Tag: Mark Luttrell

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Editorial Opinion

Pot, Police, and Ambulance Service: Three Wins for Memphis

When it comes to fast-breaking issues in a year of change, the presidential race ain’t got nothing on local government in Memphis and Shelby County. Last week alone featured decisive and potentially transformational action on a trio

of matters — two on the part of the Memphis City Council, another within county government.

The council was the scene of key votes on marijuana and residential requirements for city police. The most surprising perhaps — and certainly the most controversial — was Councilman Berlin Boyd’s proposed ordinance to decriminalize modest marijuana use, providing police with the alternative of writing tickets, much in the manner of traffic offenses, rather than arresting users under the state’s criminal statutes.

To the consternation of professed traditionalists on the council and, as it developed, of Police Director Michael Rallings, the Public Safety & Homeland Security Committee voted 5-2 to support the ordinance, which is due for its first of three required readings on September 6th. We anticipate that emotions will run, er, high on that date in City Hall. Rallings has already resolved to do what he can to defeat the ordinance, and Governor Bill Haslam, on a visit to Memphis last week, also made known his opposition. Opponents on the council, like Joe Brown, summoned up the specter of Demon Weed, but Boyd convinced a major of committee members that recreational use of marijuana is no gateway to hard drug use and that rigid employment of criminal penalties has resulted in instances of severe injustice, especially to young African Americans in Memphis.

At a time when numerous states as well as the seat of national government, the District of Columbia, have chosen to liberalize their attitudes toward marijuana, we find it both encouraging and timely that Boyd is giving Memphis the opportunity to at least rethink the matter.

If Rallings was upset over this Council action, he was relieved about another — the council’s vote last week to reject an ordinance that would have restricted his potential department hires to persons living within the city limits of Memphis. At a time when the buffing up of police ranks with quality recruits is a matter of increasing urgency, it would have been folly to impose so potentially crippling a curb on Rallings’ (and Mayor Jim Strickland’s) prerogatives, and the council recognized that fact resoundingly with a 10-2 no vote.

County government had its moment of clarity, too, at a committee meeting on Wednesday when officials of Mayor Mark Luttrell’s administration and an apparent commission majority read the riot act to representatives of American Medical Response (AMR), whose request for post-contract modifications that would double the county’s costs smacked rather obviously of bait-and-switch tactics. The upshot is a likely move by the county toward creating its own ambulance service — thereby underscoring in practical terms the difference between government’s straightforward mission to perform public service and the potential risks and derelictions to be encountered within the all-too-prevalent practice of outsourcing that mission.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Crap Shoot in the 8th

I’m thinking of moving to Tennessee’s 8th Congressional District so I can vote for Karen Free Spirit Talley-Lane. Karen, or “Free” as I like to call her, is an independent candidate, one of 20 people vying to become GOP Congressman Stephen Fincher’s replacement, including four other independents, two Democrats, and 13(!) Republicans.

There are 13 Republicans running because the 8th District has been gerrymandered into a lockdown seat for the GOP. All one of these 13 boys has to do is win, say, 20 percent of the votes and they’re on their way to Washington, D.C. The actual election in November is a foregone conclusion.

And thanks to the GOP gerrymandering of the 8th District that occurred after the 2010 census, I wouldn’t have to move very far to vote for Free — just to the “finger” on the map that juts its way deep into east Memphis, into the heart of what used to be Democratic 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen’s district, including the area where many of the city’s Jewish voters live. Huh, what could they have been thinking?

No problem, they gave Cohen Millington in exchange. Seems fair, right?

Gerrymandering is the source of our congressional gridlock. It’s a system that allows office-holders to literally pick who gets to vote for (and against) them. The majority party in power after the census obtains the right to draw the borders of our districts and other various political bailiwicks. They almost always do so in a way that splits and scatters the opposition party’s voters and solidifies their own. That’s why members of Congress are very seldom defeated, unless it’s by a member of their own party in a primary. Since they don’t have to work across party lines in their home districts, there’s very little inclination to do so once they get to Washington. They just have to keep the homefolks in their own party happy.

