Tag: Mark Luttrell

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Politics Politics Feature

Lee Harris Out, Steve Basar In?

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tennessee Senate Minority Leader Lee Harris (D-Memphis)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Politics Politics Feature

Capitol Serendipity

Between the time these words are written on Tuesday morning and the time they are read, Wednesday (when Flyer copies first hit the street) or thereafter, Memphis officials will have made their presence known in Washington.

This is true in both a literal and a figurative sense — literal, in that both Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell and Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland are sure to have seen by a national audience; figurative, in that, in the nation’s capitol, in the state capitol of Nashville, and (not least) back home, the sighting(s) will create a positive vibe for various public purposes of importance to Memphis and Shelby County.

As has been well publicized, Luttrell was expressly invited to sit in the box of First Lady Michelle Obama during the State of the Union address by President ObamaTuesday night.

Luttrell’s presence was accounted for in a White House statement regarding all of the First Lady’s boxmates: “The guests personify President Obama’s time in office and, most importantly, they represent who we are as Americans: inclusive and compassionate, innovative, and courageous.”
In particular, Luttrell apparently was included because of his work on criminal justice reform — the subject of an address the county mayor delivered to a White House conference last year and one which Obama is keen to address, in light of several volatile and sometimes fatal incidents nationwide that have scarred citizen relations with police and with the legal system at large.
Prior to his elections as Shelby County sheriff and county mayor, Luttrell’s background had been in penal administration.

After the Luttrell invitation was made public, 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen evidently thought the newly inaugurated Strickland should be in on the action as well, and invited the mayor to the State of the Union address as his guest.

Strickland should not necessarily expect to get as much air time as his county counterpart Luttrell, but that prospect should not be discounted, either. There probably has not been a single State of the Union telecast since Cohen was first elected to Congress in 2006 at which the irrepressible Memphis congressman has not figured prominently, both before and after the speech itself, in proximity to the President.

Assuming that congressional protocol allows Strickland, at least at some point, to join Cohen on the floor of the House of Representatives, where members of both congressional chambers convene to hear the address, the Memphis mayor is fairly sure to get his share of the limelight.

While in Washington, Strickland has also scheduled visits to the offices of Cohen and U.S. Representative Stephen Fincher (R-8th), as well as to those of Tennessee’s two Republican Senators, Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker.
Cohen’s invitation to Strickland, while a thoughtful gesture under the circumstances, also has obvious political ramifications for both men. It gives Strickland some useful exposure beyond his own bailiwick, and it provides Cohen with a practical opportunity to cement relations with the new mayor after an election in which the congressman publicly endorsed Strickland’s major opponent, then-incumbent Mayor A C Wharton.

Luttrell’s trip to Washington as the First Lady’s guest has already paid some specific dividends to him locally, earning the mayor both a respite from his ongoing power struggle with the Terry Roland-chaired Shelby County Commission and perhaps even a temporary truce.

Roland took to the well of the auditorium of the Vasco Smith County Administration Building at Monday’s regularly scheduled county commission meeting to read into the record a resolution of congratulations to the mayor from Commissioner Walter Bailey, adding some gracious words of tribute of his own and thereby making a point of associating himself with Luttrell’s enhanced persona and White House honor. 

It was one of the few moments of emotional unity in Shelby County government since sometime last year, when the commission, more or less as a whole, fell out with Luttrell over the administration’s fiscal accounting and what commissioners saw as an over-proprietary role vis-à-vis the commission. The resolution received unanimous approval.

The fact is, though, that Luttrell, who had left the county building to make his plane to Washington and could not respond directly to the commission’s resolution, is not out of the woods yet. Just before he received his invitation from the First Lady and the fact was publicized, the mayor had been involved in a developing imbroglio.

Roland and the chairman’s main commission ally, Heidi Shafer, had accused the administration of doctoring a commission resolution prepared by Roland and routing the doctored version to the state comptroller’s office in Nashville by way of embarrassing the chairman.

Roland’s resolution, clearly intended as a salvo in the running argument between an apparent commission majority and the mayor, sought to have the county’s fund surplus — the amount of which has been a matter of dispute between the commission and the mayor — routed from the administration’s financial office to the commission’s contingency fund.

Such a resolution, if passed, would not only put points on the board for the commission in its contest with the mayor, it would in theory give the commission an independent set of eyes in determining just exactly what the county’s surplus for 2014-2015 had been — whether $6 million, as the administration had first reported in advising the commission against a property tax decrease, or somewhere in the neighborhood of $21 million or even higher, as commissioners came to believe on the basis of late-breaking information.       

Before the resolution could be acted on by the full commission, however, a copy of it went to the comptroller’s office, and where there had been a blank for the amount of the imagined surplus intended for transfer, there was now entered an amount of $107,772,795.00 — which was the amount of the county’s entire fund balance!

As the comptroller’s office promptly notified all the local parties, such a transfer would be illegal and impossible, since it would deprive the county of its entire operating monies for any and all purposes. When that response went public, Roland cried foul, and he and Shafer suggested that nothing short of forgery could account for what he called a “blatantly altered” document.

A planned “discussion” of the matter was on the commission’s agenda for its committee sessions on Wednesday, but Roland said it was being withdrawn pending further “investigation” of the matter.
Asked for his response to the matter on Thursday, Luttrell recalled that, during a recent weekend budget summit between the administration and the commission, there had been a dispute over the issue of who should have supervision of the county’s surplus funds.

