Tag: Mark Norris

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Woke: Was the Protest on the Bridge a Sign of Real Change to Come?

CREDIT: Brandon Dill

Stay Woke.

You may have seen the T-shirt. You may have read the phrase on social media. Those two simple words, a play on “stay awake,” have become a rallying cry for the reawakening civil rights movement that’s swept the country again since the deaths last week of two more African-American men at the hands of law-enforcement officers and the subsequent attack that killed five Dallas police officers.

Memphis got its wake-up call last Sunday night. It began with a small protest at the National Civil Rights Museum, then transitioned into a larger crowd that had gathered in the plaza area in front of FedExForum. Organized via social media by local minister DeVante Hill, the group was joined by members of Black Lives Matter and other groups and individuals, including a few tourists and Beale Street patrons who got caught up in the spirit of things.

The rally evolved into a protest march, and eventually more than 1,000 people headed north through downtown Memphis toward the Hernando de Soto Bridge, where the group managed to block all traffic in both directions on Interstate 40 for several hours.

It was a situation that could have gone wrong in a number of ways, but it didn’t, instead ending peacefully five hours later, with no arrests made and little or no property damage reported.

Interim Police Director Mike Rallings had a possible career-altering night. Early on, he took off his protective vest and engaged with the crowd and speakers repeatedly, assuring them that he understood their frustration and that he — and the city — were open to starting a dialogue toward effecting change. MPD officers were the model of restraint and patience, and peace was maintained despite several potentially tense moments during the five-hour episode.

The question now becomes: Will the protest result in any real change? Or was it just a matter of the city and police artfully allowing people to let off steam before returning to business as usual. Will Memphis “stay woke”?

Monday morning, Mayor Jim Strickland and Rallings held a press conference to assure Memphians that change would happen, or at least that communication would happen, beginning with a meeting Monday at Greater Imani Church between the mayor, the police director, ministers, and members of Black Lives Matter. 

When asked about whether there would be more tangible steps, Rallings said, “I’m here to hear the community, and then we’ll lay out the next, tangible steps.” Strickland said the meeting at Greater Imani would be one of many meetings to come with members of the community.

That first meeting turned out to be combative and chaotic, with some audience members demanding that Strickland hire Rallings as permanent police director immediately. Strickland declined to do so, saying he would allow the hiring process to play out as planned. Another community meeting was planned for July 21st.

Flyer writers reached out to city and county officials, movement leaders, protestors, and others to gauge their reactions to the events of recent days, and where they might lead. Their responses follow.

Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland: “Memphis set an example for the world — of who we are and how we stand at times like these.”

Strickland said he didn’t walk onto the Hernando de Soto Bridge Sunday, because Memphis Police Department (MPD) interim director Michael Rallings had asked him to stay away. Instead, he gathered his senior leadership team at Memphis City Hall and stayed in “constant communication” with MPD and other emergency management agencies.

“To those who protested last night — we hear you,” Strickland said during a news conference Monday, “and we want to continue to hear you.” He said he’d initiated a set of public meetings around Memphis to hear from the community, and he praised Memphis Police Department interim director Michael Rallings, noting, “I hope people see why I asked him to apply for the job.” 

Brandon Dill

Michael Rallings with crowd

Memphis Police Department interim director Michael Rallings: “We have seen enough death; I’m sick of death,” Rallings said. “I don’t care where you’re from. I don’t care if you’re black or white, if you’re a Vice Lord, or a Crip, or a Gangster Disciple. We just have to bring about a change in this city. That’s what I’ve said from day one.

“Everybody has a place in and a part to play in this struggle, and it is indeed a struggle.” On Monday, Rallings called for 30 days of “no killing” in Memphis. 

Rallings described the protest as “probably the most tense situation of my 26 years in law enforcement” and that keeping the protest peaceful and ensuring the protestors’ safety was like “juggling 500 hand grenades.”

“I don’t think God put me in that situation for this to end in violence. So, I invited those young people and said, ‘let’s have a forum, let’s lay out a plan’. We can all talk about each other and yell at each other. We can ball our fist and threaten to do bodily harm. We all know how to do that. We all learn how to do that as a child, as a baby. But I’m not a baby. I’m not going to throw a temper tantrum. I’m going to try to speak peace and calm to the city and to the situation.” 

Shelby County Commission chairman Terry Roland: “I was glad to see that things ended peacefully, and I’m proud we didn’t have any violence. That’s a testament to our community. I have to hand it to our local black leaders, Pastor Norman, the police chief, and others. They did a lot to keep things from getting out of hand.

“I can understand the frustration of the marchers. Something that bothers me, though, is that a lot of those people weren’t even from Memphis. That, and they shouldn’t have blocked the roads, especially a federal highway.

“I think we just need to take a step back, take a breath. We need to quit elaborating on our differences and emphasize our similarities, show each other how much we mean to each other.”

Ninth District Congressman Steve Cohen: “Director Rallings was the star of the evening, the way he handled things. He showed a sure hand and understanding, as did many of the demonstrators. One of them, who was arm-in-arm with the director, was DeVante Hill, an intern in my office this summer. I was proud of him. The police have to use perseverance and restraint, and they did that quite well last night. We avoided injuries or other difficulties, and it ended peacefully.  

“I’ve been calling for reforms and action on the justice front for decades. We need to look seriously at reviewing policies and priorities relating to arrests and incarceration, the rate of which has been disproportionate for African Americans and negative in its impact on their community. There’s a real need to move actively toward more community policing.”