And that’s why there is a mad scramble among 13 Republicans to win the GOP nomination in the 8th. Once they’re in, they’re in for as long as they want to be there.

Just eight years ago, things were reversed. Longtime Democratic Congressman John Tanner controlled the 8th District, winning election after election. In 2008, the GOP didn’t even field a candidate. Tanner won the general election with 180,000 votes to his write-in opponent’s 54 — almost literally 100 percent of the electorate!

Then Tanner retired, and in the 2010 “wave” election, Fincher beat Democrat Roy Herron. In the post-census redistricting, the 8th District got gerrymandered to ensure that it would remain Republican, at least until the next census. That was done by moving much of eastern Shelby County, a GOP stronghold, from the 9th District to the 8th.

Which is why the Memphis television and radio airwaves are now filled with ads from Republicans, each trying to outdo the others with their red, white, and blue credentials. David Kustoff is going to end Islamic terrorism; George Flinn is going to abolish Obamacare (with the help of those two white-haired biddies who love him so); and real conservative Brian Kelsey is going to be the most conservative conservative who ever conserved. It’s why we are being visited by the dregs of the recent GOP presidential nomination process — Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, and others — who are pitching for one or the other of the Goopsters. It’s why city boys are putting on their best button-down plaid shirts and visiting tractor pulls and county fairs.

There’s been little independent polling, making this race a crapshoot in the most literal and metaphorical sense. The early thinking was that Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell had the inside track, which would be fine with me, frankly. He at least tried to push for Governor Haslam’s expansion of Medicare, indicating that he has a brain and actually cares about the area’s uninsured population and Shelby County’s overburdened hospitals. Having another congressman from Memphis couldn’t hurt. It certainly beats having one from Frog Jump, like Fincher.

I mean, as long as Karen Free Spirit Talley-Lane is out of the running …

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

It Took a Collaborative Effort, but Shelby County Passed a Budget

CREDIT: JB

JB

Administration figures Luttrell, Kennedy, and Swift huddle as the bargaining gets intense.

On Wednesday, the Shelby County Commission met for seven hours —nonstop except for brief “recesses” — and finally voted for a solution to the county’s budget dilemma that could probably have been arrived at within the first several minutes.

But the longer time period was doubtless necessary to iron out wrinkles and wear down some stubbornness and misgivings among the principals, both on the Commission and within the administration. The only given, as the day started, was that the persistent issue of school funding would be resolved via a $3.5 million add-on allocation to Shelby County Schools. (SCS’s total allocation is $22 million, and the county’s municipal-district schools will receive a pro-rated $6.2 millionl.)

The school-funding increase was one matter that Chairman Terry Roland (and most other participants) was insistent about. Every other possible increase was a variable in what turned out to be a $1.4 billion operating budget.

At roughly 3 p.m., the Commission resorted to a procedure that the administration of Mayor Mark Luttrell had persistently warned against and voted resoundingly to tap the county’s fund balance for $5 million to round out a budget deal that included some $13.5 million of add-on expenditures.

At various times in the proceedings, which began with committee meetings at 8 a.m. and continued with a special full-commission meeting that started at 11 a.m., Luttrell and two aides — CAO Harvey Kennedy and CFO Mike Swift — had seemingly convinced the Commission to pare down or eliminate some of the add-ons, which were earmarked for a variety of county departments, but in the end only a pair of add-on allocations were modestly trimmed.

The beneficiaries of the Commission’s largesse were Shelby County Schools ($3.5 million); the Sheriff’s Department ($3.1 million, with another $1.3 million possible down the road); Juvenile Court ($1 million); Shelby County Department of Corrections ($1 million); Regional One Health ($1 million) the District Attorney General’s office ($1,300,000); the Shelby County Election Commission ($8,216); General Sessions Criminal Court ($228,238); General Sessions Enviro
JB

Commissioner Eddie Jones

nmental Court ($8,233); $169,000 for JIFF (Juvenile Intervention & Faith-based Fellowship); and $64,590 for the Commission’s own budget.