“That alarmed us,” said Luttrell. “And then when this draft resolution came down, we said, ‘Okay, we really need to get some clarity from the state comptroller’s office. Let’s just go to the comptroller, so we’ll know where we stand.’” That accounts for the dispatching of a copy of the resolution to Nashville.

A letter last week from Kim Hackney, deputy CAO, to Roland supplies further explanation of the incident from the administration’s point of view. The letter suggests that the alteration of the amount sought for transfer occurred inadvertently as copies of the resolution were passed back and forth between deputy County Attorney Marcy Ingram, commission administration assistant Quoran Folsom, and county financial officer Mike Swift.

The details, as set forth in the letter, seemed plausible enough as a defense of the altered number as an unfortunate accident, but even this de facto apology, forthrightly stated for the most part, contained a hint of reproach: “[W]e regret that our office and your office were not working directly with each other on this matter. Perhaps some confusion would have been eliminated.” 

For all the public kumbaya of this week, the power struggle seems likely to continue.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Altered Resolution an Accident, Says County Administration

More on the case of the Altered Resolution— famous or infamous now in the annals of county government.

Mayor Luttrell

In the previous episode, Shelby County Commission chairman Terry Roland and his Commission ally Heidi Shafer were suggesting that someone in the administration of Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell had changed numbers in a resolution prepared by Roland and sent the resolution, altered also in the text, to the state Comptroller’s office in Nashville.

Roland’s resolution, clearly intended as a salvo in the running power struggle between an apparent Commission majority and the Mayor, sought to have the county’s fund surplus — the amount of which has been a matter of dispute between the Commission and the Mayor — routed from the administration’s financial office to the Commission’s contingency fund.

Such a resolution, if passed, would not only put points on the board for the Commission in its contest with the Mayor, it would in theory give the Commission an independent set of eyes in determining just exactly what the county’s surplus for 2014-2015 had been — whether $6 million, as the Administration had first reported in advising the Commission against a property tax decrease, or somewhere in the neighborhood of $21 million or even higher as Commissioners came to believe on the basis of late-breaking information.

Before the resolution could be acted on by the full Commission, however, a copy of it went to the Comptroller’s office, and where there had been a blank for the amount of the imagined surplus intended for transfer, there was now entered an amount of $107,772,795.00 — which was the amount of the county’s entire fund balance!

As the Comptroller’s office promptly notified all the local parties, such a transfer would be illegal and impossible, since it would deprive the county of its entire operating monies for any and all purposes. When that response went public, Roland cried foul, and he and Shafer suggested that nothing short of forgery could account for what he called a “blatantly altered” document.

A planned “discussion” of the matter was on the Commission’s agenda for its committee sessions on Wednesday, but Roland said it was being withdrawn pending further “investigation” of the matter.
Asked for his response to the matter on Thursday, Mayor Luttrell recalled that, during a recent weekend budget summit between the administration and the Commission, there had been a dispute over the issue of who should have supervision of the county’s surplus funds.

“That alarmed us,” said Luttrell, “and then when this draft resolution came down, we said, “OK, we really need to get some clarity from the state comptroller’s office. Let’s just go to the comptroller, so we’ll know where we stand.” That accounts for the dispatching of a copy of the resolution to Nashville.

A letter this week from Kim Hackney, deputy CAO, to Roland supplies further explanation of the incident from the Administration’s point of view. The letter suggests that the alteration of the amount sought for transfer occurred inadvertently as copies of the resolution were passed back and forth between deputy County Attorney Marcy Ingram, Commission administration assistant Quoran Folsom, and County Financial Officer Mike Swift.

The letter, the link to which is below, should perhaps be allowed to speak for itself:

[pdf-1]

Or here is the letter, with exhibits, reproduced in sequential pages:

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Politics Politics Feature

Pending Matters in Shelby County

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Another Year, Another Myron Lowery Prayer Breakfast

CREDIT: JB

JB

Myron Lowery says goodbye to attendees at this year’s prayer breakfast, his 25th.

Although there were some early fits and starts, as is the case with most politicians, the political career of Myron Lowery began, more or less, in 1991 — the same year as the epochal election of Willie Herenton as Memphis’ first black elected mayor. And it would seem to have ended on Friday, January 1, 2016, when the Super District 8, Position 3 City Council seat Lowery decided not to pursue again in last year’s city election was filled with the swearing-in of Martavius Jones.

That’s 24 consecutive years, a considerable run and a record for an African-American official in Memphis, and if son Mickell Lowery had prevailed, as expected, in his election contest with underdog Jones, a former School Board member, the seat might have remained in the family for yet another generation.

The senior Lowery had to have had that prospect in mind a year ago, when in his 24th consecutive “Myron Lowery Prayer Breakfast,” he looked on as son Mickell moderated the festivities at the airport Holiday Inn in his stead. Lowery’s first prayer breakfast had been held on January 1, 1992, the day that both he and Herenton, the guest of honor at the breakfast, had been sworn in.

