Tag: Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Shafer’s Commission Colleagues Back Her Move on Opioid Suit

CREDIT: JB

JB

Shafer, making the case for immediate legal action against opioid distributors

As of Wednesday morning, armed with a fresh vote of confidence from her Commission colleagues, Shelby County Commission chair Heidi Shafer seems, at least temporarily, to have won her gamble in claiming the right to file for damages against a variety of opioid distributors on behalf of Shelby 
County.

The nine members present at a special called meeting in Commission chambers, midway of the body’s regular Wednesday morning agenda schedule, voted 8-1 to support Shafer’s action, announced by her at a hastily called press conference last Thursday, in contracting with a national law firm to file such a suit.

County Mayor Mark Luttrell, objecting to Shafer’s action as a usurpation of the sole contracting authority he contends the county charter gives the administration, had called a follow-up press conference on Tuesday to announce a suit of his own in Chancery Court, in the name of “Shelby County, Tennessee” as plaintiff, seeking a restraining order and temporary injunction against Shafer’s action.

In the aftermath of Tuesday’s Commission vote — unanimous except for an abstention by Walter Bailey, who had unsuccessfully moved to defer the vote — both contending parties acknowledged that Chancellor Jim Kyle, in whose court Luttrell’s action was filed, had agreed to hear the issue on Tuesday.

Shafer, understandably ebullient following Wednesday’s vote, quoted Kyle as having urged the parties “to work things out,” while County Attorney Kathryn Pascover declined further comment.

Last week’s action by Shafer, who contends that the county charter gives her “limited executive function…to carry out our legislative initiatives,” authorized the national firm of Napoli Shkolnik, in association with Julian Bolton as local counsel, to pursue legal remedies against a wide variety of drug manufacturers, distributors, pharmacists, and physicians.

(Bolton, perhaps not coincidentally, has been serving as a “policy advisor” for the Commission, which attempted to hire him as its own independent attorney but was prevented from doing so by a ruling from the County Attorney, who claims ultimate legal representation for both the executive and legislative branches of county government.)

Luttrell continues to insist that only the administration has such authority and maintains that he and the County Attorney’s office have been in contact with several firms regarding potential legal action on the opioid matter and are on course to seek action expeditiously. Shafer and her supporters on the Commission have suggested that the administration has been dragging its feet in the matter of litigation.

In a brief but animated discussion in the Commission’s upstairs committee room, immediately preceding the body’s going downstairs into the County building’s main auditorium for the special called meeting, both Shafer and Commissioner Terry Roland made pleas for immediate action on behalf of the numerous Shelby Countians, including children, who have suffered the ravages of opioid addiction as a result of rampant distribution, legal and otherwise, of painkillers.

In response to Bailey’s questioning the urgency of immediate action, Roland said, “We’ve been working on this for three years” without the administration’s pursuing action. Meanwhile, he said, he has been going to the funerals of numerous friends who have overdosed on opioids. “You tell them it’s not urgent!”

His comments and similar ones by Shafer anticipated later emotional testimony by two women at the special called meeting downstairs, who cited instances of damaged and terminated lives due to opioid addiction.

Roland had also raised another matter, a recent circumstance in which Commissioners had rejected a recommendation from the administration to switch the insurance of county employees from Cigna to Aetna. He wondered aloud if the administration was resisting pursuing damages for opioid abuse because its preferred insuror might be in the distribution network.

That was one reference to a context of disagreement beyond the specific ones touched upon in the ongoing legal actions. The fact is that the Commission and the administration have been engaged in a serious power struggle for at least two years — one stemming from the Commission’s wish to expand its oversight of numerous matters, financial and otherwise, that had previously been left, more or less, to the administration’s discretion.

Shafer’s assumption of contracting authority in the current opioid matter, and the ultimate disposition of it legally, could well constitute a serious test case in redefining the respective powers of the executive and legislative branches of county government.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

It’s Luttrell versus Shafer in Opioid Showdown

CREDIT: JB

JB

Luttrell at press conference

The Shelby County Commission, meeting in committee on Wednesday, will have the next move in a mounting confrontation between branches of government over the right legal strategy for confronting the opioid-addiction crisis in the county and the even more compelling and decisive matter of who has the legal authority to pursue that strategy.