To offset these increases, the Commission availed itself of several cost-cutting remedies, some suggested by Kennedy for the administration, some of its own devising.

Among the former were a cap on life insurance payouts for county retirees, for a savings of $2 million; the inclusion of an estimated $1 million windfall addition to the county wheel tax, which will be routed exclusively to the schools for fiscal 2016-17; and a pledge from Kennedy to “find” another $1.2 million in random funds. Among the latter were a re-allocation to the fiscal 2016-17 budget of surplus Sheriff’s Department budget funds from fiscal 2015-16, and the aforementioned $5 million transfer from the fund balance.
Before the final budget formula was reached, various other alternatives were considered and discarded, including a proposal by David Reaves to eliminate blight-reduction funding so as to shift funds elsewhere; and a comprehensive amendment by Steve Basar that would have freed up several millions by re-classifying a number of pay-as-you-go capital-construction projects as debt-incurring cases.
Acceptance of Basar’s amendment, which was rejected after a recess, would have funded all the intended projects but would have left the county budget out of balance, with a need for the Commission to make later revisions in either the budget, which had to be passed by July 1, or the county tax rate, which got the second of three readings Wednesday, remaining at $4.37 per $100 of assessed value. The tax rate, which as of now balances with the budget, will get its third and final reading on July 27.

Although several of the votes along the way of Wednesday’s elongated bargaining sessions were contested, the margins of acceptance seemed to grow as the day wore on, with several commissioners accepting procedures they had earlier balked at (e.g., David Reaves on several expenditure increases he eventually accepted, or at least tolerated; and Reginald Milton on the retirees’ insurance caps).

The administration’s acceptance of the Commission’s tapping the county balance was passive and grudging, at best, with Kennedy acknowledging, “We didn’t like it, but we couldn’t stop it, and at least we managed to mitigate it.” As Heidi Shafer noted, the delving into the fund balance may have reduced the intensiveness of the county’s debt-retirement policy somewhat, but it still left it in acceptable order.

Implicit in Wednesday’s bargaining was the continuation of a power struggle
JB

Commissioners Walter Bailey and David Reaves

 between the Commission and the administration on matters of governance. Shafer voiced the issue during the day’s deliberations as a matter of whether the Commission’s responsibility was limited to approving a tax rate to cover the administration’s budget allocations or involved a more active license to collaborate on determining those allocations.

By definition, Wednesday’s negotiations, as well as the final outcome, resolved the issue in favor of a broader interpretation of the Commission’s mission.

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News News Blog

Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke Addresses Summons to Memphis Luncheon

Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke

Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke gave a spirited and provocative speech at Memphis Magazine’s fourth annual “Summons to Memphis” luncheon Thursday, at the Holiday Inn at the University of Memphis.

The crowd of 300 or so was fronted by a Who’s Who table that included Mayor Jim Strickland, former Mayor AC Wharton, County Mayor Mark Luttrell, Berke, and Maura Sullivan, now chief operating officer of the city of Chattanooga and formerly a top aide in the Wharton administration.

Mayors Strickland, Berke, Luttrell

Berke began by acknowledging the difficulties all four major Tennessee cities have in dealing with a GOP legislature that is controlled by rural interests. “This legislature doesn’t like cities very much,” he said.

Moving from that point of urban commonality, Berke said his city has followed a four-point plan that has lowered its unemployment to 4 percent and has resulted in a booming economy and a thriving city built on the ashes of its departed steel-manufacturing industry.

“In 1967. Walter Cronkite called Chattanooga ‘the dirtiest city in America,'” Berke said. “And when the most trusted man in America says you’re the dirtiest city in America, people believe it.”