On that first occasion (held at The Peabody), as on the 24th, the breakfast — a fundraiser whose proceeds would be shared out with various deserving local causes as the event evolved — attracted an overflow crowd of politically influential guests. Except for a brief spell, a decade or so back, when Herenton began holding his own New Year’s prayer breakfast, more or less in competition, the Lowery breakfast always had the city’s mayor — first Herenton and then A C Wharton —on hand, along with most other local politicians of any consequence.

The breakfast became, as they say, a tradition, often a news-making one, depending on the candor and intensity of the speeches by political figures, which were interspersed with musical selections from local choirs and celebrated church singers and with, well, prayers.

It was a tradition that could have been expected to continue for a while except for that hitch in the outcome of the 2015 election. Not only was Mickell Lowery, the projected host of future breakfasts, upset in his Council race, but his father had rolled the dice and lost in his support of the reelection of then incumbent Mayor A C Wharton.

It wasn’t just that Councilman Lowery had backed the loser in the mayoral race. He had done so in the most conspicuous — and, to eventual mayoral winner Jim Strickland, most offensive — way possible. At last year’s breakfast, Lowery had asked Strickland, his longtime Council mate, to stand, and, after beginning with praise of Strickland, then not only proceeded to confer his public endorsement on Wharton (whom Lowery himself had opposed in the special election of 2009) but basically called out Strickland, at some length, for what Lowery deemed a premature challenge.

Rather than stand and continue to listen as Lowery went on with remarks that may not have been intended as patronizing but certainly sounded that way, Strickland walked out of the room.

He wasn’t there for Friday’s breakfast, although, in a preliminary mailing sent out to advertise this year’s prayer breakfast, Lowery had mentioned Strickland as one of the dignitaries invited to speak. Such speaking as Strickland had in mind to do was apparently reserved for the new mayor’s own inauguration address later that morning at the Cannon Center.

Strickland’s counterpart, Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell, was there Friday and spoke to a crowd that was still respectably sized, if obviously diminished from previous years. So was 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen, the featured speaker, who — as he usually does — provided a few verbal sparks.

Cohen’s most newsworthy statement may have been his blast at the Shelby County grand jury that recently failed to return an indictment in the shooting death, at the hands of a Memphis police officer, of a black youth, Darrius Stewart. After ter
JB

Rep. Cohen

ming the grand jury’s inaction “a mystery’ and wondering out loud why no indictment was returned, Cohen said, “Police need to think twice before taking lives” and dilated on a reform bill he is sponsoring which calls for federal funding to investigate such cases and for handling them in jurisdictions other than the one in which they occur.

The congressman used the formula “3 C’s” to describe leading items on his wish list for the new session. Spelling them out, they were: “commutations,” which he wants to see more of from the federal government, especially in relation to drug convictions; “cannabis,” an increase in the liberalization of marijuana laws; and “Cuba,” the further flowering of the relationship, recently opened up by President Obama, between the United States and the island nation to our south.

Much of Cohen’s speech was given over to the theme of greater bi-partisan collaboration in Congress. He stressed the need for “collegiality and respect for [one’s] colleagues” and said that he himself was “getting better all the time” with regard to both “tools and relationships.”

On the national scene, Democrat Cohen stopped just short of congratulating the Republicans for their choice of Paul Ryan as House Speaker. On the local scene, he thanked Mayor Luttrell for being a partner in government and, while anticipating a good relationship with Mayor Strickland, made a point of expressing his appreciation for former Mayor Wharton, another absentee on Friday.

Mickell Lowery had opened up things Friday with a suggestion that the annual prayer breakfast might be continued, though in a scaled-down form. His father, when it came time to make final remarks, made a tentative effort at calling the roll of elected officials who were present, only to let that effort tail off when he realized that most of the Shelby County Commissioners, the group he started with, had already left the scene.

As for the future of the prayer breakfast, former Councilman Lowery put the question to those audience members who remained. “Should it be continued?” he asked. Most of those remaining applauded, in degrees ranging from the polite and perfunctory to the enthusiastic.

Presumably, we’ll find out next year.

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Politics Politics Feature

2015: A Year of Change in Memphis Politics

Sitting uneasily at the same table for the annual Myron Lowery prayer breakfast on January 1, 2015 were future antagonists Mayor A C Wharton (left) and Jim Strickland (in center). At far right is Council candidate Mickell Lowery, who would be upset in a Council race by underdog Martavius Jones.

The year 2015 began with a bizarre New Year’s Day event in which Memphis City Councilman Jim Strickland was asked to stand up by a reigning figure in city politics, whereupon said official, council chairman Myron Lowery, basically called Strickland out for his presumption in considering a race against incumbent Mayor A C Wharton.

The year will end with the selfsame Strickland preparing to stand on a stage on New Year’s Day 2016 and take the oath as mayor, while both Wharton and Lowery exit city government, and Mickell Lowery, the latter’s son, wonders what went wrong with his own failed bid to succeed his father on the council.

On the national stage, similar head-scratching must be going on at the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport and in other establishmentarian councils where the old reliable form sheets seem to have gone suddenly and sadly out of date.

Everywhere, it would seem, the representatives and figureheads of things-as-usual are hearing variations on “You’re fired,” which is how it might be put by Donald Trump, the real estate billionaire and political eccentric whose out-of-nowhere surge to the top of the pack among Republican presidential contenders is one of the obvious indicators of the new mood.

