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Amid Re-shuffling of Vaccine Policy, Harris Keeps Stiff Upper Lip

Harris on Zoom call with Commission

“I don’t think there’s a lot of time right now to do a lot of navel-gazing. We need to keep on plowing here and moving forward.” That was Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris’ way, at a Friday afternoon press conference, of summing up what had to have been one of the most harrowing weeks that any public figure has endured of late.

During the past week, 1) a 100-year snow caused a water crisis and immobilized his and other local jurisdictions, which found themselves locked down, not by government mandate, but by Mother Nature; 2) a county vaccine-distribution program, already regarded as problematic, was halted by state edict (not without some subtle shaming by state authorities) and turned over to the city of Memphis and other local agencies, public and private; 3) the director of the county Health Department, Alisa Haushalter, resigned amid a widening scandal related to a state investigation revealing the spoiling locally of 2,500 unused vaccine doses.

Prior to the press conference, Harris had spent a visibly uncomfortable two hours sitting Buddha-like in a special called meeting of the Shelby County Commission, whose members took turns grilling him on the import and details of the vaccine debacle. There was concern among some commissioners about an alleged “power struggle” between city and county. Commissioner Van Turner rejected what he saw as a misleading sub-text here and there questioning the mayor’s performance.

There was little brand-new information adduced in the dialogue with the commission, aside from the revelation of the Haushalter departure, which had leaked out earlier Friday, and references to “suspicious activity” and alleged theft of vaccine from the Pipkin/Fairgrounds vaccine-distribution site that had stirred law enforcement inquiries at the site. Going forward, Pipkin will be operated by the  by the city of Memphis, in tandem with UT Health Sciences.

In the later press conference, Harris revisited some of the content of the commision meeting. In his Zoom talk with reporters, he shouldered the potentially humiliating loss of surrendering responsibility for vaccine storage. He accepted it in the spirit of “it-is-what-it-is” and vowed to seek “a new working relationship and a clean slate” working in harness with the state, the city, and the other agencies charged now with distribution of vaccines and administration of vaccinations.

Harris vowed to “put forth the best practices” and said he was having “departments engaged in remediation planning” and ”moving their focus away from vaccine administration.” He said he was having daily conversations with Lisa Piercey, director of the state Health Department of Health, who on Monday publicly terminated the county Health Department’s responsibility for storage and allocation of vaccine supplies.

Harris was diplomatic about how it came to pass that Haushalter resigned. “We had been in conversation about the path forward and the appropriate path forward at this juncture, based on what had happened and based on what Director Haushalter wants to do. … I agreed with her decision to resign. So I prefer to, you know, try to treat all our employees with respect and dignity, and particularly because all of our employees devoted their careers to service or community helping. So the decision was ultimately made, that she was resigning, and I accepted that resignation.”

Haushalter, who did not attend either the commission meeting or the press conference, will cease her duties as of March 15th, but will evidently remain on the county’s human resources roster until March 31st. Haushalter had been appointed to her directorship by former county Mayor Mark Luttrell and was inherited by Harris when he began his mayoralty in 2018.

Said Harris: “All of us are learning about the wasted dosage, that there were doses expiring in the pharmacy, and so forth. And so we’re gonna have to work hard to rebuild trust. … I’ve talked about making sure that we change out some of those personnel that have responsibility for management.” As for replacing Haushalter, “We’ll go through a process of trying to identify a really incredible candidate for this time. I mean, this is a very unique time that I don’t think any of us have seen in our lifetime. Our public health employees are burning the candle at both ends. … They’ve been working extremely hard. And I think we have an opportunity here to get someone who is poised for this moment.”

Asked about his ability to interface positively with others, Harris said, “I have a good relationship with at least the executive branch of the city. And with respect to … other folks in town, with respect to the commission, a great working relationship with them. I think this is just a challenging period for everyone, particularly, you know, all of us on the Joint Task Force. You know, we’re all exhausted, because of the pandemic. We’re all frustrated. We all want things faster. We all want more quickly, we all want to be better. But I think on the whole, given where we are on such a tough road ahead. I’m pretty blessed.”

