Tag: Mick Wright

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Politics Politics Feature

The Last Straw?

Paul Young (Photo: Brandon Dill | MLK 50)

Push is coming to shove in the public outrage stemming from the shooting death last week of MPD Officer Joseph McKinney. And the shoving, on behalf of stouter crackdowns on local crime, is coming from more sources than ever before.

Mayor Paul Young, who has arguably been somewhat slow on the draw in fleshing out his crime program, cruising along with an interim police chief and nobody yet to fill his ballyhooed position of public safety director, is suddenly all cries and alarms.

Sounding almost like some of the more active Republican critics of Memphis crime in the legislature, Young released a statement including these words: “Together, let’s petition our judges and the DA for stronger, swifter sentencing for violent offenses. If you are part of the judicial system, hear my voice first. We need to work together to do better for our community.”

DA Steve Mulroy himself expressed anger that a $150,000 bond that he’d previously set for previous crimes committed by the youth suspected in the death of Officer McKinney had been somehow amended by a judicial commissioner to allow the youth back on the streets through his own recognizance.

And Shelby County Commissioner Mick Wright, a leading critic of the current crime wave, was warning, on behalf of his commission mates, “We are not finished. … You’re going to see some judges get exited stage left if I have anything to say about it.”

It was a definite irony that, scarcely a week after the MPD had announced the 100th homicide in Memphis this year, Young scheduled this week’s public celebration of his first 100 days in office at Mt. Vernon Baptist Church.

Perhaps the mayor will use that occasion to outline further his and the city council’s plan for a new nonprofit organization to reverse the crime trend.

• Former Shelby County Democratic chair Gabby Salinas, who in recent years ran two close races against established Republican office-holders, has a different situation on her hands this year.

She’s running for the state House District 96 seat being vacated by Democratic incumbent Dwayne Thompson. Not a Republican contestant in sight so far, but Salinas has four Democratic rivals — Eric Dunn, Telisa Franklin, Orrden Williams Jr., and David Winston. She remains the favorite.

• As mentioned in this space of late, Democrats are seriously contesting the state House District 97 seat now held by Republican John Gillespie. Mindful of the potential perils of procrastination, they brought out some heavy artillery last week.

At a fundraiser for party candidate Jesse Huseth at the home of attorney Robert Donati last week, an important attendee was 9th District U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, the county’s senior Democratic office-holder, who formally bestowed his endorsement on Huseth and was critical of Gillespie for legislative actions intended to shift various aspects of law-enforcement authority from the city to the state.

Cohen noted that the 97th, which was redistricted by the legislature last year, would now seem to be tilted demographically to Democrats in this election year — “up three points for Huseth and up five points for Biden.”

As Huseth himself put it, the East Memphis-based district had lost “four solid-red precincts and picked up two light-blue precincts and two light-red precincts.”

The point of the redistricting, which was carried out by the General Assembly’s GOP supermajority, remains something of a mystery, although it is said that Gillespie signed off on it, thinking it gave him more potential access to‚ and opportunity to serve, the business community.

• No doubt emboldened by the local unpopularity of Governor Bill Lee’s school-voucher program, which was formally opposed by the Memphis-Shelby County School Board and by the boards of the six municipal school districts as well, Democrats are taking another crack at the state House District 83 seat held by Mark White, House education chair and a champion of vouchers.

At least one Democrat is: political newcomer Noah Nordstrom, an MSCS Spanish teacher.

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Politics Politics Feature

County Commission Report

Election Commission head Mark Luttrell asked for permission to ditch old voting machines. (Photo: Mark H. Luttrell | Facebook)

Each of the major legislative bodies operating in Shelby County presents challenges to its members, to the various publics that wish to influence it, and to the matrices of other governmental bodies that it must coexist with.

Take the Shelby County Commission meeting of Monday, May 15th, a six-and-a-half-hour affair. The commission opened up its Monday session with an agenda of 21 “consent agenda” items and an additional nine “regular” items. In theory, the consent agenda items are matters whose import has been sufficiently chewed over in committee as to be generally acceptable already, whereas the regular items must be tackled anew.

It doesn’t work out that way. On Monday, a clear majority of items on the commission’s consent agenda were singled out for additional discussion by one or more — a fact clearly indicating that consent had not been reached. Most of these items involved the approval of public grants to this or that person or body to achieve some public purpose.

Commissioner Britney Thornton and, to a different degree, Commissioner Henri Brooks have chosen on a weekly basis to focus on the demographic distribution of these grants, wanting to know if a sufficient number of minority firms were invited to participate in the bidding for these projects. Thornton’s summing up of Monday’ results — “a flat zero” of ultimate participation by minorities.

This is one leitmotif of a typical commission meeting. Another is the dependable insistence of Commissioner Edmund Ford Jr.that commissioners — the “electeds” of county government — must be vigilant in preventing the “appointeds” of Mayor Lee Harris’ administration from usurping commission prerogatives.

At one point, Ford asked a yes-or-no question of administration budget director Michael Thompson, insisting, “Do not give an essay answer. I will cut you off and bust you out.” Mick Wright, one of four Republican commissioners on the 13-member body, challenged the decorum of that.

Wright and Ford bumped heads again on Wright’s proposal to route $3.5 million into needed upgrades for Regional One. Ford successfully insisted the money be spread around among the 13 commission districts for members’ preferred projects.