One of the most trusted end-of-year polls of the GOP race had Trump at 42 percent and Jeb Bush at 3 percent. Less extremely, back in our own bailiwick, the formerly invincible Wharton, whose two earlier mayoral races netted him victory totals of 70 percent and 60 percent, finished his 2015 reelection effort with a woeful 22 percent of the vote, a full 20 points behind the victorious Strickland, in what was essentially a four-person race.

It takes no crystal ball or soothsaying skill to see that there was discontent against traditional management — again, what we call the establishment — in all the public places: locally, nationally, and even statewide. Governor Bill Haslam, a pleasant, well-intentioned man with a little sense and sensibility, was spurned by the leadership and rank-and-file of his own Republican Party in the General Assembly in Nashville. 

His prize proposal, a home-grown version of Medicaid (TennCare) expansion called Insure Tennessee, was just different enough from the semantically vulnerable Obamacare to pass muster with the state’s hospitals, medical professionals, and — according to polls — the Tennessee public at large. It was opposed by the GOP speakers of the two legislative chambers in both a special session in February and the regular session later on and kept thereby from ever getting a vote on the floor of either the House or the Senate.

As Haslam noted in a barnstorming expedition across the state later in the year, the state also had a serious need for upgrading of its roads, bridges, and infrastructure in general, but — once burned and twice shy from the rejection of Insure Tennessee — he dared not advocate a gasoline tax or any other specific plan to raise revenue for infrastructure purposes. He was reduced instead to voicing a hope at each of his stops that an aroused public itself would clamor for such remedies. No such luck.

Meanwhile, the once-dominant Democratic Party had become such a shell of its former self that it was powerless to suggest anything of its own legislatively or to oppose any initiative of the Republicans, who owned a super-majority — and a Tea Party-dominated one — in both houses.

What the Democrats could do, in Shelby County and statewide, was outfit themselves with new leaders. Mary Mancini, a veteran activist from Nashville, became the new state party chairman, while Randa Spears was elected in Memphis to head Shelby County Democratic Party and to impose overdue reform on what had been some serious mismanagement of the party’s finances.

The local Republican Party elected a female chair, too,  Mary Wagner, suggesting the existence of a trend and the possibility that, as confidence in the old order continued to erode, political folks were increasingly looking to the women in their ranks as a source of new leadership.

• City and county politics were crucially affected by budgetary matters during 2015. 

In the case of the city, austerity measures approved by both Mayor Wharton and a council majority — specifically pension reform and reduction of health benefits for city employees — would taint public confidence in city government and shape the resultant four-way mayoral race to the incumbent’s disadvantage.

Even such seeming talking points for the mayor as the new Electrolux and Mitsubishi plants failed to diminish local unemployment to the degree that had been expected.

Mayoral candidate Harold Collins was telling with his mockery of the $10-an-hour jobs for temps he said prevailed at both locations. Memphis Police Association president Mike Williams embodied resentment of lost benefits for first responders in his mayoral bid. 

And, most effectively, the aforementioned Strickland hammered away at a triad of issues — public safety, blight, and a need for more accountability on the part of public officials — that his polling suggested were winning themes among voters of all ethnicities and economic classes.

Some considered these mere housekeeping issues, but as poll-derived distillations of the Memphis electorate’s concerns about the here and now, they were evidently on point — enough so that Strickland, in many ways a generic white man, would eventually capture 25 percent of the city’s black vote, pulling his mathematical share against African-American candidates Wharton, Collins, and Williams.

On the council front, six new members were chosen in open races, and in each case it was the most business-friendly candidate who won. This was undeniably the case with candidates such as Philip Spinosa, a young FedEx executive who raised a prohibitive $200,000 in an at-large race, avoiding public forums with his five opponents or much public contact of any kind except for a forest of yard signs bearing his name along the major traffic arteries of central and East Memphis.

Another financially well-endowed council newcomer, Worth Morgan, advertised himself similarly, but was willing to confront the rest of his field — and in the runoff a well-regarded Republican activist — in open debate, where he held his own.

Along with Strickland’s nonstop emphasis on public safety, there was an abundance of pro-police rhetoric among the winners of city races. The question — one that achieved the level of irony — was how all this public empathy, short of restoring lost benefits, could arrest the ongoing fallout from the ranks. Some 200 to 300 cops had already responded to benefit cuts by going elsewhere.

The general sense of rebellion that, in one way or another, seemed to characterize the political scene in 2015 may have found its fullest fruition in Shelby County government, where, after enacting various expected rituals of partisan rivalry amongst themselves, the county comissioners began to mount a coordinated campaign as a body against the administration of county Mayor Mark Luttrell. This development was a direct outgrowth of the budget season, during which commissioners on both sides of the party line convinced themselves that they were being spoon-fed half-truths about money available for public purposes and at year’s end were attempting to assert their own authority as superceding that of the mayor.

As with so much else on the political landscape in 2015, the accustomed way was under challenge. The new year of 2016 will presumably have to come up with some answers.

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Politics Politics Feature

Shelby County Commission Broadens Reach

Where’s Zoey? Can’t say where Waldo is, but that’s Zoey Goss sitting up there (briefly) in place of County Commissioner Heidi Shafer, who with other commissioners voted Monday to contribute $8,000 to a summer camp for Zoey and other children suffering from muscular dystrophy.