Brandon Dill

Shira Torrech, 19, protestor: “I found out about the protest on Facebook. I decided to go because I’m passionate about unity between all humans. When I got there, I saw hundreds of people gathering together — whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians. I started choking up and had to wipe away a few tears. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I was in front of the police officers on I-40 the entire night. I got the chance to speak to the people of Memphis and even the police officers of Memphis. People were singing and crying together, and chanting as one. The protest was simply to allow our voices to be heard.

“The media is saying that people were acting like hoodlums because they were standing on an 18-wheeler, but in fact those people got permission to climb on top because the driver was in support of the protest. No one got hurt. No fights. We let some cars get by because of emergencies. It was the most peaceful protest.” 

Shelby County Commissioner and longtime civil rights activist Walter Bailey: “I commend those participants who were committed and sensitive to the issue of overbearing acts by police throughout the country. I was ecstatic to see that kind of commitment from this younger generation, showing their discontent with prevailing conditions.

“As a lawyer,  I’ve handled a number of shootings and other misconduct problems, but that march was more than just about the mishandling of black suspects by police officers. At its core, it was about the social fabric of racism and the frustration and discontent of those who want to struggle and see social change.  

“One important matter is black-on-black crime. We have one of the highest homicide rates in the coutry. Concern about that is widespread, almost ubiquitous among blacks. I hope this demonstration will help start an effort by community leaders — business, corporate, religious, and governmental — to pay attention and to move forward and embrace all those various concerns. The first act, it seems to me, would be to put some sort of commission in place.” 

Michael Pope, chairman of the Shelby County Democratic Party: “I’m just glad it turned out peacefully. Their point was well taken. It was good that Director Rallings made such a point of acknowledging their grievances.

We need to seize the moment, engage in this process by giving these young African Americans, Latinos, and others some input. They need to become active at election time. That would be a logical continuation of what they set in motion last night. If they want change, they need to be part of the voting process.”

Brandon Dill

Executive Director of the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center Bradley Watkins: “The question not being asked: Why are we so accustomed to a punitive, force-driven law enforcement that Director Rallings’ actions took us so off guard? What happened [Sunday] night should be the norm, but it took us all by surprise. And it happened without the benefit of coordination between law enforcement and protesters. It happened without highly trained professional organizers.

“In Memphis, we kind of have a backwards mentality towards civil disobedience and nonviolent direct action, in spite of our history. We think peaceful protest can never be confrontational and to be peaceful there can never be disruption. The same people who go to the civil rights museum and praise Dr. King want to chastise these young people for doing exactly the types of things he would have done.

“These people came out [Sunday] because of the economy, because of jobs, because of public transit, and housing. They’re not being listened to. Their grievances aren’t being addressed. And so many things could be enacted right now with the stroke of a pen. We could initiate racial and cultural sensitivity training for officers. The Steven Askew case could be reopened. There are a number of transparency issues, and I’m just barely scratching the surface.

“When people doubt the tactics of nonviolent direct action, remember these protesters got a meeting with the mayor and the police director. Whatever positive thing comes forward, it’s because of their disruption. I am cautiously optimistic.”

Executive Director of Just City, Josh Spickler: “This isn’t a conversation that just started. It’s a conversation that has finally gotten attention. I’m very excited about police director Rallings’ actions. I think video of him stepping out in front of those officers with their batons and shields should be shown to all the new cadets at the police training academy. Because that’s exactly what it takes. If everyone policed the way he did last night, we wouldn’t need more officers — which Mayor Strickland is still calling for.

“His response was proportional. His response was based on relationships that he made very quickly. He de-escalated based on human contact and human connection. We should be very proud, as the mayor said. But we have to translate that kind of discretion into how we handle driving offenses, which largely criminalize poverty. And into how we manage minor drug offenses, which disproportionately criminalize African Americans.

“[The police could] say to the state of Tennessee, ‘We’re not going to be the frontline in your department of safety’s war on poor people. We’re not going to do it, because our courts are overrun, because we’re suspending way too many licenses, and people have to get around. You need to come up with a new system that can self-fund. Don’t count on us to write tickets.’ Dialogue is good, but it’s time to act. These folks are right. They are excluded from the economy. They are treated differently in the criminal justice system.”

State Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris: “I’m up here in Lexington, Kentucky, at the annual meeting of the Southern Leadership Conference. A lot of the people I’m here with, legislators from 15 Southern states, have first-hand knowedge of Memphis, and we all saw the Black Lives Matter protest on television together and on Facebook, as well. I think everybody paid attention to it. There were people here from Louisiana and Texas, which were trouble spots just last week. I might have gotten a better perspective here that I would have at home.

“My basic perspective is one of pride in how the situation was handled and at least temporarily resolved. There are many steps to be taken, though, a lot of work to be done. I serve on the Crime Commission with both mayors and others, Director Rallings, Sheriff Oldham, and others, and I have been talking a lot with [Pastor] Keith Norman about how to do things differently. Keith and I raised the subject at a recent meeting of Crime Commission. We need to shift our focus from crunching numbers to the issue of what must be done for the community, in the way of showing sensitivity.”

Marti Tippens Murphy, executive director of Facing History and Ourselves: “I was heartened by what looked to be a peaceful protest and an opening for a conversation and dialogue with civic leaders and the police director. I think that is part of what Facing History has had the ability to do, to convene people in the community who may be coming at things from very different points of view and providing common ground for solving problems.

“It seems like there is a real groundswell building. My hope is that if it is a watershed moment, we have the leadership in place to be able to move from awareness to conversations to action — to really think about what it means to create a more just and inclusive community.”