Ford was also instrumental in deferring action on Mayor Harris’ proposal to raise the county wheel tax to finance work on Regional One as well as two new schools.

The bottom line is that work on an ambitious 2024 budget has been remanded into the future with a target date in mind of June 30th, the end of the current fiscal year.

With surprising unanimity, the commission approved a $3.39 tax rate, as well as a desire to establish a county civilian law-enforcement review board like those now operating in Memphis and Nashville city governments. The commission also gave conditional approval to the Election Commission’s wish to dispose of “useless” old voting machines, so long as significant information from them was retained. Commissioners also approved a $2.7 million budget item providing medical backup resources for the county specialty courts dealing with veterans, mental health, and drug issues. And it readies for future voting a matching proposal to provide psychiatric rehabilitation for prisoners deemed incompetent for trial.

Overall, the import of Monday’s commission meeting was that a lot of cans got kicked down the road. More of this anon.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

A Momentous Day for the Commission

Mick Wright: "I hope "God will forgive me if I vote wrong." Photo courtesy Shelby County Government


There are various ways of dividing the efforts of humankind into separate but oddly complementary spheres: sacred vs. profane is one way, ad hoc vs. eternal is another. And who is to say that one sphere exceeds the other in importance?

Maybe not the Shelby County Commission, whose current Democratic-dominated version seems bent on taking direct action wherever it can.

On Wednesday, the Commission spent roughly the same amount of time and energy on two radically differing pending matters — one being how next to try to get the office of the Shelby County Clerk up to snuff (in this case via a “special adviser”), the other being how best to remedy centuries of racial injustice through a system of reparations for the African-American component of local society.
Left pending until the Commission’s next meeting were a series of proposed correctives aimed at preventing another Tyre Nichols situation. 

The matter of County Clerk Wanda Halbert came first on the agenda. Various commissioners made it plain they were fed up with Halbert’s inabilities to deal expeditiously with the duties of her office, which include the processing of auto license tag applications and the distribution of them. Through much of the past  year, during which Halbert twice closed her office so as to do catch-up, long lines of frustrated Shelby Countians turned up daily at the various clerk’s offices in a vain effort to get their plates.

During one of those shut-downs, Halbert conspicuously took time off in Jamaica. She periodically has described herself as a “whistle-blower” and has blamed her office imbroglios on vague insinuations of conspiratorial action on the Commission’s part or on that of County Mayor Lee Harris.

The Commission has tried numerous incentives to help the clerk out, but, as commissioners noted on Wednesday, none of these bore much fruit. Simultaneously, state Representative Mark White has introduced a bill in the General Assembly in Nashville that would facilitate local efforts to recall the clerk.

On Wednesday, Halbert, along with aides, was present in the Commission chamber, behaving more or less meekly as the Commission tossed around a proposal to appropriate $150,000 to hire a special adviser to her. The clerk welcomed the initiative, claiming she had wanted something like that all along.

Much of a lengthy debate on what was clearly being put forth as a “last chance” solution concerned the issue of where the money to hire the adviser should come from. Various commissioners objected to the proposal’s original formulation that the $150,000 should come from the Commission’s own contingency fund, and it was ultimately decided that the clerk herself possessed enough uncommitted funds to foot the bill for the adviser.

In the end, that’s how things were decided. Halbert’s helper, who will be hired by the Commission, will be paid by available funds from the clerk’s office but will answer to the Commission, not to her. The vote was 12 to 1, with Republican Commissioner Brandon Morrison expressing disapproval of the need to spend more taxpayer money to accomplish duties that are part of the express charge of the elected clerk’s office.

Later in Wednesday’s public meeting, which was specially called by chairman Mickell Lowery, the Commission took up the momentous matter of a proposed $5 million outlay to fund a feasibility study on reparations for the African-American population. The “reparations” were not necessarily financial, although at least one successful amendment to the resolution proposed by Commissioner Henri Brooks seemed to call for make-up pay differentials for African-Americans.

Most of several amendments by Brooks addressed directly, as did the resolution itself, the undeniable fact of overall racial disparities in accessing of advantages of American citizenship.

Sponsoring the reparations measure were eight of the Commission’s Democrats, including all of the body’s Black members, most of whom spoke for the measure with various degrees of passionate intensity. 


Reservations were heard from the body’s four Republicans, who tended to see the resolution as “divisive”  or in conflict somehow with the American system of equality. Aligning with them in harboring doubts about the reparations issue was Democrat Michael Whaley, whose mother is Asian-born and who self-identified Wednesday as a “person of col0r.”

Voting for the resolution were chairman Lowery and fellow Commissioners Shante Avant, Brooks, Charlie Caswell, Miska Clay-Bibbs, Ed Ford, Erika Sugarmon, and Britney Thornton, all Democrats.

“No”  votes came from Republicans Amber Mills, Brandon Morrison, and Mick Wright, and abstaining were Democrat Whaley and Republican Bradford.

In one form or another, the objecting Commissioners wondered where the $5 million to pay for the feasibility study would come from (Ford made the case that such funds were available in the county’s residual share of funds from ARPA, the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021).