Commission chair Heidi Shafer, accompanied by several supportive Commissioners, threw down the gauntlet last Thursday at a press conference at which she announced that, acting on her authority as chairman, she had engaged the law firm of Napoli Shkolnick to pursue a damage complaint on behalf of the county against a lengthy list of defendants, including drug manufacturers, pharmacists, and physicians.

County Mayor Mark Luttrell, who had denounced that action as a usurpation of authority last week, professed himserlf “irked” on Tuesday at a press conference of his own and followed through with an announcement that he was filing suit in Chancery Court for an injunction and restraining order against Shafer’s in presuming to execute such a contract.. Luttrell’s suit was also filed on behalf of the County and in the name of “Shelby County, Tennessee” as plaintiff.

Although the basic premise of Luttrell’s suit was that, according to the clear language of the county charter, Shafer’s action was “ultra vires” (Latin legalese for “beyond the powers” of her office), his motion for relief, listed several other alleged shortcomings, notably including the fact that, until the full Commission takes up a resolution of support for Shafer on Wednesday, it will not have formally conferred any statement of support for her.

Shafer had previously expressed confidence that she would have the backing of a clear Commission majority — one numerous enough both to pass a resolution of support and to supply the 8 votes from the 13-member body that would be necessary to override a potential mayoral veto of that resolution.

But, regardless of parliamentary outcomes, the fundamental issues of this latest confrontation between mayoral and Commission authority will apparently be resolved judicially.

In taking her action, Shafer alleged, among other things, that the administration had failed to act “expeditiously” on an issue that the state, by filing for remedies of its own in the opioid-addition matter, could co-opt the County ‘s freedom of action, a prospect that required her “to exercise the limited executive function that the charter allows me to employ special counsel to carry out our legislative initiatives.”

Among the other problems with Shafer’s action alleged by Luttrell in his suit and at his press conference are that Shafer’s brief fails to list specific damages for which relief is sought, that it binds the County to an arbitration process “limiting the legal remedies of the County,” and that it falsely alleges dilatory action on the administration’s part.

But the essential issue in Luttrell’s suit is that Shafer, whether or not she is able to secure a satisfactory statement of support from her Commission mates, is in violation of the County Charter, which grants “sole authority to contract on behalf of the County” and has thereby “usurped the authority endowed to the Mayor and the County Attorney” by the charter.

That is the matter that the courts will have to decide, and whatever resolution might come via judicial means will resolve not only the current imbroglio but a long-festering power struggle between the executive and legislative branches of Shelby County government.

That struggle first arose in the budget process of 2015 through Commissioners’ complaints that the administration had misleadingly withheld the true fact of a County fiscal surplus, thereby short-circuiting potential fiscal strategies — for a tax cut desired by some Commissioners, for spending programs desired by others. The disagreement has mounted in the two years since, aa the Commission has progressively demanded greater access to and control over financial and other matters.

One symbolic manifestation of the dispute was the Commission’s endeavor to have former Commissioner Julian Bolton hired as the Commission’s own independent attorney. The administration objected that only the County Attorney, appointed by the Mayor, could function as counsel for both administration and Commission, but consented to a compromise that Bolton could serve as a “policy advisor” to the Commission.

As it happens, though, Bolton is engaged as an attorney of record, along with Napoli Shkolnick, for legal action on behalf of the County in the contract executed by Shafer.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Proposed Tax Cut in Jeopardy as Commissioners Reverse Course

CREDIT: JB

After the Shelby County Commission’s marathon 7 ½-hour special called meeting
JB

Key voter Eddie Jones

on the budget Monday night seemed to produce a consensus in favor of a $4.10-cent tax rate (with the final vote pending), Commissioners engaged in a much briefer discussion in committee on Wednesday.

They recapitulated the opposing positions in the far briefer span of 40 minutes, and this time reversed course with a 5-4 party-line vote in favor of a $4.13 rate — one that maintains a revenue base that the administration of Mayor Mark Luttrell regards as stable and that eschews the prospective tax cut that dominated discussion on Monday.

Wednesday’s vote was a pure party-line affair, with the Democrats present voting for the higher rate and the Republicans on hand going for the lower rate. To be sure, the regular Commission meeting scheduled for next Monday, when more Commissioners (probably all 13) will be present, could swing momentum back toward the tax-cut rate, but one fact argues against that.