Harris’ determination to discover silver linings extended to one of the revelations from the state investigation that resulted in this week’s reordering of responsibilities — the fact of 50,000 unused vaccine doses in Shelby County. This extra inventory, he noted, happened to be the solution to the mounting determination in various quarters to reopen the schools and simultaneously to vaccinate Shelby County’s teachers.

“That was always the plan.” And, Harris said, it began to seem like it was a possibility during the snowstorm, around February, when we started saying, ‘Okay, we’re going to reopen!’”

Harris concluded his press availability with a promise to be forthcoming with the public henceforward. “So please,bear with me, okay?”

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Harris Teases Austerity Budget He’ll Present to Commissioners

In advance of Monday’s regular meeting of the Shelby County Commission, County Mayor Lee Harris released a brief summary of the budget proposal that he intends to lay before the Commission.

Headed “Shelby County’s Come-back,” Harris’ summary advised that “serious cuts” are coming, but said that “the proposed budget meets our obligation to our retirees by fully funding our pension” and “includes strategic investments in education, public safety, public health, emergency preparedness, and in strengthening the social safety net.”

County Mayor Lee Harris

The proposed $1.4 billion budget, said Harris, would make it possible to “hire more social workers, more personnel to assist our veterans’ population, and create a new COVID-assistance fund to provide direct assistance to families hard-hit by this worldwide public health emergency.” It would also “fully fund … our commitment to Public Health.”

Additions in this budget would include 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.

On the education front, the budget would allocate $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.”

“[T]his budget requires us tighten our belts,” Harris said. “This budget proposes serious cuts. This budget will require us all to make some tough decisions, like everyone else in America right now.”

A fuller presentation of budget specifics (and the Commission’s reaction) will be noted in the wake of Monday’s Commission meeting.

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News News Blog

Coronavirus: Mayor Harris Declares State of Emergency, County Sees Early Indications of Community Spread

Shelby County officials said Thursday that there are early indications of COVID-19 community transmission in the county.

Alisa Haushalter, director of the Shelby County Health Department, said based on the department’s investigations thus far, “we believe we are starting to see the very beginnings of community transmission.”

“This is a pivotal moment in the epidemic and we really need everybody to lean in and do what they can to reduce transmission,” Haushalter. “That goes for employers who need to look at alternate ways to allow people to work from home or potentially changing their operations to reduce contact.

“Also to individuals who can make decisions about not going to a restaurant or a place where there are more than 10 people. I believe fundamentally and collectively we can reduce the impact in our community.”

There are now 10 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Shelby County. The last six cases were reported to health officials from commercial labs Wednesday evening.

Haushalter said these cases are not connected to the first four cases in the county and that the majority of the new cases are associated with travel. The department has not been able to determine the travel or possible exposure for one of the new cases. This is an early indication of community spread, Haushalter said.

As more cases are confirmed, Haushalter said the health department will begin posting the ages of the patients so that the public can “have a better sense of what age categories are being impacted.”

“Ideally, this will serve as a reminder to the public that this is impacting our community, it’s continuing to spread, and that we all have a part to pay to reduce the impact in the community,” Haushalter said.

Because of this, Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris declared a local state of emergency Thursday. This move will allow the county to apply for federal funding to address the COVID-19 pandemic locally. This will put the county in a position to receive vital aid and streamline the process to obtain equipment and supplies to address the pandemic, Harris said.

“It is even more critical that we begin the process of long term planning for how we will care for patients that develop severe cases and need intensive treatment,” Harris said. “There is reason to believe that the number of patients with severe reactions could be relatively large.”

Early Wednesday, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland issued a declaration of emergency to better facilitate the city’s response to the virus.

The total number of confirmed cases in Tennessee is up to 154 as of Thursday afternoon. The majority of those are still concentrated in Middle Tennessee’s Davidson and Williamson Counties.

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News News Blog

County Poised to Invest Record Amount in Pre-K

Porter Leath

A pre-k class at Porter Leath

Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris’ 2020 budget proposal will include the largest investment in pre-K in county history, according to officials.