Brandon Dill

Angie Ash, coordinating committee member for Black Lives Matter: “It was amazing to have that turnout from the city [Sunday]. I’ve never seen this city so unified or a turnout like that. We support any organization protesting under the banner of Black Lives Matter or any work moving us toward black liberation. Getting the attention of city officials was a success, but it doesn’t end there.

“I wasn’t able to make it to Monday night’s meeting, but I heard things got heated and the mayor wasn’t speaking to anyone directly. So there’s still a lot of work to do, and we won’t stop protesting and holding them accountable. Inter-community violence could be solved if people had their basic needs met.”

Reporting by Bianca Phillips, Chris Davis, Toby Sells, Joshua Cannon, and Jackson Baker.

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Politics Politics Feature

Break in the Weather

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

UPDATE: De-annexation Bill Killed for Session

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

NASHVILLE — In a surprise action, the state Senate’s State and Local Committee has voted 5-3-1 (with chairman Ken Yager voting aye) to approve a motion by Senator Bill Ketron (R-Murfreesboro) sending the controversial de-annexation bill (HB 779/SB 749) to summer study.



Voting in the minority on the motion were the bill’s Senate sponsor, Bo Watson (R-Hixson) and Senator Mark Green (R-Clarksville), a key co-sponsor. It was Green’s absence on Tuesday that had postponed a vote until Wednesday’s reconvening of the committee.



The action means that all possible action on the bill is over with until, at earliest, the legislative session that begins in January 2017.



“We really had no idea this was going to happen. But it was the best possible result, obviously. This is really a victory for the entire state,” said Phil Trenary, the Greater Memphis Area Chamber of Commerce head who had been in Nashville last week and this week opposing the bill.

Though the suddenness of the committee’s action took Trenary and other onlookers by surprise, it had become obvious that the bill was in for rough sledding once it hit the Senate committee, where chairman Yager (R-Kingston) supervised a systematic vetting of its contents and numerous witnesses had criticized it in detail.

Some indication of what was to come was the fact that numerous amendments weakening the bill’s force were passed in committee on Tuesday by lopsided votes.

Though six witnesses on Tuesday testified to the commmittee in favor of the bill, it had become obvious from previous testimony of bill opponents last week that resistance to it was serious, influential, and in depth.

Not only Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland but the mayors of two other affected cities, Chattanooga and Knoxville, had warned of the bill’s potentially ruinous effects, fiscal and otherwise, on targeted cities. Representatives of the state’s business community, including Pitt Hyde of AutoZone, and two ranking officers of First Tennessee Bank, seconded that point of view.

Even senators considered friendly to the idea of allowing urban de-annexation procedures had visibly cooled to the provisions of the de-annexation measure sent over from the House after swift ands lopsided passage there.

Those provisions had limited the bill’s effects to only five urban areas which had pursued state law in annexations that the bill, in a provision whose constitutionality was in doubt, considered “egregious.”

Other objectionable provisions included the bill’s allowance of a low ceiling — 10 percent of an annexed area’s population on a petition — to call a de-annexation referendum.

PREVIOUSLY (3-29-16): The ongoing debate in the General Assembly on a bill to allow de-annexation by areas of Memphis and other Tennessee cities that were annexed since the passage of Public Law 1101 in 1998, was renewed Tuesday in the state Senate’s State and Local Committee.

Two amendments to the House bill were approved last week by the Senate committee — one clarifying certain issues of debt obllgations remaining for any de-annexed residents and another expanding the reach of the bill to all municipalities statewide, not just Memphis and the four other urban areas alleged to have pursued “egregious” annexations since the 1998 date.

Both those amendments were regarded as concessions to the delegation that testified in the committee against the bill last week — which included Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke, and Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero, as well as AutoZone founder Pitt Hyde and two officials of First Tennessee Bank.

Jackson Baker

Phil Trenary

Last week’s testifiers made the point that the de-annexation bill received by the House was overly punitive and potentially financially ruinous to the cities affected. (Strickland testified that de-annexation by all the areas annexed by Memphis since 1998 could cost the already cash-strapped city the loss of property tax revenues ranging from $27 at minimum to a maximum of $78 million.)

Chairman Yager began the renewed hearing on Tuesday before a standing-room-only audience, noting that the witnesses against the bill last Wednesday had been opposed to it and professing a desire “to be fair-minded on an issue this polarizing,” then announcing that six new witnesses favoring the bill would be heard.

The first was Patricia Possel of South Cordova, who said, “The city of Memphis tried to silence us,” and went on to note that her area had been annexed July 1, 2012, more than four years before the next scheduled election in South Cordova.

She called the situation “taxation without representation,” and spoke, in a trembling voice, of the murder of a neighbor, Susan McDonald, in 2015 — clearly, an indication to her that crime had followed upon her neighborhood’s annexation by the city as something of a direct consequence.

Finally, she said, there had been “no disclosure” of any kind to her or other homeowners, at the time of their purchasing property, that they were located within one of Memphis’ annexation preserves, about to lose its independence.

Next up was Terry Roland, the chairman of the Shelby County Commission, who announced that he had heard “bad numbers” being testified to by representatives of the city last week and wanted to present “the straight skinny.” According to his own figures, the de-annexation from Memphis of South Cordova and Windyke-Southwind, the last two areas annexed, would result in a financial gain to Memphis of $3 million — not, as had been claimed, a deficit of $13 million.

Roland also spoke, as he has for years, of the constant departure of citizens from Memphis because of high and unreasonable property taxes. He said that 68,000 people had left Shelby county for DeSoto County, Mississippi in the years 2001-2010.