The objectors conceded during debate that disparities existed between the races that needed addressing but expressed disagreement with reparations as such as the remedy. Bradford had originally moved that the matter be postponed until the next public Commission meeting but ultimately withdrew his motion (that clearly would have failed) and expressed hopes that the larger effort to alter disparities succeeded.

His fellow Republican, Mick Wright, expressed similar sentiments, concluding with a blessing for his colleagues and the seemingly heartfelt statement, “I hope God will forgive me if I vote wrong.”

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News News Blog News Feature

“I Want You To Stay and I Want You To Fight” — Officials React to “Evil Actions” of Rampage Killer

Joyce Peterson spoke for much of Memphis.

Editor’s note: After receiving numerous complaints from readers for displaying a photo of Wednesday night’s assailant in this space, we have decided that its news value as an identifier of a dangerous person at-large is no longer applicable, so we’ve removed the picture.

Here is Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland’s statement in full:

“I want to first, express my deepest sympathy and condolences to the victims and their families who are suffering from this senseless murder rampage. I’m angry  for them, and I’m angry that our citizens had to shelter in place for their own safety until the suspect was caught. This is no way for us to live and it is not acceptable.

The people of our city were confronted with the type of violence no one should have to face. Ezekiel Kelly was charged with criminal attempted first degree murder but pled guilty in April of 2021 to the lesser charge of aggravated assault. He was sentenced to three years, but only served 11 months and was released on March 16th, 2022 — less than six months ago.

These evil actions show why truth in sentencing is a must, and we should do all we can to make our city safe. We should not be terrorized by anyone who wants to strike fear in our hearts and take away what we love about Memphis. We must unite around this principle and stand up to the challenge of violent crime in our city. 

If Mr. Kelly served his full three-year sentence, he would still be in prison today and four of our fellow citizens would still be alive.

Thank you state legislature, led by [state House Speaker Rep. Cameron Sexton, R-Crossville) and [Lieutenant Governor Randy McNally, R-Oak Ridge), for passing truth in sentencing. From now on, three years for aggravated assault means three years.

Our judicial system is too often a revolving door.  A citizen emailed me today — ‘until/unless there are real consequences for criminal behavior, it will continue.’

I agree 100 percent. We need the courts and additional state laws to stop this revolving door and I need the public to make their voices heard by those decision makers.

I want to thank the men and women of our Memphis Police Department, and all the supporting law enforcement agencies who supported in capturing the suspect tonight, and aided in the search for Liza Fletcher earlier this week.

This has been a painful week in our city, but I have hope for Memphis, I have love for Memphis, I know that united …..we will endure.”

Camper

State House Minority Leader Rep. Karen Camper (D-Memphis):

“Our city is hurting. My heart goes out to the families of those killed and injured tonight. It was an unspeakable horror and it occurred just days after our city was devastated by another tragedy: the terrible murder of elementary school teacher Eliza Fletcher.

“It’s been a sad few months for Memphis. There is a long road ahead and much work ahead for us to do in order to begin to heal our city and we will have those policy discussions. But now we have to lock arms and pray for all of the victims of this week and the past few months and not let these tragic circumstances tear our hearts away from the city we all love.”

Greater Memphis Chamber President and CEO Beverly Robertson:

“The Greater Memphis Chamber and our entire business community are deeply saddened by the tragic events our city has lived through in recent days. We extend our condolences to the families and friends of those lost to these senseless acts of inhumanity.

“The Chamber remains committed to working with our business leaders, elected officials, and residents to thoughtfully identify real solutions that lead to real results. I have already reached out to the mayor and police chief of Memphis to ensure the business community will be at the table as we move forward.

“We all must play a role in driving positive change in our community, and this journey is just starting. Working together, we will make a difference.” 

State Rep. London Lamar:

Lamar

“The book of Psalms says ‘I rise before dawn and cry for help; I hope in your words.’

This morning, our families in Memphis are crying out for accountability and justice. We are hoping that, together, we can summon the courage to take real action against gun violence.

No community should have to live with the trauma of mass shootings and terrorism. But this isn’t the first senseless tragedy and it won’t be the last if we are unwilling to turn our prayers into action.

I have consistently fought for evidence-based reforms that prevent violent crime. We will continue our work to expand access to mental healthcare. And our mission to end generational poverty never ceases.

But our work is being crippled by policies that make it easier for dangerous people to access deadly weapons. I am a gun owner, but I understand the right to carry must come with meaningful rules and responsibilities.

Again, I am asking anyone at the Capitol who will listen: Please acknowledge the deadly consequences of guns falling into the wrong hands and work with me to end gun violence against our families.”

Taylor

Shelby County Health Department Director Dr. Michelle Taylor:

“The shootings last night in Memphis that left four people dead and three injured, and the kidnapping and death of Eliza Fletcher are a wake-up call for our community.

Shelby County Health Department (SCHD) extends its deepest sympathies to all the victims, their friends and families, and everyone in our community impacted by this past week’s violent events. We also thank the many law enforcement personnel and first responders who risk their lives every day to bring an end to violent crime in our community and make Memphis a “place of good abode,” as it was called when it was founded.

The principles of public health practice are well suited to implement a violence prevention framework that addresses the root causes of violent crime. The key to addressing the endless cycle of shootings and imprisonment in our community is to heal the generational trauma that makes violence appear to be the only option. Adverse childhood experiences and adverse community experiences have increased over time, due to the structural and institutional failures to address the issues leading to inequality and conflict in our community.