Harris announced Tuesday that the budget allocates $6 million for pre-K and early childhood education.

The mayor will present his full proposed budget to the Shelby County Commission on April 29th.

If approved, $5.5 million will go toward pre-K classrooms and the remaining $500,000 will be allocated to the Porter-Leath organization for Early Head Start, a program that helps families care for their infants and toddlers through comprehensive services. Porter-Leath will use that investment to leverage more than $4 million in additional resources, officials said.

The mayor’s budget is also expected to identify a dedicated funding source for early childhood education.

“If funding is approved, we have a chance to increase literacy, the likelihood of high school graduation, and, further down the road, employability,” Harris said. “We have a chance to ignite a boom in community benefit.”

This comes as an $8 million grant that has funded 1,000 students since 2014 is set to run out in June. The county and city plan to invest $16.6 in pre-K by 2022, which should fund those 1,000 seats plus an additional 1,000 more.

The city began looking at funding county-wide pre-K last year, putting $3 million of excess city revenues as seed money into a dedicated fund. Additionally, a portion of city property tax revenue and taxes paid by companies whose PILOT (pay-in-lieu-of-taxes) incentive has expired began going to the fund.

The Memphis City Council and the Shelby County Commission both voted in March to select a fiscal agent that will manage and raise additional dollars for the pre-K fund. The fiscal agent will also be tasked with creating high-quality pre-K classrooms.


The city and county have not yet announced who the fiscal agent will be. 

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Cover Feature News

Lee Harris Looks to Lead

On August 2nd, the voters of Shelby County resoundingly voted for Lee Harris, a law professor at the University of Memphis, a former city councilman, and the Democrats’ leader in the state Senate, to be county mayor for the next four years. Harris, who was sworn in on August 30th in a joint ceremony with other county officials, is still in the early stages of organizing his mayoralty. On Monday, he sat down with the Flyer in his 11th-floor office in the Vasco Smith County Administration building to discuss the prospect of things to come.

Photographs by Justin Fox Burks

You’re going from the position of being a minority legislative leader to being a county executive. What’s it like in those circumstances, going from one branch of government to another?

I think there’s a huge difference. I didn’t realize how big a difference there was until I got here a couple of weeks ago. You really have your hand on the lever in this office, no doubt about it, and you can effectuate change and drive a message and an agenda. That’s much better! No doubt about it.

As a minority leader in the Senate, I had a role in putting messages in the pipeline and putting the brake on some things. But here you get to set the stage for change. And before I was part-time. Now I can do this every single day, all day long, bringing beneficial change for our community. Two early examples have been the opportunity to appoint Patrice Thomas as CAO and Marlinee Iverson as county attorney.

I know you’re aware of the schism that has existed between your predecessor, Mayor Mark Luttrell, and the Shelby County Commission the last couple of years. Can you avoid something like that?

I didn’t realize how bad it was until I won the election and began the process of settling in. It’s even worse than you reported. I don’t think they got along well. I gave Mayor Luttrell high marks in terms of leadership and the team he put together, but he really fell down in terms of relating to the commission.

Like this idea, four years ago, of separate inauguration ceremonies for the mayor and the commission. There was the expectation that I was going to have a separate ceremony. I thought, “Are you kidding me? If we do, we’ll start off on the wrong foot.” This is local government, not Washington, D.C., and all of us in local government should be on the same page. [Outgoing commission chair] Heidi Shafer did a great job working with me to make a unity ceremony, bringing together a lot of stakeholders. So far we’re getting along very well.  

As for why they [Luttrell and commissioners] didn’t get along, part of it was a matter of perspective. On both the 11th floor [site of mayor’s office] and the 6th floor [site of commission offices] it’s too easy to surround yourself with fans feeding your point of view. But I’ve served as a local legislative official on the city council; so I know they [members of the legislative branch] expect somebody to communicate and work with them.

Your profile on the Shelby County website notes, “He has won numerous awards because of his work in politics and government.” What awards do you take most satisfaction from?