The fact is that the Commission’s Republicans, at full strength and unified, add up to only 6 out of 13 members and usually need to peel away one Democrat or perhaps two to vote their way — in this case for the $4.10 rate and for a tax cut.

There are two inner-city Democratic Commissioners whose tendency to vote along with the GOP members is almost proverbial. They are Eddie Jones and Justin Ford, both of whom were being counted on by some key Republicans to cross over one more time. Ford was absent on Wednesday, but Jones was there, and he voted along with the other Democrats for the $4.13 tax rate.

Jones was one of the final speakers on the issue in Wednesday’s opening budget committee. His remarks — including a comment that Wednesday’s vote was “not the end of the road, just a fork in the road” — hinted at some residual flexibility on the issue. But, should he stick with the rest of the Democrats on Monday, and should Ford also hew to the party line, both the $4.10 rate and the suburban GOP dream of a tax cut are dead in the water

That outcome would suit the administration just fine. Harvey Kennedy, Luttrell’s CAO, began the tax-rate discussion Wednesday by commenting that, while the administration could make $4.10 work “if it’s the will of the body,” it continued to be opposed to the lower rate as too restrictive. And County finance director Wanda Richards added a warning that the $4.10 rate “down the road will increase our dependence on debt.

From that point on, a mini-version of Monday night’s lengthy debate ensued.

“Giving back to taxpayers” vs. “”a false narrative”

Millington Republican Terry Roland insisted that, during the seven years so far of his tenure, “this is the first chance we’ve had to give something back.” Germantown Commissioner Mark Billingsley argued in like manner: “I’d like to see us put a few dollars back in our citizens’ hands.”

Democrat Reginald Milton, whose special concern these days is public health, particularly the financial needs of Region One Hospital (formerly The Med), said he was “sympathetic” to taxpayers’ desire for some relief, but that, in view of the ongoing medical crisis, it would be “practical to maintain our dollars until we can see what happens.”

George Chism of Collierville would tilt back the other way. Focusing on the need for business and industrial expansion, he said that, for the sake of all citizens, “We gotta have some victories,” meaning a tax rate that would attract, rather than discourage, new investment.

Veteran Democrat Walter Bailey would have none of that, calling the idea of “giving back” a “false narrative:.” He put it baldly: “Rich people don’t need government. The working class and the poor need government services.” And service, he said, was “where we fail.”

After Roland and Republican Heidi Shafer weighed in again for the $4.10 rate (Shafer making a familiar argument that tax cuts spur growth), Bailey called for a vote, which ended with the aforesaid 5-4 outcome.

Van Turner, who as vice chair was presiding over the discussion, substituting for absent budget chair Steve Basar, then pointed out that, for procedural reasons, another vote had to be taken in order to complete the second reading of what was now an amended tax rate.

But first the Commissioners on hand then went through their appointed motions a second time. Roland began by seeming to suggest that, if necessary to support the lower tax rate, he would favor holding up on a prior vote to add 24 Sheriff’s deputies. Billingsley, who chairs the Commission’s law and order committee, said he, too, could “back away” on the new deputies and went on to interject an unexpected and potentially controversial argument.

Heat Over Community Grants and PILOTS

He turned the subject to something that had generated some unexpected heat during Monday’s prolonged debate — the matter of grants to putatively deserving local community causes and organizations. Mayor Luttrell professed hmself “troubled” and “gravely concerned” about how and whether the grants, administered by individual Commissioners from their own designated funds, were being accounted for.

“If you screw it up, you can go to the pokey,” Luttrell said, in support of adding a mechanism to monitor the grant process.

The process of allowing each of the 13 Commissioners to have a de facto fund for designating such outlays — called “community enhancement grants” — had been an innovation during this past fiscal year, one sponsored by Commissioner Milton, and on Monday he and the Mayor engaged in some intense sparring over the issue, with the Commissioner defending the purpose and accountability of the process.

Both Luttrell and Milton had grown hot under the collar, at various points each accusing the other of questioning his integrity.

Re-igniting the argument on Wednesday, Billingsley declared that, if necessary to create the possibility of a tax cut, “we cannot support the fluff,” and he spelled that out to mean the prospect of deleting the Commissioners’ individual community grants. (An amendment to that end by Bartlett Commissioner David Reaves had failed on Monday.)