The Shelby County Commission, as currently constituted, is turning into a juggernaut of sorts. Chairman Terry Roland of Millington and Commissioner Heidi Shafer of East Memphis are but two of the determined commission members who have kept in working order a bipartisan majority that is perceptibly and consistently expanding its influence and authority vis-à-vis other power blocs.

For months now, the commission has been challenging the prerogatives of County Mayor Mark Luttrell‘s administration and asserting its own. “We are the people,” is a frequent boast by Roland, who attributes to Luttrell and others holding executive positions not much more than a responsibility to carry out commission policy dictates.

In defense of that position, he and Shafer, along with former Commissioner Julian Bolton, the independent counsel they are attempting to hire, cite various portions of the County Charter, laying special stress on its apparent conferring on the elected commission, “all lawful authority to adopt ordinances and resolutions governing the operation of government or regulating the conduct and affairs of the residents of the county.”

As for Luttrell, Shafer defined his role this way in a recent Viewpoint article for the Flyer: “The mayor is charged with seeing that all resolutions and ordinances of the board of county commissioners are faithfully executed. He or she is to present the consolidated county budget to the commission, which has full rights to modify or amend. The mayor is also compelled to ‘take such other executive and administrative actions as are required by this charter or may be prescribed by the board of county commissioners.'”

The administration has not yet loosed its own heavy artillery, fighting things out so far on the single issue of whether the commission has the right to an independent counsel — something that neither Luttrell nor his appointed county attorney, Ross Dyer, have been willing to concede. Both claim that only the elected chief executive, Luttrell, has contractual authority under the terms of the charter and that the county attorney and all of the office’s assisting personnel are contracted employees.

In the face of advice from Dyer that Bolton’s appointment would be illegal except as a possible adjunct to Dyer’s own staff and under his supervision, the commission voted late last month to hire the former commissioner. Mayor Luttrell subsequently vetoed the appointment, and the commission, in a special called meeting last week, found nine votes to override the veto — one more than the two-thirds majority required for an override.

Inasmuch as Luttrell has indicated he will refuse to sign a contract of employment for Bolton, the matter lies in limbo, awaiting either a legal determination, perhaps in Chancery Court, or some solution based on a compromise reached between the commission and the administration. A possible basis for the latter is the situation on the other side of Mid-America Plaza in City Hall.

There, Allan Wade has served since the 1990s as the Memphis City Council’s attorney, functioning both as a counterweight to the city attorney and an alternative source of legal opinion during public meetings from the desk he occupies on the floor adjacent to the council. Wade’s office is often cited by members of the county commission as a precedent for the one they intend to create. Interestingly, though, and this is where the prospect of a compromise on the county side begins to gleam, a striking analysis has been offered by Jimmie Covington, a longtime former journalist whose knowledge of city/county affairs was voluminous enough that the public officials he reported on frequently sought his opinion on matters under contention.

In another recent op-ed for the Flyer, Covington advanced the idea that there is no actual legal basis per se for Wade’s position of city council attorney — merely an ad hoc gentlemen’s agreement between the principals of city government that has spanned almost a quarter century. A solution of that sort on the county side is not impossible; Roland has hinted privately that it, or something like it, could be the carrot in a scenario whereby the stick might be a commission challenge to Dyer’s tenure as county attorney.

(“No comment” has been Dyer’s consistent response to all direct queries about the current imbroglio — which should not be taken to mean that he and Luttrell are not incubating an in-depth strategy of their own.)

So far the bipartisan majority for the commission’s power move has held — though there are clear indications that some commission members are not at home with the idea of prolonged conflict with the administration. David Reaves, who represents Bartlett, has been a dissenter on several recent votes regarding the attorney matter, though he was on the same page as fellow Republicans Roland and Shafer regarding some of the early challenges, which revolved around differences of opinion between the administration and the commission regarding the amount and disposition of a fiscal surplus.

Bipartisan coalitions are potentially unstable by their nature. The current one is Republican-led, from a base that has included five of the commission’s elected Republicans, plus Democrats Justin Ford and Eddie Jones, whose allegiance is provisional and dependent more on personal accommodations than on ideological grounds.

Largely as a result of internal machinations that denied him the chairmanship, the other elected Republican, Steve Basar, has been in de facto alliance with the commission’s Democrats on several specifically partisan matters, though his was a crucial swing vote for last week’s veto override.

From the standpoint of maintaining a bipartisan coalition versus Luttrell, the status of designated commission counsel Bolton as an African-American Democrat has been a crucial binder (though it is also the source of some of the misgivings harbored by Reaves and potentially other Republicans). In a commission meeting two weeks ago, Shafer bruited about the names of others who had been considered for commission attorney, including former GOP commissioners Charles Perkins and Buck Wellford, both of whom, she said, had declined the opportunity.

She also had mentioned in passing former Democratic Commissioner Steve Mulroy, who said this week that Shafer had contacted him as a reserve possibility if the current involvement with Bolton came unglued. (Mulroy said he had recommended instead that the commission consider an African American without any particular political bias.)

Meanwhile, even as there is a temporary lull in the matter of a commission attorney, the ad hoc commission coalition has opened up a new front with a different adversary — the Economic Development Growth Engine (EDGE) board.