I just won one a couple of days ago for environmental justice. I joined with others to point out contamination of water at  TVA’s new power plant and got them to stop drilling. And there are only 10 states that have a law requiring pure water in public schools. Tennessee became the 10th state because of legislation I sponsored. If they find lead contaminant at a school, they’ll have to take that water out of circulation and replace it with water free from contamination. I worked with Senator Bo Watson on that one.

Then I sponsored bills, some with [Senator] Brian Kelsey, to get ourselves into the conversation on the aquifer. We got the Ground Water Control Board to start meeting and write new rules for drilling, and to work with the University of Memphis on aquifer issues. You have to make the effort to get all the stakeholders involved. In Nashville, there are a lot of stakeholders involved on issues all the time. 

You have to deal with a lot of polarities in government, don’t you? Democrats vs. Republicans, cities vs. suburbs, blacks vs. whites, and so forth.

Yes. One of the first persons I talked to in Nashville and tried to befriend was [Representative] Andy Holt. He’s a teacher, a part-time professor, and he  likes to talk about economics, and I don’t mind talking about economics. He likes to talk about Republican orthodoxy, and I love to talk about Republican orthodoxy and what they should be doing, about how they’re concentrating on giveaways instead of being true to the free market. We’ve sponsored bills together. He was skeptical of me for a long time. You can find common ground with anyone.

At your first campaign debate with Republican nominee David Lenoir, you mentioned “segregation” as a major county issue. Would you elaborate on that?

Yes, sure. De facto segregation is still with us — schools and all the major places. How do we combat it? With high-quality schools that everybody wants to go to, that create interaction. Schools like White Station and Central and some others create diversity to a certain extent, and it helps for people to grow up in diversity. When I was growing up, there was no white person in my house, ever. I lived in a segregated neighborhood. My parents and I didn’t ever encounter anybody who didn’t look like us, unless maybe a repair-person. I don’t think I really talked with anybody white until Overton High School. [Smiles ruefully] And then, of course, I went to an all-black college.

Someone has quoted you as saying you want to put $300 million into the schools. What are your plans?

Well I don’t think I said a specific number. But, yes, there’s a lot of need for more investment in our school systems. I don’t want to get into the weeds on specific structural issues. That’s one of those things that’s been a distraction for years. I’m saying that, no matter what, there’s room for investment in education. And I think everybody in the community wants to see more investment. We need both more funding and more accountability. I’m one of the few Democrats, by the way, who say we haven’t made gains fast enough. I’m not a cheerleader unless we’ve been stone-cold successful.

Is the independence of the public schools from direct control by the mayor and commission a barrier?

Yes, and the first thing I’m going to do on Monday will be to announce to the commission my intention to appoint an educational liaison officer. That’s step number one: someone to work with Shelby County Schools and the other stakeholders. Way down the line are structural and legal challenges. First we need to get everybody connected — mayor, county commission, superintendent, school boards, etc.

That sounds like something your opponent David Lenoir talked about. 

Lenoir did talk about it. Oh, yeah, I got it from him. I spent a career as a [law school] teacher. The best teachers in my view are really great students. You learn things from the give-and-take of a conversation. The campaign was a great conversation, and that was a good idea. Schools are a major expense, and we need a liaison. 

What persuaded you to run for County Mayor?

Two friends, Steve Mulroy and David Upton, hounded me about it. They explained to me things about this role, and I became convinced. There were two major considerations: Can you win? And the other is much more service-minded. If you win, would it really make that much of a difference? I concluded “Yes” on both fronts. Even if I didn’t win, I thought I could change the entire conversation, I knew I would force everybody else to talk about things in a totally different way.

My opponent would talk about tax cuts, people leaving the county, made-up stuff. The only way to grow your county is to make your county attractive to move into, with great schools, great neighborhoods and people, and good public transit. If I wasn’t in the race, nobody would talk about those things.
And I think it was right that I could hold on to the Democratic vote and stretch out to get others better than some predecessors. Some people think that to get the urban vote you’ve got to be a certain kind of candidate, that if you’re not behind on your taxes and haven’t piled up bankruptcies, you’re not qualified. Such folk don’t think a lot of the voters. The voters want high-quality representation. I talk the same way in Collierville as I do in Orange Mound.