Berke alluded to the ‘Chattanooga Way,’ the four points of which are: Working Together Works; Investing in Public Spaces; Great Cities Plan for a Great Future; and Provide More Paths for the Middle Class.

Berke went into each seemingly platitudinal point in great detail, demonstrating the concrete steps Chattanooga has taken to achieve each goal. He was particularly proud of the city-owned broad-band network that is available to every home and business in Chattanooga.

The crowd was attentive and appreciative, seeming to enjoy Berke’s occasional irreverence and his upbeat message.

Contemporary Media, Inc. publisher Kenneth Neill presented Berke with a signed copy of Peter Taylor’s novel, A Summons to Memphis in appreciation of his appearance.

Berke and CMI Publisher Kenneth Neill

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

First Licks in the Tennessee 8th District

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

As introductory campaign events go, the forum for 8th District congressional candidates held Tuesday night last week by the East Shelby Republican Club at Germantown’s Pickering Center was somewhat tentative — as most such debut cattle calls are — but it contained plenty of foreshadowing of the slings and arrows to come.

Four of the main GOP players were there — state Senator Brian Kelsey, radiologist/radio executive George Flinn, Shelby County Register of Deeds Tom Leatherwood, and advertising man/consultant Brad Greer of Jackson. Missing among the touted contenders were former U.S. Attorney David Kustoff and Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell.

The outlier of the group, both geographically and, to a large extent, philosophically, was Greer, whose chances for prevailing are maybe not quite as good as those of then state Senator Marsha Blackburn when she ran for the 7th congressional seat in 2002 against three Shelby Countians— the aforesaid Kustoff, then Shelby County Commissioner (now state Senator) Mark Norris, and then Memphis City Councilman Brent Taylor. 

Blackburn, whose home base was Brentwood in Williamson County, campaigned well across the 7th District, even in Shelby County. She would win easily, taking advantage of the split vote among Shelby County natives, none of whom exactly ran like a house afire anyway.

But if Greer’s public image is not as well honed as was Blackburn’s, who at the time was one of the preeminent leaders of the anti-income tax movement in Tennessee, he has even more opponents from Shelby County than had Blackburn in 2002, and thus can count on an even more advantageous split.

Jackson Baker

(l to r) Brad Greer, George Flinn, Brian Kelsey, and Tom Leatherwood in Germantown

Flinn, Kelsey, Kustoff, Luttrell, and Leatherwood (to list them in the order of their campaign financial holdings) could very well divide the vote in their home county of Shelby, wherein resides 55 percent of the 8th District electorate. And that could pave the way for an upset victory for Greer, whose Madison County bailiwick is closer to the traditional heartland of the District, which since 2010 has been served by Crockett County resident Stephen Fincher, who is voluntarily relinquishing the seat.

That might especially be the case if the 8th District votes according to the same pattern as in March on Super Tuesday, when the distribution of votes for the hotly contested Republican presidential primary was, according to Greer, 60 percent in the non-Shelby part of the district and only 40 percent in the Shelby County bailiwick of Flinn, Kelsey, Kustoff, Luttrell, and Leatherwood.

To be sure, Greer has some competition of his own among fellow Jacksonians Hunter Baker, David Bault, and George Howell, none of whom, however, have raised much money at this point or figure to run well-supported races. And prominent Madison County kingmaker Jimmy Wallace, a major force behind Fincher, is putting his eggs this time in the basket, not of Greer, but of Kelsey, who also has good support and fund-raising potential in the Memphis area.

For the record, candidate cash on hand, as of the first-quarter reporting period, was: Flinn, $2,930,885; Kelsey, $439,005; Kustoff, $319,682; Luttrell, $144,570; and Greer, $103,713. No one else had amassed $100,000, or anything close to it. (And Flinn’s total should be taken with a grain — or perhaps an airplane hangar — of salt. Like Donald Trump at the presidential level, he is wealthy enough to self-finance, and, unlike The Donald, actually does so to a substantial degree; he does minimal fund-raising as such.)