Roland did concede that if all 10 areas annexed by Memphis since 1998 were able to de-annex themselves (as the original House bill provided), the city would end up the loser, financially, but he made it clear he considered that prospect far-fetched.

The two Shelby County witnesses were followed by John Emerson of Alamo (who had been introduced by Yager earlier as “the father of de-annexation” and who pronounced it absurd that representatives of cities habitually spoke as if there a law of nature that urban municipalities could only expand and never contract.

Three residents of Chattanooga suburbs that had been annexed followed, with variations on some of the themes already addressed. (One of them announced that he did not turn on TV to watch “baseball, football, or Dancing With the Stars,” but was a regular watcher of congressional hearings and stayed up late to watch them. He had determined from that practice that public political debates and processes were essentially shams.)

From that point, the stream of amendments that was interrupted by the close of last Wednesday’s hearing ensued again — the first of them authorized by chairman Yager himself and directly addressing the complaint that Strickland had made of the original House bill — that, while it did require newly de-annexed citizens to continue paying their share of the city’s general obligation debt on a pro rata basis, it did not stipulate anything regarding residual pension and OPEB obligation on the part of those residents.

The Yager amendment would include pensions and OPEB obligations on a pro-rated basis.

Senator Bo Watson of Hixson, a suburb of Chattanooga, and a sponsor of the de-annexation bill, challenged the logic of including those debts, which Watson suggested were “pay-as-you-go” by their nature and that ex post facto assessments would be improperly doubling up on charges to the residents.

He was backed up on those allegations by Senator Todd Gardenhire, another Chattanoogan, who testified from his point of view as a former member of a U.S. Department of Labor committee on pension obligations. In the course of seconding Watson’s assertions that including the new assessments would be double-billing de-annexed residents, Gardenhire got off a series of negative observations regarding the past fiscal performance of the city of Memphis.

Most of those observatios recapitulated criticisms made by state comptroller Justin Wilson about city bookkeeping practices during the administration of former Mayor A C Wharton. “The city of Memphis was not run like a business,” Gardenhire said.
Even so, the amendment was passed by the committee 6-1. It began to seem possible that the optimism for a favorable resolution expressed last week by Strickland and Chamber of Commerce president Phil Trenary might be justified.

That sense was furthered somewhat by discussion later of other new amendments, notably including one by chairman Yager that would raise from 10 to 20 percent the percentage of residents necessary to validate a petition for a de-annexation referendum. This one ultimately passed 7-0, and among those committee members agreeing with Yager that “the bar should be raised” on requirements for a de-annexation petition was state Senator Mark Norris (R-Collierville), a nominal supporter of the bill’s intent.

Not everything was roses. An amendment from state Senator Reginald Tate (D-Memphis) limited the Memphis areas eligible for de-annexation to South Cordova and Southwind-Windyke failed for lack of a second. And another, contemplated by Yager, requiring 66 percent, rather than a simple majority, for passage of a de-annexation referendum, was withdrawn by the chairman.

Asked afterward to assess Tuesday’s actions on the bill, the Trenary said the amendments made the bill “more realistic” but said he still continued to oppose it and was hopeful that the legislature as a whole ultimately would.

Roland’s reaction was one of satisfaction also, and he expressed the hope that the effect of the bill might still be limited to the two recently annexed areas of South Cordova and Southwind-Windyke. “They’re the only ones that are organized,” he pointed out.

An ultimate vote by the committee on the amended bill was delayed out of courtesy to the bill’s main sponsor, state Senator Mark Green of Clarksville, who was absent. (It was Green who last week compared the alleged “egregious” annexations by Memphis and other cities to a Russian occupation of Poland, and Norris wondered somewhat archly on Tuesday how the residents who moved to “Poland” in recent years should be counted in determining the right ceiling for a referendum petition.)

It is hard to imagine Green being altogether favorable to the amendments accepted Tuesday, but, in any case, whatever his opinion or the committee’s vote on the bill, the bill is not likely to be headed to the floor of either House or Senate anytime soon.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall 1365

Verbatim I

Most of the news coming out of Tennessee last week revolved around whether or not the legislature would pass a bill making the Bible, a text regarded by Christians as the living word of God almighty, Tennessee’s official state book. When asked to comment on what it means to elevate the Bible to the same status as raccoons, which are Tennessee’s official wild animal, and “Rocky Top,” one of many Tennessee state songs, Rep. Micah Van Huss had this insane thing to say: “The dog and the cat are state symbols and nobody in Tennessee is required to purchase a dog or a cat.” The dog and cat aren’t Tennessee symbols, unfortunately. All these shenanigans would be a lot cuter if they were.

Verbatim II

State Senate Republican leader Mark Norris had this to say when the Senate voted 22-9 to send the Bible bill back to committee: “All I know is that I hear Satan snickering. He loves this kind of mischief. You just dumb the good book down far enough to make it whatever it takes to make it a state symbol, and you’re on your way to where he wants you.” In spite of all that kooky Vincent Price stuff about Satan laughing, Norris’ comment was widely praised for its relative sanity.

Booty Church

The most incredible thing about this story is that it didn’t happen in Memphis first. A development group that was blocked from building a sex club adjacent to the Goodpasture Christian School in Madison, Tennessee, is moving forward again after rebranding the effort as a church renovation. According to reports, the ownership group will have to prove that the building is an actual house of worship prior to opening.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Can “Insure Tennessee” Rise Again?