Shelby County Health Department is committed to expanding access to behavioral health resources for everyone throughout their lifespan as a first step to addressing the generational traumas that can lead to community violence. SCHD provides a wide range of prevention and screening services. We are expanding our reach by convening behavioral health resources and acting on our analysis of gun violence as a public health crisis in our community. As a part of that work, SCHD has begun a Cure Violence Global pilot program using a local subcontractor (Heal 901) to replicate Cure Violence’s data-driven, evidence-based approach to crime prevention here in Shelby County.

Please join the Shelby County Health Department in our meaningful and collaborative action to bring an end to the senseless violence that harms everyone in our community. To learn more about how to get involved, please visit our website: shelbytnhealth.com.”

U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis):

Cohen

“What has been happening in my hometown is harrowing and disturbing. I have been concerned for some time about the crime situation and have spoken with the relevant public officials about addressing the issue.

I have suggested convening a summit with the two mayors, the District Attorney General, the Police Director, the Shelby County Sheriff, the school board president, and the juvenile court judge. We need a comprehensive approach involving the schools and the juvenile justice system to help reverse these disturbing trends.

“Today I wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland to explain the situation in Memphis, noting the high-profile killings in recent days and weeks, and asking him to look favorably on discretionary grants from the Edward Byrne Memorial Grants Assistance and COPS programs and to provide any and all other assistance available from the Department of Justice. I also asked to speak with him at his earliest convenience.”

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Politics Politics Feature

The Battle of Byhalia: County Commission Debates Pipeline Risks and Benefits, Blocks Land Sale

(Photo: Kodym | Dreamstime.com)

As the saying goes, you can win a battle and lose a war. That adage also works in reverse. Opponents of the proposed Byhalia Connection pipeline ultimately triumphed at Monday’s meeting of the Shelby County Commission, but only after an early defeat.

The first vote took on the pipeline matter broadly, via a resolution requesting “that the Federal Government review the Byhalia Connection Pipeline permit.” At this point, the would-be partners in the pipeline, Valero Energy Corporation and Plains All American Pipeline, still possess a go-ahead from the U.S. Corps of Engineers.

Invited to make the case for the pipeline, Katie Martin, a spokesperson for Plains, attempted to defuse criticism about environmental hazards and potential dislocations of the low-income area of southwest Memphis the proposed pipeline would pass through. She said the project had experienced  “unconscionable bullying” by an unfriendly and biased media. 

Justin Pearson, the youthful leader of anti-pipeline activists and founder of MCAP (Memphis Community Against the Pipeline), responded with warnings about the very matters Martin had attempted to debunk.

Commissioner Michael Whaley, co-sponsor of the measure with fellow Democrat Tami Sawyer, focused on “risks that exist with this pipeline” — alluding to one of pipeline opponents’ main fears, the threat of potential pollution of the Memphis sand aquifer, source of Memphis drinking water.

“I have yet to really hear a truly compelling reason why we need it,” said Whaley, who argued “that it would be more beneficial, for the sake of the community, to build climate-friendly infrastructure instead of additional fossil-fuel infrastructure.” And, he said, “Quite frankly, climate-friendly infrastructures could also be drivers of the economy, drivers to create jobs — but not at the expense of quality of life for people in the field.” 

Mick Wright, a Republican commissioner, described himself as “torn” by the issue, seeing both sides of it, but said he wasn’t totally convinced by opponents’ arguments. “I’m just not ready on it. We obviously still rely on oil-based transportation, and oil-based transportation has provided a huge benefit. I certainly have benefited from being able to have a vehicle and have traveled throughout the county and throughout the country. I definitely agree that we want to get to a place where we have fuel sources that are there possibly cleaner. So I struggle with this. But I’m just not there yet.”

Nor, on the general case at hand, was the commission. The resolution seeking federal scrutiny needed seven votes to pass but went down by a vote of five to six, with all five GOP members of the commission voting no. They were joined by Democrat Van Turner, who made it clear that he was joining the prevailing side in a tactical maneuver that would enable him to call for a parliamentary reconsideration of the matter at the next meeting.

Things went differently on the more concrete matter that was actually key to the resolution of things on Monday. This was a vote on whether to sell two properties, owned by the county as the result of tax defaults, which the pipeline proprietors need to pursue construction. That vote failed by the overwhelming vote of nine votes against and only two votes for, those of Republicans David Bradford and Amber Mills, and that was the ball game, though the pipeline companies have not yet formally surrendered. (Yet another resolution to remove a small portion of the 38109 ZIP-code area from a moratorium on property sale had lost much of its relevance and passed easily, eight to two, Commissioners Sawyer and Whaley voting no.) 

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

County Commission: Do the Ayes Still Have It?

The formal vocabulary of Shelby County Commission meetings is slowly gravitating from the antique and ornamental to current and ordinary forms of speech.

Until recently, as an example, meetings used to be opened by invocations by the sergeant-at-arms of the venerable Anglo-Norman phrase “oyez, oyez,” (except that the uniformed county officer serving in that role would pronounce the phrase “Oh yes, oh yes.”) These days, the officer says instead, “Hear ye, hear ye,” which happens to be what the archaic phrase “oyez, oyez,” still used in the U.S. Supreme Court and by numerous other tribunals, actually means.