All of the foregoing is a recap of the basic paper facts. Last week’s forum at the Pickering Center gave a partial foreshadowing of how the race might be run and of some of the intangibles involved. Herewith are some (admittedly sketchy) reviews of how and what the participating candidates did:

First up was Greer, who established the fact that he represented rural Tennesseans and had handled 18 West Tennessee counties in the 2006 U.S. Senatorial race for Republican victor Bob Corker. He distinguished himself from the others when an audience member asked about trade policy, and Greer wasted no time blasting away, Trump-like at the purportedly ruinous effects of various free-trade pacts on ordinary working folk. “I don’t give a good rat’s ass about other countries before my fellow countrymen,” Greer declared, in what may have been the line of the night.

Flinn was next, and right away declared his fealty to presumptive GOP presidential nominee Trump. He went on to express, as he does in his now-frequently-appearing TV ads, some of the well-worn GOP shibboleths of recent years, fretting that “we’re being killed by entitlements,” and promising to “represent you to D.C., not D.C. to you.” (I can’t help fantasizing about what would happen if the genial and accomplished Flinn dispensed with such pedantic bromides and let fly something defiant about the independence secured by his self-financing, a la “If you like Trump, you’ll love me!”)

Kelsey was third to speak, and in his allotted two-minute introductory spiel, he must have used the self-defining phrase “proven conservative” perhaps 50 times. Okay, that’s hyperbole, but variations on the phrase dominated his brief remarks to an overwhelming degree. In fairness, he did get to elaborate on his record during the Q-and-A portion of the evening, touting his sponsorship of a constitutional amendment to ban a state income tax and his enmity-to-the-death for Medicaid expansion.

Most compellingly, Kelsey signaled his willingness and intent in the future to attack the absent Luttrell, a supporter of Governor Bill Haslam’s ill-fated “Insure Tennessee” proposal: “We have Republicans in this very race who supported extending Obamacare.” And later: “As I mentioned before, we have Republicans who want to expand Medicaid under Obamacare.” 

And there was Leatherwood, whose hold on his county register’s job owes much to a neighborly demeanor and a competent, customer-knows-best attitude but who, when running for offices of partisan consequence, prefers to present himself as some kind of avenging Robespierre of the Right. He vies with Kelsey in his contempt for “socialism” and regard for “free enterprise” and, on matters of education policy, gave notice of his wish to purify both state (“Frankly, TNReady is merely Common Core by another name”) and nation, promising to support the abolition of the Department of Education.

In brief, Flinn, Kelsey, and Leatherwood all essentially stuck to well-worn Republican talking points, and Greer evinced at least some disposition, in this year of Trump and Sanders mass assemblies, to go yellow dog.

The next forum for these Republican contenders is scheduled for this Thursday night in Dyersburg.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

De-Annexation Pollyannas

We know that politicians, even wise and knowledgeable ones, whose local constituencies lie primarily outside the current boundaries of the city of Memphis, may find it difficult to fully tell it like it is in the case of the de-annexation bill under consideration in the Tennessee General Assembly.

That fact might explain why Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell, whose views on city/county affairs are normally quite balanced, professes not to be unduly concerned about a bill which, on the face of things, threatens to dismember Memphis, depriving it of geographic areas that are prime sources of sustaining revenue.

At this moment, Luttrell necessarily has to be looking to that part of his bailiwick — suburban east Shelby County — that will supply the lion’s share of the votes in the pending election for the 8th District congressional seat which Luttrell is seeking in this year’s election. Fair enough. Sentiment in that area seems, on the basis of attitudes taken by its representatives in the legislature, to be either favorable toward the bill or indifferent to its consequences. However, if the final version of the bill, in its sanction of easy dissolutions, turns out to apply to all incorporated municipalities statewide, including all of those in Shelby County, they may have another think coming.

