to help our people,” he said. “I’m not going to be bullied. I’m trying to do what’s good for everybody.”

And Roland reciprocated Reaves’ charges of political motivation by accusing Reaves, Billingsley, and Chism of being partisans of Roland’s potential mayoral opponent, current county Trustee David Lenoir. He said the three also were supporters of former U.S. Attorney David Kustoff in the 8th Congressional District GOP primary and that he, by contrast, intended to remain neutral.

Meanwhile, Billingsley revealed that in April he had queried then-County Attorney (now appellate Judge-designate) Ross Dyer, as follows: “It is unfortunate I have to inquire for a county attorney opinion, but I have no other choice. If a Shelby County commissioner contacts another Shelby County commissioner … and threatens their ability to put items on the… Commission agenda, threatens lack of funding, and threatens their ability to serve in their [elected] capacity, based on their personal animosity [toward] that individual, would this be considered official misconduct? Additionally, is there a process for reporting?”

Dyer, whose investiture as a Judge in the Court of Criminal Appeals will take place this Thursday, promised at the time that an answer would be forthcoming at some point from himself or from his staff.

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Politics Politics Feature

Matters of Tenure on the Shelby County Commission

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Jackson Baker

Walter Bailey

No suggestion at Monday’s regular meeting of the Shelby County Commission could have been treated with more courtesy than the request by long-serving Democratic member Walter Bailey for an ordinance to amend the County Charter so as to eliminate all reference to term limits for county officials.

And no suggestion had so little chance of passage as Bailey’s ordinance, which, on the first of three readings, gained the votes of only three members — Bailey and fellow Democrats Justin Ford and Van Turner — on the 13-member body. 

The ordinance allows for a public referendum of county voters, and that provision allowed several members to abstain from voting on the premise that they would meanwhile consult their constituents, but this was largely a face-saving mechanism for Bailey and perhaps for themselves.

The fact is, as a number of commissioners say privately, and as David Reaves said out loud on Monday, most members of the current commission would not have been able to run successfully for their seats on the body if term limits had not been imposed.

In arguing for the ordinance, Bailey noted for the record that members of Congress and the state legislature are not bound by term limits and that the imposition of them on the commission arbitrarily deprives the public of needed experience on the part of members. Bailey himself, a member of a distinguished political family that included his late brother, author/civil rights icon D’Army Bailey, is the longest-serving member of the commission and, as he put it last week in committee, where his ordinance was first vetted, maybe the longest-serving public official in the state. He won office first in 1971, has served as chairman twice, and has served continuously, with the exception of four years, from 2006 to 2010, when the charter’s then-new term-limit requirement caused him to step down temporarily.

He is now serving his second term since being returned to the commission in 2010 and faces another mandatory withdrawal from service. • More local backdrop for the 8th District congressional race: As indicated last week, a victory by Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell in the crowded Republican primary field would occasion some frenetic maneuvering on the part of the county commissioners, inasmuch as Luttrell would thereby vacate his county position, opening it up to a reappointment process.

Luttrell, if  victorious in the congressional race, would presumably resign his mayoralty sometime between the general election in November and his January swearing-in in Washington. Meanwhile, the commission would have selected a new chair in September, according to its normal schedule. And whoever is chair when Luttrell ceases to be mayor automatically becomes interim Shelby County mayor for a maximum of 45 days, after which the commission will select a new one by majority vote.

As Commissioner Mark Billingsley of Germantown reminded his colleagues with copies of a handout he distributed Monday, the county charter makes no provision for an election to fill a vacancy in the mayor’s office “until a successor is elected and qualified at the next countywide election allowed by the state election laws.” Hence, whoever is selected by the commission upon the completion of the interim mayor’s service will serve as a fully pledged county mayor until the county general election of 2018.

There is no doubt that current commission chairman Terry Roland, a Millington Republican, wants to be the next county mayor. His intentions of running for the position in 2018 have been clear for months, and, in case anyone should forget the fact, he announces it periodically during meetings of the commission. (Roland pointedly did so at last Wednesday’s committee sessions and did so again at Monday’s regular commission meeting.)