A parallel phenomenon has been the attrition undergone by the archaic term “aye” as the traditional signifier of an affirmative vote. At some point in the early days of the Commission that was elected and installed in 2018, new Commissioner David Bradford, who represents Collierville and other suburban areas in east Shelby County, began saying simply “yes” when, in a roll call of Commissioners’ vote, he gave his okay to this or that measure.

The other members voting on his side of the issue would continue saying “aye,” an Anglo-Scottich term dating from the 16th century which has got itself lodged in parliamentary idiom ever since. Slowly, though, Bradford’s usage began catching on with other commissioners — fellow Republicans Mark Billingsley and Mick Wright, especially — who are now apt to say “yes” as often as “aye” when they vote in favor.

Though the dominion of the traditional term is slipping on the Commission, the ayes still have it, for the most part, as the word continues its general prevalence in roll calls. Oddly, the symmetrical equivalent to it, “nay,” goes totally unspoken in normal circumstances, except in the occasional summing up of a negative vote outcome, as in “the nays have it.”

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Politics Politics Feature

Numbed by the Numbers: County Commission Struggles to Agree on Budget

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Separate attempts to produce a budget for Shelby County failed to produce anything resembling a consensus on a marathon meeting day of the County Commission on Monday. Commission Chairman Mark Billingsley said he intends to call a special meeting for next week to see if the process can be expedited.
Jackson Baker

Commission Chairman Mark Billingsley

Billingsley told his fellow commissioners the called meeting would likely be necessary in the interests of reaching agreement on a budget, with the new fiscal year just around the corner on July 1st.

The Memorial Day holiday next week forces an adjustment of the normal schedule, which would mandate a day of committee meetings during the week, preparatory to the next regular commission meeting the week after. The holiday forces the entire sequence to occur a week later, with committee meetings scheduled for June 3rd and the next regular public meeting to be on June 8th.

Hence the need for a called meeting, especially since Monday’s meetings — a special called budget meeting, starting at 11 a.m., followed by the regular Commission meeting at 3 p.m — became embroiled in complications that were still unsnarled when the commission adjourned at nearly midnight.

“We’re getting into another day,” said budget chair Eddie Jones wearily, with the clock moving toward the witching hour and one of the Webinar meeting’s participants, an administration staffer participating from home and having to alternate her contributions with soothing words for a restless two-year-old. “That sounds wonderful,” was the wistful comment of Commissioner Mick Wright on this audible reminder of a domestic life beyond numbers-crunching.

Various formulas have been adduced for dealing with a looming budget deficit that had looked to be as large as $10 million even before the effects of the coronavirus crisis pushed things even further into fiscal crisis.

In mid-April, County Mayor Lee Harris had proposed a $1.4 billion “lean and balanced” budget, with $13.6 million in specified cuts offset by a $16.50 raise in the county’s motor vehicle registration tax, a.k.a. the wheel tax. A majority of commissioners could not be found to agree, and alternative budget proposals, all with different versions of austerity, have since been floated, one by Commissioner Brandon Morrison, another by budget chair Jones, working more or less in tandem with vice chair Edmund Ford.

Among the issues raised by Monday’s day-long discussion was that of whether, as county Chief Financial Officer Mathilde Crosby contended, the proposals offered by Jones and Ford focused overmuch on cuts in administrative departments, thereby paralleling what has been something of a running feud between Harris and Ford based, as more than a few observers see it, as a potential long-term political rivalry between the two.

Crosby also offered criticism that the Jones-Ford proposals for budget-cutting ignored distinctions between the county’s general fund and various dedicated funds for mandated functions.

Another potential issue is that of the county tax rate, currently pegged at $4.05 per $100 of assessed value. Commissioner Reginald Milton, for one, believes that the rate is set artificially low because of simple mathematical error and that this factor is bound to doom the county to endless future variations of the current budget scramble until the rate is recalculated. The current rate has so far been reaffirmed in two of the three readings required for passage.

The budget issue is predominating over other matters, though the commission did reach an agreement Monday on what had been a controversial proposal by Commissioner Tami Sawyer for an ordinance requiring, on penalty of $50 fine, that residents and visitors wear protective face masks in public areas. Sawyer recast her proposal in the form of a resolution requesting such a requirement by the Health Department but providing for no fine. The resolution passed 8-5 on a party-line vote, with the Commission’s Democrats voting for and the Republicans voting against.

Another matter of consequence that awaits the commission is the matter of new voting machines for Shelby County. The commission has twice voted a preference that the county invest in a system of hand-marked paper ballots in time for the August county general election and federal-state primaries, but the Shelby County Election Commission has approved the recommendation of Election Administrator Linda Phillips that new ballot-marking machines from the ES&S Company be purchased instead.

With the elections approaching, the need for a decision soon increases. The process requires that Harris sign an order authorizing the purchase of a new system, after which the commission must vote for its funding. At issue is whether the commission will approve the Phillips/SCEC request or act according to its own preference for the hand-marked system.

A sizable and well-organized group of local activists is pushing for the latter option, on grounds, among others, that a system of hand-marked ballots would be cheaper, more transparent, and less vulnerable to hacking.