Suddenly the Germantown Republican adopted a surprising and paradoxical-sounding rhetorical position. “I spend every day fighting for the poor,” he said, characterizing the proposed tax-cut rate as a question of “3 cents for the poor in Shelby County.” Roland chimed in that he, too, could be brought to support a “scorched-earth” policy.

Bailey pointed out what he regarded as the obvious, that cutting taxes was not a concern of the poor but that access to services was.

Both Jones and Roland continued in a populist vein and managed somehow to get on the same rhetorical page, though arguing for different tax-rate outcomes, with Jones denouncing the tax giveaways of the county’s PILOT (payment-in-lieu-of-taxes) arrangements and Roland thundering against the joint city/county EDGE board for its ability, independent of Commission oversight, to approve tax abatements.

Brief as that part of the discussion was, it augured a different, perhaps unifying theme that could potentially be picked up on Monday when, as Turner had said, either the $4.13 tax rate or the $4.10 rate could win out, in whichever case a final reading would be called for in a special called meeting for later next week.

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Editorial Opinion

Disunity

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Even as it gets ready to take on what could be a contentious fight over the forthcoming county budget and tax rate, a potential slugfest that all principals hope can be resolved and headed off at a May 7th summit retreat, the Shelby

County Commission and the administration of county Mayor Mark Luttrell remain locked in a power struggle over access to and control over surplus county revenues.

The battle was first joined a couple of budget seasons back, when the commission, long after it had locked its planned expenditures in place, got ex post facto information from the administration regarding a hitherto unannounced $20 million surplus. That discovery was the proximate cause of an ongoing power struggle between commissioners and the administration, one that flared up in several of the matters on the agenda of Monday’s public meeting of the commission.

Greg Cravens

Pervading the meeting from item to item were two clear and obvious themes, one having to do with the commission’s efforts to get its own procedures — and those of county government — in line with recent resolves to eliminate a variety of disparities in hiring, contracting, and employee relations. In the process, the gulf between the commission and the administration widened a bit further.

The first case in point was a dispute that arose over what seemed to be a routine federal pass-through grant awarding just under $2 million to Sasaki Associates, Inc. for “various National Disaster Resilience … design projects.” The question was raised, first from the audience, and then from various commission members, whether sufficient allowance had been made for minority subcontracting on the project. Public Works director Tom Needham repeatedly insisted that the issue was moot and implied broadly that any further delay on awarding the grant might result in its being lost to the county.

Questioning from commissioners, and especially an unrelenting point-by-point interrogation from Commissioner Heidi Shafer, commenting that Needham’s reluctance to answer was “yet another case of the administration keeping us in the dark,” finally elicited the fact that no such ill fate was in store. The commission would end up endorsing the grant — along with an add-on clause prepared by Commissioner Van Turner regarding the minority contracting issue.

There were other matters of similar import involving the question of whether the county was seriously undertaking equality of opportunity with women as well as racial minorities, but the pièce de résistance of Monday’s discussion was a resolution that would establish what amounted to a set-aside fund for any unspent surplus — one accessible to and subject to the oversight of the commission. At present, surpluses have been under the exclusive purview of the administration, and county CAO made a point of objecting to the resolution as “unacceptable.”

In the final analysis, the matter was referred back to committee, where it may or may not be resolved. Which is to say, the power struggle goes on.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

As Expected, Luttrell Enters 8th District Congressional Race

CREDIT: JB

Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell has definitely thrown his hat into the ring as a candidate for the soon-to-be-vacant 8th District congressional seat.

JB

County Mayor Mark Luttrell

The mayor’s bid, which was not unexpected and which, as a likely and pending matter, he discussed at length last week with the Flyer, was announced at a Reagan Day dinner of Madison County Republicans in Jackson on Monday night.

Luttrell instantly becomes one of the favorites in the GOP primary field, which also includes state Senator Brian Kelsey of Germantown, Shelby County Register of Deeds Tom Leatherwood, Shelby County Commissioner Steve Basar, former County Commissioner and radiologist/broadcast executive George Flinn, and former U.S. Attorney David Kustoff.