It now appears, however, that Roland sees no need to seek reappointment to a second consecutive term as commission chairman in September (as numerous commission chairs have done in the last several years, with former member Sidney Chism, a Democrat, having brought off the trick). Roland is content to allow things to take their natural course in September, with Democratic member Turner the favorite to become the next chairman.

But Roland is certain to be front and center as a candidate for appointment as mayor when the commission convenes, sometime early in 2017, to serve as a successor to Luttrell through the election of 2018. And word has it that he believes he already has most of the votes in hand to overcome other candidates, including possible opponent David Lenoir, the county trustee, who intends to run for the office in the regular 2018 election cycle. Another possible contender for the commission’s mayoralty selection would be GOP Commissioner Steve Basar, whom Roland bested for the chairmanship last year in a hastily called revote after Basar had held the position for roughly an hour.

All of this would be moot, of course, should someone other than Luttrell win the congressional race. There are five other Shelby County Republicans in the field — Basar; radiologist/broadcast executive George Flinn; state Senator Brian Kelsey; County Register of Deeds Tom Leatherwood; and former U.S. Attorney David Kustoff.

And Jackson businessman Brad Greer must be delighted at the prospect that so many Shelby Countians in the race, dividing up the local vote, creates the real mathematical possibility of his winning. (Something like that happened in the 7th District congressional race of 2002, when Kustoff, then city council member Brent Taylor, and then County Commissioner Mark Norris split the Shelby County vote, allowing for an easy victory by Marsha Blackburn of Williamson County, who still represents the 7th District.)

Outlook on Convention Delegates

Some 400 Democrats betook themselves to First Baptist Church Broad last Saturday to make themselves eligible for formal Shelby County conventions on Saturday, March 19th, that will select from this pool of eligible members the delegates to the Democratic National Convention at Philadelphia this summer.

Yes, there will be two conventions on March 19th — one to be held at First Baptist Broad that will determine the identity of the delegates and alternates who will go to Philadelphia to represent the 9th Congressional District; and another, to be held the same day in Jackson, that will determine who goes to the national convention to represent the 8th Congressional District, which takes in a generous hunk of eastern Shelby County.

At both locations, the delegates to be selected will conform to the pattern of the two districts’ voting in last week’s “Super Tuesday” presidential primary in Tennessee, with the lion’s share of delegates and alternates going to Hillary Clinton, who won the primary vote handily, and a handful going to Bernie Sanders. 

In the case of the 9th District, that would be six delegates and one alternate for Clinton, with one delegate apportioned to Sanders. In the case of the 8th, it’s four delegates for Clinton and one for Sanders. Insofar as the math permits, the delegates are apportioned, half and half, by gender.

For the record, Clinton beat Sanders statewide by a two-to-one ratio. The ratio in Shelby County, whose African-American demographic (generally very supportive of Hillary Clinton) is higher, was four to one: Clinton, 66,465; Sanders, 15,985. 

The Democratic Party’s ex post facto process for selecting delegates differs from that of the Republicans, which required would-be delegates to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland to file for election on the Super Tuesday ballot on behalf of the specific presidential candidate they chose to represent. The chief vote-getters on each list became convention delegates in a ratio proportionate to how well their candidates did in head-to-head voting.

For the record, Donald Trump won 39 percent of the statewide Republican primary vote; Ted Cruz won 25 percent; Marco Rubio, 21 percent, Ben Carson, 8 percent; John Kasich, 5 percent. (Results rounded off.)

The preliminary delegate list released last week by the state Republican Party did not include the apportionment for Shelby County, but the county’s GOP primary results went as follows: Trump, 30 percent; Cruz, 29 percent; Rubio, 26 percent, Kasich, 8 percent, Carson, 6 percent, and “others,” 2 percent. (Again, results rounded off.)

If all of this appears to be a mite complicated, that’s because it is. Updates will be provided by the Flyer as they are received.