Other, related aspects of the controversy include allegations from the activist ranks of potential conflicts of interest involving Phillips and family members and a concern that purchase of the ES&S machines would involve an implicit need to purchase a new voter-registration system from the same company.

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Politics Politics Feature

Commission Gets $1.4 Billion “Lean” Budget from Harris

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Here’s one for you: What’s the difference between $10 million and $13.6 million?
The answer to that is two weeks. In that amount of time, Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris raised the floor on what he considered the minimum amount of spending cuts needed in the county’s 2020-2021 budget year.

On April 6th, Harris presented a plan to the Shelby County Commission calling for $10 million in cuts, spread among various departments of county government. In a lengthy discussion of alternative methods of reducing the budget, the commission decided to put off action on Harris’ plan.

In the meantime, the mayor has recalculated and increased the tab for what he considered necessary as a means, without raising taxes, to get the county through the dismal current reality of continued shutdown followed by uncertainty. Actually, Harris did propose a mite of increased taxpayer obligation to accompany his proposed austerity budget revealed on Monday — a “lean and balanced” one of $1.4 billion. The increase would be in the form of a $16.50 raise in the county’s motor vehicle registration tax, a.k.a., the wheel tax.

This is the second time of late that the wheel tax has figured as a component of a plan by Harris to raise revenue. The first time was earlier in the year when the mayor proposed an incremental increase in the wheel tax to finance a new contribution to the Memphis Area Transit Authority in the interests of expanding MATA’s purview.

Objections to that proposal from various commissioners and members of the public — no few of them noting that the wheel tax, as originally conceived, was meant to be restricted to education — scuttled that approach and forced the county to find other means to fund its MATA contribution.

But now it’s baaack! And, as repurposed in the mayor’s budgetary plan, it drew more tentative fire than before, with Republican Commissioner Brandon Morrison, who said she could support the precedent, nevertheless invoking the dread metaphor of “the slippery slope.”

Firmly but a bit apologetically, Harris pointed out that Shelby County’s property tax, sales tax, and hotel-motel tax were all at levels too high to push any further and that the county’s automobile license tax was at an “average enough level among equivalent state fees” that it had the right amount of give.

The two other components of the mayor’s austerity budget involved the aforementioned $13.6 million in cuts and a $6 million borrowing from the county’s fund balance, leaving that reserve fund at the comfortable go-no-lower level of $85 million.

Under probing from various commissioners, Harris defended his recommendations by saying explicitly that without cuts of the sort he proposed, the county would have to go up on taxes — “it’s one or the other” — and might have to impose layoffs, also.

Democratic Commissioner Tami Sawyer voiced a concern that, even should Harris’ cuts be adopted, layoffs might be around the corner.

The mayor’s proposed budget would shore up the target areas of health, public safety, and the social safety net, and it contains several new or protected expenditures — approximately $4 million to fund 30 new additional patrolman positions in the Sheriff’s Department, needed “to patrol the soon-to-be de-annexed areas” of Memphis; a second dose of $8.5 million to Pre-K and early Pre-K, as well as “$427 million for schools, in addition to $33 million in school construction needs this year.”

The budget also contains commitments for funding continued actions for relief and treatment during the COVID-19 epidemic.

The commissioners, who rejected the specifics of a hiring freeze proposed two weeks ago by Harris and resisted at the time by county department heads, adopted one of their own on Monday — a more lenient version that would freeze hiring and spending through June 30th but contained appeal procedures that Harris said made it a “soft freeze” compared to what had been his “hard stop.”

The freeze adopted Monday was sponsored by Republican commissioners Mick Wright and Morrison and got the seven votes needed for passage, with most Democratic commissioners either voting no or abstaining. 

Without being specific, Democratic Commissioner Edmund Ford Jr., a persistent critic of the mayor, compared Harris’ projected plans to some adopted in 2014 by the Memphis City Council on which both he and Harris served. Those financial arrangements would lower the county’s bond rating and draw the attention of the state comptroller, Ford said.

In related action on Monday, the commission unanimously approved the county tax rate for 2020-2021 — keeping the rate at its current level of $4.05 per assessed value of $100.

The commission also voted 7-4-1 in favor of a resolution, sponsored by Democratic commissioners Tami Sawyer, Michael Whaley, and Van Turner, requesting Governor Bill Lee to sanction no-excuse absentee voting for the duration of the coronavirus shutdown and expressing a preference for machines allowing voter-marked ballots. That vote was more or less along party lines — 7-5-1, with Democrat Ford joining several Republicans in opposition.

Online Glitches
Commissioners and other personnel participating in the commission’s meetings have by now gotten used to the webinar means of virtual electronic communication, whereby each participant tunes in from separate computer stations and discussions proceed more or less along the lines of Robert’s Rules of Order.
Jackson Baker

Mark Billingsley

But their familiarity has another side to it — highly noticeable Monday when a few commissioners allowed their lines to stay open during discussion, thereby picking up traces of private conversation and domestic soundtracks.

That fact, along with technological glitches in the presentation of the Harris budget, complicated the process of communication on Monday and kept GOP commission chair Mark Billingsley calling for order in that regard. 