• EDGE, the quasi-independent city/county agency charged with overseeing industrial recruitment and development, has often been the subject of public criticism for its decisions on payment-in-lieu-of-taxes (PILOT) arrangements with businesses. It has come in for criticism on the commission for that and for the fact that the representatives on the EDGE board of the commission and the city council are ex-officio non-voting members only.

Another bone of contention is an assumption that EDGE officials are on the cusp of completing a merger with the local Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA). Commissioner Basar introduced a resolution on Monday requiring EDGE to get the approval of both the commission and the city council before proceeding with a merger.

Perhaps because of its sponsorship (Basar is still persona non grata with the dominant coalition), the commission approved instead a motion to send the matter back to committee, as well as a resolution from Shafer requesting that no action be taken by EDGE and CRA until the full commission can formally review the matter at its December 7th meeting. Added Roland, ominously: “I am giving a firm warning to EDGE that if they try to sign a memorandum of understanding or go around us in any way possible, there will be a resolution from us rescinding EDGE.”

Yet a third commission foil, the Shelby County Schools board got off the hook Monday when, after serious criticism from members regarding SCS officials’ inability to be specific in their reasons for requesting commission approval of reshuffling some $10 million in previously allocated funds, the approval was granted, but with warnings from Shafer, among others, that the commission would require more details and more advance knowledge before approving any future such requests.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Commission Reschedules Independent-Attorney Showdown for Wednesday

CREDIT: JB

JB

The contending parties at a recent weekend retreat: L to r: County CAO Harvey Kennedy; Mayor Mark Luttrell; Commission Chairman Terry Roland; and Commissioner Heidi Shafer

All systems are still go on Wednesday for the showdown between a rebellious Shelby County Commission and the administration of Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell over the issue of an independent counsel to serve the Commission only.

Resolution of the matter was to have occurred at a special Commission meeting called for last Thursday by Commission chair Terry Roland, but Commissioner Willie Brooks had duties rolling out a new pay station for FedEx on Thursday and had to be excused — thereby taking his vote out of the occasion and making for a more marginal circumstance.

At Brooks’ request, his colleagues agreed on an alternate formula whereby action on the independent-counsel matter could be accomplished on this Wednesday’s committee day in the County Building. As Commissioner Heidi Shafer, one of the leaders of the independent-counsel action said, the Commission plans to adjourn its committee work midway of the session and would go downstairs to the Commission auditorium to hold a special meeting of the full Commission on all the matters pertaining to the counsel controversy.

“Then back up to finish committees,” Shafer explained, in imagining a finish for Wednesday that would be bound to feel anti-climactic.

The counsel controversy had been germinating for some time but achieved full bloom during the Commission’s budget season in the spring when the Commission bi-partisan majority developed suspicions that Luttrell and his CAO, Harvey Kennedy, had been disingenuous in handling a pending fiscal surplus, low-balling an estimate of it in the amount of $6 million rather than what later investigation revealed to be perhaps as much as $21 million and working to frustrate any effort by the Commission to carve a one-cent sales tax decrease out of the surplus.

The Commission’s desire for an independent counsel of its own to help it evaluate fiscal realities of this kind and other policy matters became an immediate goal — not merely as an end in itself but as a first step in underscoring the commissioners’ feeling that they, and not the executive branch, are the supreme ruling entity in Shelby County government.

On behalf of the Administration, County Attorney Ross Dyer issued a ruling, based on his reading of the county charter, refuting the viability of a permanent independent attorney for the Commission, suggesting only that the Commission, with his concurrence, could employ “special” attorneys for specific and limited ad hoc purposes.

Julian Bolton, a lawyer and former Commissioner, had been named by the Commission to serve as its attorney, but Dyer has indicated he would refuse to sign the necessary contact to legitimatize Bolton’s position, and Luttrell subsequently issued a veto to the resolution that is subject to override by simple majority vote of the Commission.

Voting that override is one likely action for Wednesday, and Roland has suggested that the Commission, as a bargaining tool, might also exercise an option to dispossess Dyer, an appointee of Mayor Luttrell who, like all such mayoral appointees, is subject to Commission approval. The Commission could theoretically reverse its prior approval of Dyer’s hiring with a simple vote of reconsideration.

Roland and Shafer had previously released a lengthy opinion by Bolton, acting as an ad hoc attorney, in favor of their hiring an independent commission attorney.

They have subsequently released additional supporting legal opinions from three former members of the Shelby County Charter Commission. Below are excerpts from these opinions:

George F. Higgs
former member, Shelby County Charter Commission:
…The legislative body is not limited, except by budgetary limitations, and it was the intention of the Charter Commission that traditional separation of powers doctrines be observed. Independent and separate legal counsel is necessary to ensure that the executive and legislative branches exercise independence and separation from one another, thus creating a balance of power. Therefore, in my opinion, the proposed resolution is appropriate….

Dr. Coby V. Smith
former Shelby County Charter Commission member
…The language was intended to allow the Shelby County Commission the freedom to solicit, select, and retain any talent or resources within their budgetary limits that they felt was essential to performing their legislative duties. This language specifically identified special (legal) counsel because of its importance and because of discussions regarding the various conflicts that occur between the Shelby County commission and the executive branch of Shelby County government…..
I have reviewed the proposed resolution, and have no hesitancy in recognizing that it is consistent with what the charter commission envisioned the Shelby County Commission should be empowered to do….