NASHVILLE — By means of what many supporters of Medicaid expansion in Tennessee see as a stacked deck, an ad hoc state Senate Health and Welfare Committee last week aborted Governor Bill Haslam‘s special session and seemingly killed his Insure Tennessee proposal last week with a 7-4 vote against it on Wednesday — not quite two days after the special session had kicked off with an optimistic address by Haslam.

That vote, from a committee whose normal membership had been altered by Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey, the Senate speaker, effectively halted what would have been a gauntlet run for the proposal through a series of other committees, and prevented the proposal — which was couched in the form of a joint resolution — from reaching the floor of either the House or the Senate for a floor vote.

In the immediate aftermath of the committee vote, supporters of Insure Tennessee pointed out that the regular nine-member Senate Health Committee, which will reconstitute for the regular session that began this week, contains five members presumed to have been for the Insure Tennessee proposal, including the Senate sponsor, Doug Overbey (R-Maryville).

Ramsey’s ad hoc version — reshuffled, according to the Senate speaker, so as to insure that all 33 members of the Senate were evenly apportioned on the three committees that could potentially hear the bill — contained from the start a preponderance of skeptics regarding Haslam’s proposed plan. 

That hurt the proposal’s prospects, and so did the reluctance to endorse the bill of key Republican leaders — Ramsey and Majority Leader Mark Norris (R-Collierville) in the Senate and Speaker Beth Harwell (R-Nashville) in the House.

Much of the resistance to the Haslam proposal was clearly based on the opponents’ ideological hostility to the Affordable Care Act, the health-care system designed by the Obama administration to expand insurance coverage — in partnership, essentially, with private insurors. A component of the act has been the provision of billions of dollars in annual grants to participating states to expand their Medicaid programs. In Tennessee, as Haslam and others pointed out, that would have meant outlays of $1.4 billion annually to TennCare, the state’s version of Medicaid.

Although there were numerous Republicans prepared to vote for the bill, particularly in the House, GOP ideologues denounced the measure as “Obamacare,” despite numerous nods to marketplace methods in the Haslam version and kept on repeating discredited assertions (e.g., that the federal government would ultimately default on funding, sticking Tennessee with the bill, or that the state would not be able to extricate itself from Insure Tennessee, even though Haslam devised it as a two-year pilot program with an automatic fail-safe cut-off mechanism should assumptions prove incorrect or circumstances turn even slightly adverse).

Opponents were aided by a show of force in the hearing rooms by red-shirted representatives of “Americans for Prosperity,” a shell organization funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, who also paid for ads accusing Republican supporters of Insure Tennessee-like state Representative Jimmy Eldridge (R-Jackson) — of having “betrayed” Tennessee.

Predictably, there was a firestorm of criticism in the aftermath of the bill’s rejection, from legislative Democrats and from some Republicans as well, from representatives of Chambers of Commerce and from the Tennessee Hospital Association, whose member institutions had guaranteed to pay whatever future expenses for Insure Tennessee that the federal funding did not directly cover.

The Shelby County Commission, which had voted 12-0 to encourage legislative support for Insure Tennessee three weeks ago, reacted to the proposal’s defeat with a 10-1-1 vote for a fresh resolution on Monday, sponsored by conservative Republican Terry Roland of Millington, urging that the Haslam proposal be reconsidered in the regular session now begun. The desperate financial needs of The Med (now known as Regional One Health) and the predicament of Tennessee’s uninsured population were cited by another GOP conservative, Mark Billingsley of Germantown.

Weighing in at some length also was Republican County Mayor Mark Luttrell, who said, among other things, “I think our citizens in Shelby County deserve more. There should have been a full hearing before the Tennessee General Assembly.”

And, amid calls in the General Assembly itself for renewed consideration of Insure Tennessee, Governor Haslam, whose initial statements following rejection of his proposal were fatalistic, included some determined, even upbeat-sounding statements in his “State of the State” address to a joint session Monday night.

From the governor’s speech: “Last week, the decision was made not to move forward with Insure Tennessee. However, that does not mean the issues around health care go away. Too many Tennesseans are still not getting health coverage they need in the right way, in the right place, at the right time. An emergency room is not the place where so many Tennesseans should be going for health-care services. It’s not the best health care for them, and it’s costing us a lot more in the long run.

“Health-care costs are still eating up too much of our state’s budget and impacting the federal deficit and nation’s debt. According to the Congressional Budget Office, if we maintained health-care costs at their current levels, which we know are inflated, for the next eight years — just kept them flat — we’d eliminate the nation’s deficit. To do that, we can’t keep doing what we have been doing.

“So, though the special session has ended, I hope we can find a way to work together to address those problems.”

• The Memphis mayoral race, just as many expected, and just as some — existing candidates included — were hoping, is filling up. The latest to declare a candidacy is Shelby County Commission Chairman Justin Ford, who had promised the media he would reveal his decision to them on February 9th. And, came Monday, February 9th, Ford did just that.

In a conversation with reporters during breaks in Monday’s commission meeting at the County Building, Ford said he’d been thinking about a mayoral race for four or five years (or about the time he was first elected to the commission in 2010), and, after paying brief homage to the Ford family’s commitment to public service, made special note that his father, former councilman, commissioner, and interim county mayor Joe Ford, was able to raise “half a million dollars” in a race against then Mayor Willie Herenton in 1999. “It won’t be [any] different this time,” avowed Ford, who said he would run on issues of economic development, health care, education, and public safety.

Asked about the fact that the mayoral field was fast multiplying, Ford said, “The more the merrier. When you look at any type of race, especially in this democracy, in the city of Memphis, we’re accustomed to change. The more people in the race the better. They bring different perspectives [for] the opportunity for people to make the decision whether or not they want some change.”