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Politics Politics Feature

Shelby County Commission Tackles Issues With State Legislature

The March 3rd Super Tuesday vote, with presidential preference primaries favoring Democrat Joe Biden and President Donald Trump, and nominating Joe Brown and Paul Boyd, respectively, as the Democratic and Republican candidates for General Sessions Court clerk, has come and gone.

But there was still politics to be found locally. In a lengthy, oddly contentious meeting of the Shelby County Commission on Monday, political factors weighed heavily on several controversial issues, most of which were resolved either unanimously or via one-sided votes. A pair of hot-button issues were addressed in the form of late add-on resolutions at the close of Monday’s meeting, which had already generated significant steam via the regular agenda.

One of the add-on resolutions opposed Republican Governor Bill Lee‘s proposal for open-carry legislation, at least for Shelby County, and passed the Commission by a bipartisan 10-1 vote, the lone vote in opposition coming from GOP Commissioner Mick Wright, who chose to let his dissent speak for itself.

The resolution was co-sponsored by Republican David Bradford and Democrat Tami Sawyer. The minimal discussion of the measure was itself bipartisan, with, for example, Democrat Reginald Milton and Republican Amber Mills making similar declarations of being pro-Second Amendment but citing opposition to the open-carry measure from law enforcement officials.

Specifically, the resolution’s enacting clause asks that any open-carry measure exclude Shelby County: “Now, therefore, be it resolved the Board of County Commissioners of Shelby County Tennessee be carved out of any and all permitless gun carry legislation.”

It should be noted that in a separate action over the weekend, the Shelby County Democratic Executive Committee unanimously passed its own resolution condemning Senate Bill 2671/House Bill 2817, the permitless-carry legislation, citing similar objections — noting that, for example, “the Memphis Mayor, Memphis Police Director, and the Shelby County Sheriff have already spoken out against the bill.”

Another late add-on resolution at Monday’s commission meeting was introduced by Sawyer. It would have repeated the commission’s previous stand in favor of voter-marked paper ballot machines in Shelby County and included an exhortation to the General Assembly to “support legislation for paper ballot on-demand options,” thereby tying into specific ongoing legislation to that end.

Further, and importantly, the resolution provides an alternative to holding a public referendum authorizing new voting machines, as apparently required under a newly unearthed provision of state law. It underscores the authority of the county commission itself, “as the governing body of Shelby County” to purchase new voting machines, and notes the subsequent reallocation last month by the commission of capital improvement funds as a means of doing so. The resolution would not be acted on directly but was by unanimous consent referred to the next meeting of the commission’s general government committee.

Commissioner Sawyer appended to the resolution a copy of a letter signed by five Republican legislators representing Shelby County and addressed to the three Republican members of the Shelby County Election Commission.

The letter, on the official letterhead of state Senator Brian Kelsey, carried two specific “recommendations” to the GOP SCEC members. One directly opposes voter-marked ballots, stating that “[a]llowing voters to handle and mark paper inevitably opens the election process to numerous unnecessary human errors” and that “reverting back to technology from the 1990s would be a huge mistake.”

A second “recommendation” needs  to be quoted in its entirely: “Second, in order to ensure that everyone has the same opportunity to vote and to limit the financial strains on the taxpayers, we recommend seven days of early voting be conducted at all satellite voting locations in Shelby County, preceded by eight days of early voting at the Shelby County Election Commission office. Opening only one early voting location in the Agricenter, as was done in 2018, was wrong and in violation of state law. The solution we propose will fix this problem.”

Buried in this somewhat disingenuous language is the idea of cutting back the amount of time devoted to satellite early voting from two weeks to a single week.

Sawyer was pointed and defiant in the citation of the Kelsey letter, saying that its recommendations and circumlocutions alike, as well as the confinement of the communication to Republican members of the SCEC, constituted an affront to the commission and to the process of resolving the voting-machine issue in an orderly, conscientious manner.

“The letter undermines this board,” she declared, insisting that her condemnation of the letter be given maximum public exposure.

The voting-machine issue was not the only matter to invoke the possibility of cross-purposes between county and state authorities. An unexpected controversy arose over a proposal, advanced by Commissioners Milton and Van Turner at the behest of County Mayor Lee Harris, to allocate $33,799 for a Veterans Service Officer in Shelby County. Commissioner Mills, who with colleague Edmund Ford, had been to Nashville last week to discuss county-government needs with state officials, asked for a postponement of the action, insisting that she had been promised the prospect of not one, but five such officers for Shelby County via state action, and that county action on the matter could scuttle the state effort.

An argument ensued between Mills and Harris, with the mayor, backed by several members of the commission, expressing disbelief that county action on the matter would provoke a punitive reaction in Nashville. But in the end a narrow vote approved a deferral of the issue to the commission meeting of April 20th.

Modest controversy arose, too, over the commission’s action in approving  a paid parental leave policy for county employees. The annual price tag of the proposal, $830,000, to be paid for by internet sales tax revenues, was objected to by Republican Commissioners Mills and Brandon Morrison, who cited a looming $85 million county deficit, and abstained from an otherwise unanimous vote of approval.

Democrats at the Ready

Jackson Baker

Among those gathered Saturday morning at Kirby High School for preliminary party caucuses before this summer’s Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee were (l to r) Rick Maynard, U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, and David Upton.