Herman Morris Jr.
former chairman of the Shelby County Home Rule Charter Commission
…The intention and plain meaning of the language, in my opinion, is to allow the Shelby County Commission to employ special legal counsel to assist it, in carrying out its legislative functions. The wording of the section is broad and does not limit the power of the legislative branch, in any respect, except in the event of budgetary constraints…..

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Politics Politics Feature

Showdowns in Shelby County

CREDIT: JB

JB

Council runoff candidates at Hooks forum were (l to r) Jamita Swearengen (District 4); Worth Morgan and Dan Springer (District 5); and Anthony Anderson and Berlin Boyd (District 7)

As early voting ends this Friday and the final runoff election date of November 19th, next Thursday, beckons, most attention has been focused on two of the five district city council runoffs: District 5 (Midtown, East Memphis) between newcomer Worth Morgan and youthful activist Dan Springer, and the District 7 race (North Memphis, Frayser) between interim incumbent Berlin Boyd and challenger Anthony Anderson.

District 5 lies astride the Poplar corridor power nexus and is also the bailiwick of current Councilman and Mayor-elect Jim Strickland. Both Morgan and Springer are Republicans, though Springer, who has worked for both Senator Bob Corker and County Mayor Mark Luttrell, won the formal endorsement of the Shelby County Republican Party during the regular election process, in which seven candidates overall vied for the seat.

Morgan, who led by far in fund-raising, with receipts of more than $200,000 to Springer’s $60,000 or so, had the support of the city’s business elite. Now, both he and Springer have solicited support from the camps of losing candidates. 

A meet-and-greet for Morgan last week hosted by fifth-place finisher Charles “Chooch” Pickard, drew a diverse group including avowed Democrats, African Americans, and members of the city’s gay community. Springer, for his part, has actively pitched across party lines as well and has won the formal support of Democrat Mary Wilder, among others. 

Overall, Springer leads in formal endorsements of various kinds. Morgan finished ahead on October 8th, however, with 32 percent of the vote to Springer’s 23 percent.

At a forum last week at the Hooks Central Library for candidates in Districts 4, 5, and 7, Morgan and Springer differed only moderately on issues, though Morgan, who has seemed more at ease in debate formats, gave answers that were both more glib and more expansive. He spoke of having transcended several difficult illnesses as evidence of his resolve, while Springer emphasized his experience.

At the same forum, Boyd, too, stressed his existing connections and boasted of having brought $3.6 million into District 7. Anderson, a clergyman who is the entrepreneur behind the Memphis Business Academy charter-school network, countered with a figure of $8 million allegedly invested in MBA and with references to his numerous community involvements.

Both advocated revenue solutions involving assessments of nonresidents who work in Memphis, in the form of sticker fees (Boyd) or payroll taxes (Anderson). Both approaches would seem to require approval by the Tennessee General Assembly. The two differed most obviously on crime, which Boyd saw as a looming danger and Anderson saw as having diminished.

In the regular general election, Boyd had 26 percent of the total vote, and Anderson had 24 percent.

(Go to Politics Beat Blog at memphisflyer.com for more on these races and the three other Council runoffs: Frank Colvett Jr. vs. Rachel Knox in District 3; Patrice Robinson vs. Keith Williams in District 3; and Jamita Swearengen vs. Doris DeBerry-Bradshaw in District 4.)

The power struggle between the Shelby County Commission and the administration of county Mayor Mark Luttrell moved toward another showdown on Monday with the mayor’s veto of a recent commission resolution appointing former Commissioner Julian Bolton as its independent counsel.

Commission chair Terry Roland‘s public response was in a memo to his fellow commissioners, in which he wrote that he had in mind to call a special commission meeting for Thursday. “We must act as a body to protect our legislative duty to the people of Shelby County, Tennessee,” the memo concluded.

Roland had previously indicated privately that County Attorney Ross Dyer, who has resisted the independent-counsel idea on grounds that the County Charter does not allow it, might be confronted with a choice between altering his view and facing a possible ouster move from the commission. That could come with a vote to reconsider his hiring.

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Politics Politics Feature

The Battle Over Julian Bolton

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Julian Bolton, the former Shelby County commissioner who was appointed two weeks ago by commission chairman Terry Roland as a “special purposes” lawyer to look into the legality of his (Bolton’s) being hired by the commission as its permanent independent counsel, responded to Roland on Monday with a lengthy series of citations from the County Charter. All seemingly attested that he could indeed be hired, a prior finding by County Attorney Ross Dyer to the contrary notwithstanding.

The commission promptly voted 8-5 on Monday in favor of a resolution from chairman Roland to carry out the hiring.

Jackson Baker

Chairman Roland and County Attorney Ross Dyer seemed focused on another matter here, but they were much on each other’s mind on Monday.

Dyer chose not to comment on the new development, other than to reaffirm his contention of two weeks ago that any permanent attorney hired by the commission would have to be a member of his (Dyer’s) staff, paid by him, and managed by him. And, since Dyer determined that he and the commission chair would have to agree on a candidate, the county attorney in effect had claimed veto power over any such appointment.