In any case, we note by contrast to Luttrell’s hands-off approach the response of Sheriff Bill Oldham, who has viewed with concern and simple common sense the increased burdens, financial and otherwise, that will accrue to his department if it becomes wholly responsible for law enforcement in areas that might separate from Memphis.

Unfortunately, the attitude of the Shelby County’s aforementioned suburban legislators seems characterized either by an attitude of vengefulness toward Memphis, as in the case of state Representative Curry Todd, or an affected Pollyanna-ism in the case of state Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris, both of Collierville. We find disingenuous Norris’ protestation that the bill doesn’t de-annex anybody but merely gives annexed populations the right to vote on their status. That’s especially misleading, given Norris’ public rebuke of Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland for laying out the consequences to Memphis of the bill, at least as originally written — notably the potential financial losses to an already cash-strapped city of from $27 million to $78 million.

Norris blithely upbraided Strickland for stressing the bill’s downside (one that the Greater Memphis Area Chamber of Commerce, other Tennessee mayors, and major business leaders like AutoZone founder Pitt Hyde and ranking officials of First Tennessee Bank have testified is realistic). According to Norris, Strickland should be emphasizing Memphis’ advantages to residents rather than what he calls “the parade of horribles” itemized by the Memphis mayor.

Norris seems to believe that the proponents of de-annexation are seeking to physically remove their areas miles away from Memphis, distant from the job opportunities and attractions and developed infrastructure that the city offers. The fact is, all these amenities would still be available to the de-annexed populations; the latter would simply cease to help pay for them. They would become exploiters of Memphis rather than partners in maintaining the city. He should know better, and probably does.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Behind the Bill

CREDIT: JB

NASHVILLE — Maybe it’s because Ron Ramsey, the powerful state Senate Speaker, Lt. Governor, and presumed political careerist, chose Wednesday as his time to announce his decision to exit politics, or maybe it’s just another indication of how Memphis and its perils rate low on the Richter scale of Legislative Plaza these days. Or maybe it’s just a matter of the calendar. JB

Strickland at Shelby delegation lunch

In any case, outside of those folks who, in one sense or another, represent the sphere of Memphis and Shelby County in Nashville, the Great De-Annexation Crisis has generated very little fuss and bother at the General Assembly in Nashville.

This is despite the fact that Memphis is one of only six municipalities in Tennessee that stand to lose from the de-annexation bill that swept through the House of Representatives on Monday night and has convulsed local government — the Memphis part of it anyhow — with its implications.

It was only on behalf of Memphis that several of the Representatives elected by the city — Joe Towns, G.A. Hardaway, Raumesh Akbari and Larry Miller — and two friendly helpers — House Democratic leaders Mike Stewart of Nashville and Craig Fitzhugh of Ripley — rose on Monday night to protest HB0779/SB0749, the bill brought by two Chattanooga-area Republicans that would allow residents of areas annexed by their municipalities since 1998 to de-annex.

Other cities charged by the bill’s sponsors with “egregious” and arbitrary annexations are Chattanooga, Knoxville, Kingsport and Cornersville. Cornersille? Yes, the tiny Marshall County municipality of 1100 souls was faulted on Monday night by bill sponsor Mike Carter (R-Ooltewah) for grabbing up nine local farms in an arbitrary annexation.

The only one of 16 or so amendments introduced by opponents of the bill that was accepted by Carter was one to delete Johnson City as an offender. What that east Tennessee city had done was to voluntarily consent to the de-annexation of a community called Suncrest and thereby earn a pardon.

It would seem that Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, for whom this is about the fourth or fifth crisis to hit him unawares during his short term, is agreeable to ceding two of the most recently annexed Memphis neighborhoods — South Cordova and Southwind. He said so to the press after a Wednesday lunch meeting of the Shelby County legislative delegation at Tennessee Tower that he and Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell had signed on to long before the current matter broke.