Victory, he said, could come to “whoever has a resounding message, goes door to door, and also raises the right amount of money.”

Ford said he was aware that both Mayor A C Wharton and Councilman Jim Strickland, a declared mayoral candidate, had already raised prodigious amounts of money. “I’ve seen their financial disclosures,” he said.

As an incumbent, Wharton had a head start, Ford acknowledged. “Incumbents are hard to beat, so at the end of the day, if you don’t have a focus and have a real plan, you might not be successful.” But, he noted, “We’re a long, long way from the finish line.” And a few months, for that matter, before petitions for the October election become available in April.

Other candidates already declared are Wharton, Strickland, former Commissioner James Harvey, and former U of M athlete Detric Golden. Considered likely to enter the race are Councilman Harold Collins, New Olivet Baptist Church Pastor and former School Board member Kenneth Whalum Jr., and Memphis Police Association President Mike Williams.

• An effort last Wednesday by county Commissioner Steve Basar to hold a review of the joint city/county EDGE (Economic Development and Growth Engine) board — billed as an “update” on the published Commission agenda for Basar’s economic development committee — was forestalled, with several members insisting on the presence of EDGE board members before having such a discussion. Basar agreed to defer the discussion until the presence of board members, who had not been invited to last week’s commission session, could be arranged, likely in March.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

The Republican Rift

Anyone who’s been paying attention knows that Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey’s hand-picked Senate committee voted not to allow Governor Bill Haslam’s innovative Insure Tennessee proposal out of committee. Seven Republican legislators — including local lightweight champion Senator Brian Kelsey — each of whom gets per diems, paid travel expenses, and government health care for their part-time jobs — voted to keep sending Tennessee tax dollars to other states and to keep 280,000 Tennesseans from being able to purchase affordable health care.

Those seven people voted to turn down funds that would have helped keep county hospitals open all across the state. They voted to make people have to travel farther for care. They voted to make the rest of us pay for uninsured Tennesseans’ medical care. They voted to force more people to face medical-related bankruptcy. They voted to let thousands suffer and die from lack of medical care.

Why? Because most GOP legislators in Tennessee are owned by Americans for Prosperity (AFP), the Koch brothers’ group that is fighting the Affordable Care Act all over the country. If a Republican dares to not sign the AFP pledge to fight “Obamacare,” AFP runs ads in their communities linking them to President Obama. Oooh.

The legislators’ decision is another indication of the growing rift in the GOP between the socially conservative, “shrink government,” pro-gun ideologues and the business-friendly, common-sense-governing faction. The former group boasts our two local AFP toadies, Senators Mark Norris and Kelsey. The latter group includes Haslam, Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell, GOP members of the Shelby County Commission, and many others around the state.

Someone’s going to have to lead the fight for common sense in the GOP. Haslam is the obvious choice, but there’s not a lot of fire there. I never thought I’d write these words, but we need more Republicans like Commissioner Terry Roland, who isn’t intimidated by out-of-state interests and who gets that foolishly turning down federal money that’s already ours is going to mean a tax increase in Shelby County.

We need somebody like Montana Republican state Representative Frank Garner, a conservative who was open to hearing how “Obamacare” might or might not work in his state. AFP ran ads with his picture super-imposed over President Obama’s. They called a “town meeting” in Garner’s district to tell his constituents about his nefarious activities. They didn’t invite Garner, but he showed up anyway. From a rawstory.com account of the meeting:

“I promised the people here when I ran that I would listen to you and not out-of-town special interests,” Garner said to wild applause. “If every time they want me to sign a pledge card and I don’t do it, they are going to rent a room and have a meeting, then this is going to get real expensive — because I’m not signing the pledge card.”

Having the courage to do what’s right for your constituents. What a concept.

Categories
News News Feature

Haslam’s Next Move

Although I’ve never been there, I can imagine that somewhere inside Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam’s office is a picture. I envision it as a photo of a bright, ambitious, and idealistic Emory University college student proudly standing next to former iconic Tennessee U.S. Senator Howard Baker. It would have been taken when Haslam volunteered to work on Baker’s reelection campaign in the 1970s. I can further imagine Haslam worshipped the man whose colleagues dubbed him “The Great Conciliator” for his uncanny ability to politically maneuver diverse factions into seeking workable compromises for the benefit of the common man, because it was the right thing to do.

In a previous column, I, like many others, scoffed at Haslam’s 21-month attempt to work with the federal government to craft an expanded health insurance plan tailored for Tennessee. I criticized him for what I perceived as his foot-dragging to aid the 280,000 Tennesseans who fall through the cracks of Medicaid and are left unable to pay for simple medical care or are victimized by the ravages of a catastrophic illness. I will admit I should not have been so quick to judge his intentions or his determined strategy at devising a workable proposal.

But as we found out last week, even the best of intentions seems to carry no weight with the current Tennessee General Assembly. To have Haslam’s well-thought-out Insure Tennessee plan fail to even get out of a Senate committee is an abomination, especially for anyone still deluded enough to think our elected officials are chosen to do the will of the people.

The majority of Tennesseans favored taking the available $2.8 billion in federal dollars over two years to finance the program. Using the inclusive vision practiced by his political mentor, Baker, Haslam methodically garnered the support of the state’s medical associations, bankers, businessmen, and law firms. He had fact-based rebuttals for any questions about the validity of the plan, including the trump card of it being a “pilot” program that could be dropped after two years of enactment. But, once again, sinister forces within and outside Tennessee’s borders used their financial and political influence among state legislators to defeat the proposal, mainly by invoking the conservative rallying cry of Obamacare.