All that had seemingly scotched a resolution offered at the time by Roland to hire Bolton — as a decisive first move in a commission effort to assert its authority at the expense of County Mayor Mark Luttrell, who, a clear majority of commissioners believed, had over the months been ritually usurping prerogatives that either did not exist or that were more properly those of the commission to administer — both in determining policy generally and in fiscal administration, specifically.

Back in the 1990s, the Memphis City Council had engaged Allan Wade as its own independent attorney to sift evidence, make arguments, and determine policy in contradistinction to the city attorney and the office of the mayor. Wade was the model for the position the commission intended to create.

For weeks the commission had been battling Luttrell, and Dyer, both of whom had maintained the County Charter permitted only one county legal office under the direct administration of the mayor serving as legal advisor to all aspects of county government, including the affairs of the commission itself.

Two weeks ago, at the time of the first abortive resolution to hire Bolton as an independent lawyer, Dyer had, as indicated above, rejected that idea, but to mollify Roland et al., had suggested that, for specific, limited purposes, the commission could, as it had during moments of the city school-merger controversy of 2010-13, and, as it had during wrangling at Chancery Court over the various ways of reapportioning itself, hire an attorney for special, limited, non-recurring purposes.

“Fine,” announced Roland, who withdrew his original resolution and hired Bolton on the spot for the “single purpose” of countering Dyer’s case against the county commission’s hiring Bolton as a permanent and full-time independent counsel.

From that point, the Luttrell administration and the commission went on to hold what had been a preordained “budget summit” last Friday at St. Columbia Episcopal Conference & Retreat Center in Bartlett. The purpose was to reach a meeting of the minds on some of the issues dividing administration from commission and, if possible, to get on the same page regarding matters at large.

With Luttrell and Roland sitting side by side as co-chairs for the event, with principals from throughout county government sharing breakfast and lunch at the casual affair, and with a polite discussion of subjects ranging from revenue sources to the respective roles of the commission and the mayor in the budget process to the problem of OPEBs [Other Postemployment Benefits] to educational spending to recondite aspects of the county wheel tax and county infrastructure, all gathered did seem to achieve some sense of accord.

Interestingly, one idea that became something of a hit at the conference apparently derived from research by Bolton, who determined that in virtually every corner of Shelby County there were unused county-owned enclaves that could serve as office space for the county commissioner whose district happened to coincide with the available space.

One commissioner, Mark Billingsley, who represents Germantown, professed himself happy with the prospect.

So lingering was the mood of concord and free sharing of information on Friday, so warm and comfortable the sense of common purpose, that developments on the following Monday came as the proverbial cold shower.

By Monday morning, ad hoc attorney Bolton had made his report to chairman Roland, who distributed copies to the full commission.

Bolton’s report, based on his reading of the County Charter, said, in great and specific legal detail, that “the legislative power of the county is vested in the Board of County Commissioners of Shelby County [and] includes all lawful authority to adopt ordinances and resolutions governing the operation of government or regulating the conduct and affairs of the residents of Shelby County.”

From that broad first declaration, Bolton, citing codes and sections from the charter, went on to state that “the charter clearly subordinates the position of the chief executive officer, i.e., county mayor,” whose role is “to see that all resolutions and ordinances of the board of county commissioners and all laws of the state subject to enforcement by them or by the officers who are subject under this charter, to their direction and supervision are faithfully executed.”

Bolton’s memo went on and on in this vein, but its bottom line contention is that the commission, not the mayor, is the county’s chief governing authority. On the matter of the county attorney’s authority claimed by Dyer, Bolton writes, “The rules of statutory construction do not allow the subordinate office of the County Attorney, although chief counsel for the commission, to impair, frustrate, nor defeat the object of a statute, ordinance, or resolution by interpreting that ‘chief counsel’ means ‘sole counsel,’ absent specific statutory, or charter authority.”

All of this readily convinced Roland to add the new appointment resolution making Bolton a de facto independent attorney for the county commission. The actual vote on his resolution Monday was 8-4, in favor, with Democrat Van Turner demurring and four Republican commissioners — David Reaves, Billingsley, Steve Basar, and George Chism voting no.

Various reasons were adduced for the lack of solidarity with the commission — the fact that Dyer had reportedly interrupted their attempted executive session on the matter Monday morning, declaring it illegal, or allegations that interested Republicans from outside the commission had intervened with individual commissioners against the appointment of a Democrat, Bolton, as the commission’s attorney, rather than a Republican.

The 8-5 vote, underwritten by all Democrats save for Turner and by Republicans Roland and Heidi Shafer (whose argument for enhanced commission authority is this week’s Viewpoint, p. 15), holds for a document that contains a space for Mayor Luttrell to sign.

The county charter would allow the resolution of Bolton’s appointment to become official without the mayor’s signature or, should Luttrell choose to veto it, by a simple majority override on the part of the commission.

The remaining obstacle to the installation of Bolton as an independent attorney representing the county commission is contained in one of the resolution’s enabling clauses: “Be it further resolved that the Shelby County Attorney is directed to prepare a contract under the supervision of the chairman, or his designee, for execution by the parties in accordance with Section 3.03 (A) (D) of the Shelby County Charter.”

County Attorney Dyer has made it clear to his confidants that he has no intention of preparing such a contract, technically forestalling the effect of the document and likely throwing the whole matter into the jurisdiction of Chancery Court for final judgment.