While the field of Republican contenders proliferates for the seat now held by Stephen Fincher of Crockett County, who has chosen not to run for reelection, the field of Democrats has not developed in kind. Shelby County assistant District Attorney Michael McKusker had indicated an interest in running but late last week bowed out, saying, “Simply put, I do not believe I can properly balance both the demands of my career and my family life with a campaign of this magnitude

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Opinion Viewpoint

Restoring Balance Between the Shelby County Commission and the Mayor

The 2014 Shelby County election ushered in many first-time county commissioners to serve as the people’s representatives. It was the first full election under the single-member district division. Only five of the 13 commissioners had served a full previous term. So, while the changeover offers plenty of opportunity for positive change, it also creates a deficit in institutional knowledge.

Heidi Shafer

Previous large commission turnovers were somewhat mitigated by county attorneys who had years of service in the Shelby County Attorney’s offices. This time, however, a new county attorney was appointed by the mayor from outside Shelby County, creating opportunities for positive change along with a lack of practical historical knowledge.

The commission and mayor’s office are currently struggling over what powers appropriately belong to each according to the charter, and how to best serve the people who elected us.

Commissions in previous years have allowed the mayoral administration to borrow some of the commission’s powers, as it did when EDGE was created in 2010, and allowed mayoral contracting up to $100,000 during Mayor Wharton’s term. The commission is evaluating which of those powers should be taken back. 

We have been reviewing the Shelby County Charter for a clearer understanding of its mandates.

First, the charter proclaims: “The Legislature is given broad legislative powers inclusive of the rights to adopt County ordinances and is so constructed as to be truly representative of all the people of Shelby County.” And this: “The legislative power includes all lawful authority [my emphasis] to adopt ordinances and resolutions governing the operation of government or regulating the conduct and affairs of the residents of the county, to adopt the county budget, to fix the county tax rate, to make appropriations of county funds for all legal purposes, and to exercise all other authority of a legislative nature which is vested in the county by the Constitution, general statutes, or special, local or private acts of the General Assembly or this charter.”

Second, the commission may “adopt any ordinance or resolution [again, my emphasis] which is not in conflict with the Constitution or general laws of the state of Tennessee, or charter.”

Third, “The legislative branch is vested with all other powers of the county not specifically, or by necessary implication, vested in some other official of the county by the Constitution or by statute not inconsistent with this charter”. The mayor is given no similar provision.

The charter also lays out clear responsibility for the commission to order “such special audits as deemed necessary,” to establish purchasing policies, and to be the sole power to grant franchises, borrow money, and issue bonds. No county property or interests can be sold without express validation of the commission. The commission also sets its own budget.

All resolutions and ordinances become effective with or without a signature from the executive branch, unless the mayor chooses to veto. The commission can then override an executive veto with a majority plus one vote (unless the vote originally required a two-thirds majority to pass).

The commission has the power of approval and consent of all nominations by the mayor for any board, commission, agency, authority, chief administrative officer, county attorney, public defender, or divorce referee.

What are the duties of the county mayor? The mayor is charged with seeing that all resolutions and ordinances of the board of county commissioners are faithfully executed. He or she is to present the consolidated county budget to the commission, which has full rights to modify or amend. The mayor is also compelled to “take such other executive and administrative actions as are required by this charter or may be prescribed by the board of county commissioners.”

I am a believer in the separation of powers and of intra-governmental cooperation, when it doesn’t compromise the voice of the people.

But the charter makes it clear that the commission is the legal designee and guardian of that voice. The ongoing efforts of my colleagues and me to restore and safeguard the authority of the commission vis-à-vis the mayor should be seen in that light.

Heidi Shafer is a second-term member of the Shelby County Commission.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Commission Averts Crisis in Stormy Back-and-Forth Voting on Budget

CREDIT: JB

JB

Kennedy and Luttrell (r) listen as CFO Swift makes administraton case.

One of the most stressful meetings in the history of Shelby County government took place Monday at a County Commission meeting that saw:

(a) an organized walkout by one side of a divisive argument over the county budget and tax rate, followed by
(b) a response by the other side to reconstitute itself as the full committee — all of this after
(c) a dire warning from the County Finance Officer that a failure to agree could lead to a shutdown of county government and a defaulting on employee paychecks.