Those two de-annexations would only cost the city $5 million, Strickland said, as against the $27 million or so he estimates that de-annexations of every community absorbed by Memphis since 1998 would cost.
JB

…and wth the press afterward

The year 1998 is apparently being used as a demarcation point in the de-annexation bill because that is the year of what was supposed to be a settlement of the crisis caused by the fateful Toy Town bill of 1997. That measure, smoothed through the legislature by the late Senate Speaker John Wilder on behalf of a Fayette County client community, would have allowed communities of the most modest size to incorporate and, before it was finally declared unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court (on a caption irregularity, actually), it had already spurred dozens of would-be incorporation efforts on the borders of Memphis.

The resultant 1998 compromise bill assigned municipalities limited areas as expansion reserves and made the process of urban expansion more difficult. But that has clearly failed to appease the adversaries of urbanism, and one wonders if Strickland’s proffered sacrifice will be honored as a stopping point in a revised Senate version or serve merely to whet the appetite of the de-annexationists.

A dialogue Monday between Strickland and Rep. Curry Todd (R-Collierville), one of the more vocal advocates of de-annexation, was not promising in that regard. Todd insisted that the city, in a conference call held at some unidentified earlier point, had agreed to larger concessions, and Strickland (who would later say he had participated in no such conference call) would respond that it wasn’t so.

Beyond the offer to sign off on Southwind and South Cordova, Strickland also floated the idea of somehow  offsetting fire and police expenses and of adding utility and OPEB costs to the general obligation bonds that the bill would obligate the residents of any de-annexing area to pay out on a pro-rata basis.
JB

Germantown Mayor Palazzolo

Granted, the current situation is to the Toy Towns matter as apples are to oranges, but then Mayor Willie Herenton, for better or for worse, was less flexible on concessions by Memphis, and make of that what you will. (One historical analogy that definitely does hold is that County Mayor Luttrell, much in the manner of County Mayor Jim Rout in the Toy Towns era, professes not to be terribly troubled by developments.)

In any case, there may be beaucoup bargaining yet to come before the other legislative foot drops in a Senate vote, probably next week. For what it’s worth, Memphis Democratic Senator Reginald Tate is already showing signs of weakening in his sponsorship of the de-annexation bill under pressure from the media in exposing his legislative history.

Tate, who lost out on a vote to be Senate Democratic leader before the current session by a single vote, has in fact voted so often with Republicans, even on matters arguably counter to Memphis’ interests, that wags in  Legislative Plaza refer to his District 33 as “the Ramsey-Tate district.” JB

Curry Todd on the attack

For what it’s worth, spectators for the Monday night vote on de-annexation included a generous supply of mayors of suburban municipalities. Asked about that on Monday, Germantown Mayor Mike Palazzolo said his primary interest in being in town was to resist ongoing efforts to repeal the Hall Income Tax, the proceeds of which are significant add-ons to to the coffers of every municipality in Shelby County, including Memphis.

But Palazzolo acknowledged that his landlocked city would be an interested party if adjacent areas like Windyke became de-annexed in the wake of the current bill.

The question of whether and when such areas, if detached from Memphis, would be eligible for absorption by another municipality, is an intriguing one — and, oddly, several leading proponents of the bill, including Todd and Representative Mark White (R-Germantown) professed not to know what the bill provided in that regard, though House sponsor Carter dismissed the prospect of such re-annexations Monday night on the ground that the bill made them prohibitively difficult.

To say the least, there would seem to be much in the measure requiring a re-examination by all sides.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Poll shows large Luttrell lead over other Shelby Countians in 8th District race.

A po

Luttrell

ll completed by the Remington Research Group of Kansas City shows Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell to have a commanding lead over other Shelby County candidates in the 8th Congressional District Republican primary.

The poll, conducted on February 29 and March 1 involved “686 likely Republican primary voters,” with a margin of error of +/- 3.5 percent, according to Remington director Titus Bond.