Lenoir did take you to task on some crime issues.

Well, criminal justice, in my view, is not a bumper sticker. There’s such a thing as being “tough on crime” for the sake of being tough — without making us safer. The “Crooks with Guns” bill he talked about, for example, giving previously convicted felons stiff penalties merely for possessing a gun. If you’ve committed a crime, I’m happy to give you 10 years [in incarceration]. If you’re asleep in town, and a weapon is found under your mattress, I’m not happy about giving you 10 years. That’s more than you’d get if you raped somebody or committed manslaughter.  

And there was my opposition to the Drug-Free School Zones bill, with its dramatically stiffer penalties. I argued we should have incremental reform. My position was supported by both the ACLU and the Koch Brothers, by the way. The 1,000-foot radius of that bill swallows entire communities. Liberally defined, you’re almost always in a school zone in the city of Memphis, which means that a drug sale there can get you eight to 15 years instead of 11 to 29 months if you’re not in a school zone. 

In Tennessee’s four urban counties, you’re almost always in a school zone; in the other 91, you’re almost never in one. So urban violators are penalized enormously and unfairly more than rural ones for exactly the same crimes.

Crime control should be like a three-legged stool. The first leg is arrest and prosecution. The second has to do with education and other preventive efforts to keep people from going down the wrong path. We need to emphasize pre-K, K-12, and teaching vocational skills. The third leg is re-entry. The county runs the re-entry office, and I’m going to have an announcement on that in the next 10 days. We’ve got to make sure we are meaningfully reintegrating people into the community.

Memphis Mayor Strickland has his Memphis 3.0 project. Do you envision doing something similar?

I don’t do a lot of planning, a lot of committees. I talk to people in the communities. I know what they want. In order to bring stakeholders together you may have to do some planning, but it’s not my custom. I usually vote no on them and don’t participate in any of them. Like the city council committee  to rename parks when I was on the council. They formed a committee. I couldn’t believe it! What is there to talk about? I just don’t know what there is to study. You either do something or you don’t. Either you pick up the trash or you don’t. And instead of firing somebody, the school system hires a “consultant” to look into the grading scandal!

What’s your take on the current dissatisfaction with EDGE [the city/county industrial recruitment board]?

I don’t plan to get involved in that unless the county commission really desires my presence on this new task force. We do need new leadership in the Chamber of Commerce, though, and new leadership all over the place. But EDGE is a priority for special interests. Of the 950,000 people in the county, 949,000 of them do not care about EDGE — absolutely, positively do not care about this issue at all. Things that people really care about are education, health care, and transit issues.

We need to do something to improve health care and to take care of Regional One [aka The Med], our only public hospital. Utilities are a big issue for everybody, and MLGW functions as an instrument of taxation, also. Should there be voting representatives from the county at large on the MLGW board? Probably. 

And the EDGE board should have some regular people on it, too, just people from the neighborhoods. It’s the quintessential special interest. PILOTs [payments-in-lieu-of-taxes as an incentive for business] surrender too much revenue. Of course, businesses come here in order to make profits. To get them here, we’ve got to make this an attractive place to live. We need to invest in neighborhoods, invest in education, workforce development. I don’t think anybody seriously thought we were in competition for Amazon.

Frankly, we could shut down EDGE and give everybody a tax cut. If you cut taxes on everybody, we’d get more investment and more economic activity. If there’s a county commissioner out there who wants to take the lead on a tax cut, have at it! I’m not taking a position, other than to say I’m not for raising taxes. Tax cuts benefit everybody. A lot of this other stuff does not register.

Going forward, I think we’re going to be talking about education, public safety, and taxes. I don’t think people want to get distracted about these sideshow issues. 

Looking ahead, do you think two terms as mayor are going to be necessary?

Yes. I think there are lots of things that can be done in the short term, but lots of things, too, that are going to take more than four years.