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Politics Politics Feature

Ballot Bombshell: Election Machine Issue Becomes Moot

Some drama was expected, but nothing like the more-than-audible gasp that exuded from the audience at Monday’s meeting of the Shelby County Commission, when Tami Sawyer articulated what was suddenly and shockingly becoming obvious:

“There will be no new machines in 2020,” said Sawyer, summarizing it all in an epiphany after an hour or so of intense debate and argument on both sides of the speakers’ dock regarding what sort of new voting machines the county should get in its long-planned buy in time for the August election cycle locally.

County Election Coordinator Linda Phillips had been making and repeating that promise of new machines for most of the last year, kindling up an ever-growing local controversy as to which type of machine. On Sunday she had published a viewpoint in The Commercial Appeal in which the following two sentences were the key ones: “Now that we are about to replace our outdated voting equipment, the controversy has reached the boiling point. I have spent my career conducting elections, and I’d like to share my viewpoint.”

Jackson Baker

House District 97 candidate Gabby Salinas (l), one of two Democrats running, enjoys an exotic Mideastern dance in her honor at a weekend fundraiser.

Phillips’ viewpoint, as spread out over two pages in the paper, was that ballot-marking devices (BMDs) are superior to voter-marked paper ballots (VMPBs) because, she argued, they are more secure from error, though she acknowledged they were somewhat more expensive as machinery. A contrary point of view is being argued by a determined group of local voter-reform activists, who stress that the hand-marked method is cheaper and more easily checked for accuracy and that the ballot-marking devices favored by Phillips are eminently hackable.

To underscore the latter point, one of the VMPB advocates, Bennie Smith, who doubles as a Democratic member of the Shelby County Commission and styles himself an expert on voting technology, had demonstrated to a previous meeting of the commission that he could insert a predetermined vote total into a result line of the BMD machine’s paper readout.

Both kinds of machine, Phillips has pointed out, possess a “paper trail” capability allowing voters to see and approve a printout of their ballot. (Critics of BMDs, the machines employing ballot-marked devices, complain that voters are asked to base their comparison ultimately on an unintelligible bar code.)

Anyway, the verbal battle was raging as usual on Monday, though Phillips herself was absent, when everything became moot.

Prompted by commission chairman Mark Billingsley, Marcy Ingram, deputy county attorney and de facto legal adviser to commission members, announced to the assembly at large that state law — to wit, TCA 29-111 — forbade any purchase of new voting technology without a prior voter referendum.

“Yes, Mr. Chairman earlier today, we determined that in the budget, the commission has a lot of leeway to use CIP funds, general obligation bonds, to pay for the voting machines. And there’s a statute on the books that’s about 15 years old that says that if you use general obligation bonds you do have to put it out to the voters to let them decide whether or not this is appropriate. So, with that being said, you would have to have a special election or have to put the item on the August ballot, if you intend to use CIP.”

Billingsley reinforced the point: “So in layman’s language for people in the audience and people listening at home … there would have to be a referendum.”

“That would be correct,” Ingram replied. And moments later, Commissioner Sawyer expressed the bottom line: “No new machines in 2020.”

Sawyer went on to argue — in the long run, successfully — that it would still be useful to vote on the resolution that had been in question before the bombshell.

That was Agenda Item #33: “Resolution of the Board of County Commissioners of Shelby County, Tennessee, urging the Shelby County Election Commission to pursue a voter-marked paper ballot approach when spending county funds for new voting equipment.” The primary sponsors of the resolution were Commissioners Van Turner, Willie Brooks, Sawyer, and Reginald Milton.

The background was the fact that the Shelby County Election Commission had, at Phillips’ request, issued an RFP (request for proposal) to potential bidders who would supply new voting machines for use by her promised date of August, and the controversy over which kind of machine had flared up there.

On the basis of the divided responsibilities built into Shelby County government — in this case, that, while the SCEC could decide on the machinery, the county commission could vote Yes or No on whether to fund the purchase — the advocates of hand-marked ballots, prevented from speaking at SCEC on grounds that the RFP was underway, had resolved to take their case to the commision.

Before attorney Ingram’s bombshell announcement, the VMPB activists — law professor and former County Commissioner Steve Mulroy, teacher and recent city council candidate Erika Sugarmon, former legislator and school board member Mike Kernell, and veteran rights activist Dr. Suhkara A. Yahweh — had pleaded their case, with eloquence and examples.

It was all for naught, though there would indeed be a vote on the agenda item, expressing a preference for ultimate use of hand-marked ballots by a de facto party-line vote of 7-6, with yea votes coming from Democrats Brooks, Mickell Lowery, Eddie Jones, Milton, Sawyer, Michael Whaley, and Turner and no votes coming from Republicans Mick Wright, David Brandon, Amber Mills, Brandon Morrison, chairman Billingsley, and Democrat Edmund Ford.

Jackson Baker

Commissioner Wright cited the fundamental irony

In the fallout from the bombshell, there was general discontent from commissioners, whatever their ideology or point of view on the merits of particular machines, that word of the potential predicament had not been sounded long before, that, as Chairman Billingsley put it, “the people charged with the election would have made us aware of this by now.”

Commissioner Wright cited the ultimate irony of the situation: “It’s disappointing that the state has this rule in place, that the voters would have to vote using the system we want to replace in order to have the system that we want to replace be replaced.”