Haslam appears to have thrown in the towel on pushing any further efforts toward passing Insure Tennessee. He was quoted in The Commercial Appeal as saying, “At the end of the day, I’m really disappointed that 280,000 people who could have had health-care coverage, at least right now, it doesn’t look like we have a path to get them there. That’s the end result to me.” To which I say:

Governor, look at that picture of you and Baker and ask yourself: “Why does this have to be the end of your plan? If one path is closed off then try another.”

You admitted you hammered out the final approval to go forward from the U.S Department of Health and Human Services in December, and then announced it in the first week of January. You then went on a whirlwind tour of the state, with a stopover in Memphis. It seemed more like a victory lap, as if the heavy legislative lifting had already been done. Yet, you didn’t have vocal support from key legislators — House Speaker Beth Harwell, Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris — and only lip service from Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey.

A parade in Nashville of highly paid hospital administrators endorsing the plan doesn’t carry anywhere near the emotional impact of real people bringing their personal stories directly to the faces of legislators.

It’s time to cash in on your solid state-wide popularity. You didn’t give yourself enough lead time to drum up support. People like you. Use the bully pulpit of your office to energize your message; force legislators to listen. Then go summon that Baker voodoo for bringing opposing sides together and work out a compromise.

Governor, to breathe life back into this proposal, you’re going to have to roll up your sleeves and do something you’ve previously chosen to avoid: getting down in the trenches and fighting for the good of all Tennesseans. You can begin by convincing yourself that it’s the right thing to do. Look again at that picture of Baker, and maybe you’ll find the inspiration and courage to do it.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Haslam’s “Good Faith” Issue

As chronicled elsewhere, Governor Bill Haslam began this week of legislative special session in Nashville with the challenge of persuading reluctant members of his Republican Party to suspend their aversion

to what they call Obamacare and accept his home-grown version of Medicaid expansion called Insure Tennessee.

Prior discussions of the matter in the media have focused almost entirely on the mechanics of the plan or the political matters at stake or the financial incentives available to Tennessee (and its hard-pressed hospitals) should the General Assembly opt to give its statutorily necessary approval to the proposal. Those financial stakes are large indeed, amounting to somewhere between $1 billion and $2 billion annually. But the political obstacles are large, as well: GOP talking points against Obamacare (the vernacular name for the Affordable Care Act) are so well established that the governor’s arguments for Insure Tennessee had to be couched in terms that drew the broadest possible distinctions between his Tennessee variant and the federal act.

Accordingly, Haslam made much of marketplace methodologies embedded in Insure Tennessee — including an alternative plan-within-the-plan for vouchers to pay for private insurance, as well as requirements for co-pays and modest premiums for those new insurees opting for coverage under TennCare (Tennessee’s version of Medicaid). And the governor catered to home-state Republican sensitivities by adding an anecdote to his prepared speech involving his past entreaties to President Obama, along with those of other Republican governors, to allow Medicare funding to be dispensed to the states via block grants for the states to dispense as they wished.

But much of the governor’s speech was taken up, too, with appeals to the legislators’ hearts as well as to their heads. Opponents of Insure Tennessee have been shedding crocodile tears at the plan’s provision for discontinuing Insure Tennessee after two years if either the federal government or the Tennessee Hospital Association default on promised funding. That would drop thousands of new insurees from coverage, the critics say. To this, Haslam offered the common-sense rebuttal that two years of coverage are significantly better than no health-care coverage at all.

And he offered his listeners a real-world anecdote about a Tennessean whose stroke, resulting from his inability to afford health insurance, had “landed him in the hospital, followed by rehabilitation” and taken him out of the workforce. “He was a hard-working Tennessean who wasn’t able to get the care he needed on the front end and that has real consequences for him and his family. Having a stroke wasn’t only devastating to him and his family, it could have been prevented, and not preventing it is costly to all of us.”

The governor then, having argued facts and savings and marketplace models, laid the matter to rest on the bedrock issues of values and good will: “I think this is also an issue about who we are. My faith doesn’t allow me to walk on the other side of the road and ignore a need that can be met — particularly in this case, when the need is Tennesseans who have life-threatening situations without access to health care.”

Indeed. It’s a matter of good faith and we agree with the Governor: That’s the nub of the issue.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Sentiment Divided on “Insure Tennessee”

NASHVILLE — Like his 11-minute re-inauguration speech delivered two weeks ago, Governor Bill Haslam’s 15-minute opening address Monday night to this week’s special session on Insure Tennessee, his Medicaid expansion plan, was brief and to the point and couched in accommodationist rhetoric.

The previous speech had no particular mission in mind other than to hint at a more assertive second term: “[W]e haven’t had nearly high enough expectations of ourselves. In many ways, we’ve settled and haven’t lived up to our full potential. So one thing I can guarantee you that we are not going to do in the next four years is coast to the finish line.” But Monday night’s address was designed to spell out a key resolve that could be crucial to the success or failure of that race to the finish line.

The good news, from the governor’s point of view, was the prolonged standing ovation he received upon entering the chamber Monday night — a sign of the general good will that the General Assembly, on both sides of the political aisle, continues to extend to Haslam.

The bad news, from Haslam’s point of view, was that, by general agreement, he still has — in the words of state Representative Glen Casada (R-Franklin), who has been a prominent opponent of  the governor’s plan — “his work cut out for him.” Said Casada about House prospects: “He needs 50 out of 99, and right now he doesn’t have it.”