In the end, after five hours of this sort of high-stakes poker, the Commission would approve a $1.1 billion budget package that assumed a status quo property tax rate at the current level of $4.37, though resistance from an organized Republican minority prevented an actual vote of approval on second reading;. The Commission would also vote for a generous distribution of surplus tax revenues that nullified the GOP minority’s lingering hopes for a one-cent reduction in the tax rate.

It was a party-line struggle — though each side included one prominent member of the other party — and it further intensified a division which has existed since the formation of a new Commission after the 2014 county election but which had been dormant until disagreements over budget policy flared it up again.

In a strict sense, there had been little doubt as to the outcome of the conflict, since the administration of County Mayor Mark Luttrell, himself a Republican, had used its influence in both public and private ways to put the brakes on sentiment for a tax decrease, which five Republican members had sought ever since Luttrell had made a point of announcing the fact of a $6 million end-of-fiscal-year surplus.

At a marathon budget-committee session last month, Luttrell had stated his opposition to using part of the surplus to reduce a penny on the tax rate, insisting both that county infrastructure needs and blight-eradication efforts should come first and arguing for larger increases to specific county divisions — the Sheriff’s Department being prominent among them — than the Commission as a whole had seemed willing to grant.

Subsequently, claim such proponents of the tax decrease as GOP members Heidi Shafer and Terry Roland, Luttrell bargained privately with Commission members and managed to wean Republican outlier Steve Basar back into line with the Commission’s Democratic majority, recreating the de facto alliance with the Democrats that Basar had pursued last fall in response to a GOP majority’s dashing his hopes of becoming Commission chairman when it tilted instead toward Democrat Justin Ford, the eventual winner.

During the same period, chairman Ford had been allied with the Commission Republicans, and he voted consistently with them again in each of Monday’s showdown votes, which centered on a seemingly nonstop series of procedural issues. Basar was aligned again with the Democrats, and indeed it was he who began Monday’s consideration of the budget with a recipe for distribution of budget increases that the Democrats backed and that administration CAO Harvey Kennedy conferred his imprimatur on.

Because two Republican members, Mark Billingsley and David Reaves, were away on vacation, the GOP resistance on Monday was reduced to the scale of a guerilla insurrection led by Roland and Shafer, but one that, when joined on a given vote by Republican George Chism and Ford, could prevent the absolute majority of 7 that was needed for certain key measures to succeed

Thus was the second reading of the administration-preferred $4.37 tax rate held one vote short of success, though it will be back up for a third and decisive reading on July 1, which coincidentally is the first day of the new fiscal 2015-16 year.

And the magic number was thereby denied on a series of other votes on budget-related items, since the Democratic coalition was also hampered early in the meeting by the absence of member Eddie Jones.

Jones’ arrival late in the meeting created the conditions for a decisive majority of 7 and prompted Democrat Van Turner to reintroduce a somewhat modified version of the budget proposal Basar had made, and that version would be approved — but only after a grueling procedural struggle that required two prolonged recesses, innumerable rulings by County Attorney Ross Dyer and staff, and a moment of genuine crisis.

That moment had come, just before Jones had made the scene, when the two sides were deadlocked over the Democratic coalition’s effort to secure a budget vote and the GOP minority’s wish to opt instead for a continuing resolution that would allow current funding levels to continue. Another prospect for both sides was for a special called meeting sometime next week, but agreement on that, too, proved elusive.

It was then that CFO Mike Swift warned, on the basis of a Dyer ruling, that if the two sides could not agree, county government might well have to be shut down in early July and employee paychecks delayed or frozen.

Terry Roland argued for the Republican side that Dyer’s ruling was mistaken, that a continuing resolution could be achieved well after the beginning of the next fiscal year and that such late resolutions had occurred frequently in recent years.

Subsequently four members, Ford and Republicans Shafer Roland, and Chism, would absent themselves from their Commission seats, withdrawing to a back lounge area and thereby creating a temporary loss of quorum that could have aborted the meeting and put Swift’s warning to the test.

That was when Jones arrived, creating a new quorum, and the remaining members were in the process of re-forming the Commission, with Democrat Walter Bailey as the new chairman, when the four absentees returned. Not long thereafter, agreement would be reached on a budget, with the only holdouts being Shafer and Roland.