Below is the tabulated response to the question, “ If the candidates in the Republican primary election for United States Congress were Brian Kelsey, David Kustoff, Mark Luttrell, George Flinn, Tom Leatherwood and Steve Basar, for whom would you vote?.”

Mark Luttrell: 26%
George Flinn: 11%
Brian Kelsey: 9%
David Kustoff: 8%
Tom Leatherwood: 7%
Steve Basar: 1%
Undecided: 38%

The press release announcing these results said further:

“In addition to his ballot strength, Luttrell possesses the strongest image rating of all the potential Republican candidates. 43% of likely Republican primary voters view him favorably with only 5% viewing him unfavorably. This is by far the strongest image rating of the field by more than double his nearest competitor.
“Luttrell enjoys massive support in the Memphis media market where he receives 33% support. The Memphis media marketanchors the district, comprising more than 71% of Republican primary voters.

“’Mark Luttrell holds a strong advantage in the early stages of this race. In a winner take all primary, other candidates will have to spend significant sums just to match Luttrell’s current ballot position and favorability,’ said Titus Bond, Director of Remington Research Group. ‘Mark Luttrell is the heavy early favorite in this Republican primary.’”

Asked the obvious question about the poll — whether he or his campaign had commissioned it — Luttrell said no.

There was no explanation as to why several declared candidates from outside the Shelby County area were not included in the questionnaire.

[pdf-1]

[pdf-2]

Categories
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.

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Church Proposes New Jobs Program for Panhandlers

CREDIT: Vladislav Pavlovich | Dreamstime.com

What if, instead of giving panhandlers a dollar or some spare change, we gave them a day’s work? That’s what Calvary Episcopal Church is proposing with a new program aimed at getting panhandlers off the streets and into odd jobs picking up litter or clearing out weeds.

Earlier this week, Calvary hosted a summit for area homeless agencies, business leaders, and government officials in the hopes of gaining both financial support and a commitment from city and county leaders to partner with them on their Willing to Work Memphis program.

Willing to Work would be modeled after a successful program in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in which a volunteer drives a van around town picking up panhandlers and offering them temporary work provided by that city’s public works department. Those who participate make $9 an hour. Since Albuquerque’s program launched last September, 17 participants have transitioned into full-time jobs, and 11 people have been enrolled in mental health services.

Vladislav Pavlovich | Dreamstime.com

The Rev. Christopher Girata of Calvary Episcopal said a similar program could be launched in Memphis for $150,000, which he said would cover the cost of the van, gas, lunches, and storage for participants’ belongings (and even pets) while they work. Ideally, Memphis’ public works department would identify work sites, and payment for the day’s work would be donated by partnering agencies.

“No one agency or church needs to shoulder this burden alone. We can do it together,” Girata said.

He said some aspects of the program would require city or county oversight, such as how to handle background checks for the temporary workers and training for the van driver to be able to “roughly evaluate a person’s capacity for employment.” He recommended that drivers not Breathalyze potential workers but rather determine sobriety by monitoring a person’s behavior.

At the summit, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland and Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell both voiced support for the program. Strickland said he’d talk with the city’s public works department about the proposal. Luttrell said the county appropriates funds annually for blight remediation, and he thought those funds might be able to help support the program.

Kevin Kane, CEO of the Memphis Convention & Visitors Bureau, said his organization would offer some financial support as well.

“We have visitors who come here from all over the world, and they’re often alarmed by our aggressive panhandlers,” Kane said.

But Kane cautioned that some panhandlers around town are part of a network of people who aren’t actually homeless, and he advised that the program should include some way to screen out people who don’t actually need the services.

Girata told those at the summit that, when he first moved to Memphis, he was struck by all the “No Panhandling” posters in downtown windows.

“Rather than punitively saying ‘You can’t do that,’ why don’t we give them an option instead of panhandling?” Girata asked.

Calvary will host a follow-up meeting on Wednesday, February 24th at 4 p.m. for homelessness agencies, business groups, downtown stakeholders, and anyone who would like to help support the program.