That outlook was echoed by state Representative Craig Fitzhugh (D-Ripley), the Democrats’ House leader and a firm supporter of Insure Tennessee. Fitzhugh said, “He answered the questions. The main questions my friends on the Republican side have had. … The Republican caucus needs to show they have a concern for ‘the least of these’.'” The plan had “no downside,” said Fitzhugh, but, “I think he’s got a lot of work to do.”

State Senator Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a foe, not just of the governor’s plan but of Medicaid expansion in general, said he thought opposition to Insure Tennessee was “mounting, the more we hear about it.”

Referencing a point Haslam had extemporized into his prepared remarks, to the effect that Republican governors had persistently expressed a wish to President Obama that Medicaid funding be presented to the states in the form of block grants, and that Insure Tennessee came close to that goal, Kelsey said, “My takeaway is this: The governor and I agree that we’d love to have a block grant in Tennessee, but that’s not what the president is offering.”

There were, however, signs that a bipartisan support coalition of Insure Tennessee from Republicans and Democrats (a distinct minority in the legislature that Haslam, however, had made a point of courting) might be possible.

In the immediate aftermath of the governor’s speech, state Rep. Antonio Parkinson, a Memphis Democrat, and state Rep. Mark White, a Republican who represents East Memphis and the suburbs, agreed that Haslam had made enough distinctions between Insure Tennessee and the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) to coax reluctant GOP members to support the plan.

White himself had been one of those GOP members who’d been biding his time but now expressed support.”I think that was important for him to distance himself from the president,” White said. “He also gave a personal side. It’s not all politics. … The more you weigh it on our measuring scale, it weighs out that we need to do something.”

Two Democrats differed on the role of their party in the debate over Insure Tennessee. State Senator Lee Harris, the former city council member who was elected by Senate Democrats (5 members out of 33) to be minority leader, said, “It’s not about the Democrats. It’s not newsworthy what the Democrats are doing. That’s irrelevant. It’s about the Republicans. They have control of both chambers. If you’ve got control, you’ve got responsibility.”

State Representative G.A. Hardaway, another Memphis Democrat, begged to differ. Of the 26 Democrats in the 99-member House of Representatives, Hardaway said, “We hold the key in the House.”

• In his Monday night address opening the week of special session, the governor — Haslam being Haslam, a man of soft persuasion rather than faustian and bombast — artfully pitched an appeal that was simultaneously above partisan politics and designed to address what have been the main sticking points among GOP legislators.

The governor dutifully paid lip service to Republican talking points, loosing his own shots at what he consistently called Obamacare but taking pains to distinguish his own plan from the superstructure of the Affordable Care Act.

Haslam gave an explanation for why, in 2013, he had rejected the opportunity to expand Medicaid (TennCare in Tennessee) — an expansion that would have allowed the state to avail itself of about $1.5 billion annually, money which the state’s hospitals, charged with caring for indigent patients, contended they desperately needed.

He hadn’t accepted expansion then, the governor said, because “expanding a broken program doesn’t make sense. … But I also didn’t think that flat-out saying no to accepting federal dollars that Tennesseans are paying for — that are going to other states, and that could cover more Tennesseans who truly need our help — I didn’t think that made much sense either.”

Accordingly, he said, he decided to provide his own example of how a governmental health-care plan should work, spending the time since that decision in 2013 to devise what he told the assembled legislators is a two-year pilot program that has incorporated free-market principles, both through an optional voucher component for use with private insurance plans and through requiring co-pays and modest premiums — “skin in the game” — of those new insurees who chose to go through TennCare.

Haslam pointed out that Insure Tennessee would add no new costs to the state budget, since the Tennessee Hospital Association (THA) had guaranteed to pay any additional costs incurred once the federal government, after two years, dropped its own subsidy from 100 to 90 percent.

If either the federal government or the THA proved unable to follow through as promised, or if the state in two years’ time decided Insure Tennessee wasn’t a good fit, the state had been assured by court decisions and the state attorney general’s advice that it could discontinue the plan.

(Pointedly, the governor, in giving the address, dropped this line from his prepared remarks: “I understand the concern, but I think it’s worthy of mention that the United States of America has never missed a scheduled Medicaid payment.”)

As for the professed concern of Insure Tennessee skeptics regarding the pain of having to discontinue coverage for new insurees after two years, Haslam said, “If you gave your loved one an option: You can have health coverage now to address your very real need and with that the possibility that you might lose it in the future, or you could never have it, which would you choose? If you think about your loved one, I bet the answer is simple.”

Ultimately, said Haslam, the state simply had an obligation to the unfortunate and the indigent, one based in commonly held spiritual precepts. “My faith doesn’t allow me to walk on the other side of the road and ignore a need that can be met — particularly in this case, when the need is Tennesseans who have life-threatening situations without access to health care.”

• Back in Memphis, pent-up controversy was also moving toward some overdue discussion. On Wednesday’s committee agenda of the Shelby County Commission is a call for open discussion of the future of the Economic Development Growth Engine (EDGE), which guides industrial and business expansion and awards economic incentives toward that end.

Republican member Steve Basar, chair of the commission’s economic development committee and the commission’s ex officio member of the 11-member EDGE board, placed the discussion item. Basar said he heard “rumblings” of discontent about EDGE on the commission, including possible calls for the board’s abolition, and, as an EDGE supporter, wanted to address it.

Much of the discontent was an adverse reaction to the EDGE board’s recent decisions on PILOTs (payment-in-lieu-of-taxes), but Basar said only minor modifications were needed.