Seeming anarchy had been just around the bend, though, and it remains to be seen what will happen when the Commission meets on July 1 to consider a third and final vote on both tax rate and budget.

In other action, the Commission named Yolanda Kight from a field of several applicants to a vacancy on the county Judicial Commission. Kight prevailed after multiple ballots and see-saw voting by the Commission.

JB

One of the innumerable recess colloquies that took place on Monday. (L to r: Commissioner Steve Basar, adiministration CAO Harvey Kennedy, and Commissioners Van Turner, Terry Roland, and George Chism

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Kyle or Mulroy?

CREDIT: Kyle by Seanna Lyn Brandmeir; Mulroy by Justin Fox Burks

Something of an irony may be shaping up for 2014, the next fully fledged political year in Shelby County. (One year out of every four is in theory election-free in Memphis and Shelby County, and 2013 is one such year; a plethora of special elections has somewhat jimmied the cycle in recent years, however.)

The main local entrée on next year’s political menu will be the race for Shelby County mayor. Incumbent Republican Mark Luttrell is considered a certainty to run for reelection, and there is of yet no consensus among Democrats as to who should oppose him.

One name that is always mentioned in such a context is that of state senator Jim Kyle, the Senate’s Democratic leader. After a pro forma period of letting his name float, Kyle normally withdraws his name from consideration. Next year could be different, if for no other reason than Kyle’s frustration with being a member of an increasingly powerless minority in Nashville.

Last week, the formative one for the 2013 session of the General Assembly, was a rough one for Kyle, who seems to be on the losing end of a campaign for a rules change requiring the dominant Republicans to hold their caucus meetings in public.  

Moreover, having barely won reelection as leader of the truncated Senate Democrats with a 4-3 victory late last year over fellow Memphian Reginald Tate, Kyle last week saw Republican members of the Shelby County delegation engineer the election of the GOP-friendly Tate as delegation chairman over state representative Antonio Parkinson, whom Kyle had supported.

If Kyle should once again reject a race for county mayor, a very real Democratic prospect is Shelby County commissioner Steve Mulroy, who is term-limited from running for reelection in 2014. The commissioner often serves as point man for Democratic initiatives and did so again of late with his proposal for a wage-theft ordinance.

As a white Democrat with significant Poplar Corridor appeal, Mulroy might indeed be able to marshal a strong campaign against Luttrell, and he is inclined, as are most politicians, to aspire upward rather than laterally, which would be the case if he sought a Memphis City Council seat in 2015, as some have suggested to him as an alternative.

The aforementioned irony in a Luttrell-Mulroy race would be a limited one, actually — confined to the fact that the current mayor was himself an outspoken advocate for action against wage theft during his race for mayor in 2010. The then sheriff and mayoral candidate told a gathering of Midtown progressives, as we reported at the time, that he favored “legal alternatives to the incarceration of the mentally ill and stepped-up actions against ‘wage theft,’ the exploitation of workers, mainly Hispanics, by unscrupulous employers.”

Luttrell was a virtual nonparticipant in the recent county debate over wage theft, however. Mulroy’s county ordinance, which was directed against such offenses as employers’ holding back employees’ wages or declining to pay overtime, was narrowly rejected on its third reading on Monday after a systematic campaign against it by local business organizations, including the Chamber of Commerce.

Crucial to the outcome was the conversion of Democratic commissioner James Harvey from proponent of the ordinance to opponent.

A companion wage-theft ordinance, sponsored by Myron Lowery, is still pending in city council. • Planned Parenthood, the venerable provider of what it describes as “high-quality, affordable sexual and reproductive health care for millions of women, men, and teens” and which has been under consistent attack of late by social conservatives, in and out of government, for its enabling of abortion procedures, has a big night planned for Tuesday, January 22nd.

In tandem with the Center for Research on Women (CROW) at the University of Memphis, Planned Parenthood is sponsoring an event entitled “Religion, Law, and Reproductive Rights: The 40th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade.” The event, which has numerous local sponsors, ranging from the American Civil Liberties Union to the University of Tennessee Medical Association, includes a documentary film and a panel of speakers from the ranks of law, politics, and local clergy.

The free event will be held at the U of M’s University Center Theater from 6 to 8:30 p.m.