Tag: Shelby County Trustee

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Is This an August Surprise?

Image of Trustee Regina Newman

With Election Day coming this Thursday, August 4th, I’m making allowances this week for candidates’ versions of an “August Surprise.” That’s adapted from the well-established term “October Surprise,” having to do with late-breaking revelations that are sometimes (but not always) something sensational that is released, effected, or revealed by one campaign in order to embarrass another campaign with the aim of turning the tide of a race.

Steve Basar, the Republican nominee for the office of Trustee, offers up this mailing as a case in point. What Basar suggests is that his opponent, incumbent Democratic Trustee Regina Newman, is mixing in campaign materials with tax bills she’s sending out.

Asked about the insert, Newman audibly suppressed a chuckle and said the insert explains various standard services offered by the Trustee’s Department to the taxpayer regarding a variety of potential issues. Here is the brochure, folded out:

Newman, meanwhile, sends along a specimen of a similar informational brochure sent out from the office of her predecessor, former Trustee David Lenoir.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

David Lenoir Makes It Official: He’s a Candidate for County Mayor

CREDIT: JB

JB

Trustee Lanier, announcing for Shelby County Mayor on Thursday

County Trustee David Lenoir, wearing a dark business suit, cap-toed shoes, and a composed, no-nonsense mien to match, strode to the lectern set up in the lobby of Crye-Leike Realtors on Poplar, acknowledged the generous introduction of him by host Dick Leike, nodded appreciatively to a heartily applauding gathering of supporters, many of them prominent members of the business community or the local Republican rank and file, and proceeded to present the case for his election as Shelby County Mayor.

He began by characterizing himself as “the county’s banker” and as a “bottom-line kind of guy.” He spoke of boyhood experiences cutting grass and helping his parents with a start-up business, of going to the University of Alabama on a football scholarship and getting an accounting degree, and later operating three small businesses of his own, while his wife Shannon, who had been his sweetheart both in high school and at ‘Bama, would end up as a small-business owner herself.

A little bit of Horatio Alger that, updated to the 21st Century standards of the nuclear family (the Lenoirs have sons, “our two young men).

Lenoir said three objectives — or “issues,” as he referred to them — should predominate in the mayoral campaign: “great schools, great jobs, and a mayor who understands how to run an efficient operation and can reduce the tax burden.”

If the last part of that triad was meant to indicate either of his two GOP primary opponents — Millington County Commissioner Terry Roland or Juvenile Court Clerk Joy Touliatos — it did so very obliquely.

In fact, Lenoir seems to be proceeding on the assumption that his record of low-keyed professional competence in his two terms as Trustee (involving a progressive shrinkage of the county debt from $1,800 per capita to $1,000) and his status as a mainstream, vaguely middle-of-the-road Republican should speak for themselves. And, in particular, he apparently intends to ignore the ad hominem provocations of opponent Roland.

Two facts in evidence of that: 1) It was clear to all observers during the County Commission’s climactic budget sessions in early summer that Roland meant to indict Lenoir’s performance with his highly public proposal to re-designate for other purposes money earmarked for lawyer Lang Wiseman, an employee of the Trustee’s office. “He don’t show up for work!” Roland claimed via his characteristic vernacular. (He also challenged the line items of Juvenile Court clerk Touliatos.)

For his part, Lenoir ignored the obvious political context and professed an ignorance of Roland’s charges when he turned up at a later commission budget session and simply made a detailed, mathematically based explanation of his employees’ salaries and workloads, including Wiseman’s. He kept all his budgeted money.

More recently: 2) Roland suggested at a recent fundraiser that Lenoir was the candidate of the county’s political/financial establishment and made it all sound like the machinations of a cabal. Alluding to the banker character in “The Beverly Hillbillies” TV sitcom, the Commissioner affected a shucksy mode and said, “I didn’t know I was going to be running against Mr. Drysdale, but I guess I am.”

Asked about that after his announcement on Thursday, Lenoir maintained a poker face and said, “I don’t know his comment. I’m proud of my background… I worked in the business community for 20 years. As far as his comments, I’m not familiar with them.”

Maybe so, maybe no. But it seems clear that Lenoir in any case has no intention of responding to Roland on the commissioner’s own terms. And, in fact, the basic line of Lenoir’s campaign staff, as expressed by one of its prominent members on Thursday, is: “We see our main opponent to be Touliatos.”

Again: maybe so, maybe no — though another of Lenoir’s statements Thursday, that the next mayor should be someone “tested in various arenas and cool under pressure,” would seem to be directed elsewhere.

As did Lenoir’s skepticism, during a Q-and-A with reporters, that the tax-rate reduction achieved this year by the County Commission (a point regularly touted by Roland) did not necessarily equate to an actual reduction of the tax load.

In any case Lenoir’s long-awaited declaration of mayoral candidacy is now official, he will definitely have significant financial and GOP-network support, and his major task now, one shared with Touliatos, is that of profile-raising. Roland long ago succeeded, for better or for worse, in getting people to know who he was.

It’s up to both Lenoir and Touliatos to achieve a wider degree of public awareness ,too. There’s little doubting that David Lenoir will have the means and the opportunity to do that.

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News The Fly-By

Blight Group Involved in Years-Long Fight with County Over Property Taxes

CREDIT: Bianca Phillips

Gennie Suggs-Smith is “angry as hell,” and she says that’s what keeps her hanging on to the blight remediation group she founded, Census Tract 61 Neighborhood Council, years after losing its South Memphis office in a property dispute with Shelby County.

Now Suggs-Smith believes the county is dragging its feet on giving her a free property from the Shelby County Land Bank to replace the one she lost in a tax dispute.

“A good year has gone by that I’ve been trying to get another property [from the land bank],” Suggs-Smith said.

The trouble began in 2008. The Census Tract 61 group, which was founded in 1986, had been operating out of a house at 1249 Cannon since 2002. There they coordinated efforts to deal with blight in an area just east of Soulsville. They also ran a club for kids, fed meals to needy residents, and organized neighborhood get-togethers for the small area bordered by South Bellevue, South Parkway, Walker, and the BNSF railroad.

Suggs-Smith said she filed for nonprofit status with the IRS and property tax exemption status with the state Board of Equalization (BOE) in 2004. But that didn’t stop tax bills from piling up. The outstanding tax bill on Census Tract 61’s office rose to $11,600.

“I started getting letters about property taxes, but I thought, since we were a tax-exempt organization, sanctioned by the IRS and the state of Tennessee, that they were making a mistake,” Suggs-Smith said. “I didn’t follow up about the taxes though. Since I’d filed all the necessary [nonprofit] paperwork, I didn’t think they were serious.”

But turns out they were. In 2008, Suggs-Smith received a letter from the county letting her know they were serious about taking the property. Although she said she’d filed for tax-exempt status with the state, the county never received confirmation, and at the time, Suggs-Smith didn’t have all the paperwork to prove her status.

“We had a flood in our building and lost a lot of files, but I eventually found a copy of the state stuff and showed it to the courts,” Suggs-Smith said.

Bianca Phillips

Gennie Suggs-Smith and her former office on Cannon

But it was too late to save her office on Cannon. It was sold in a tax sale in 2008.

Suggs-Smith eventually won an appeal to the state BOE in 2012, but although the board ruled Census Tract 61’s tax exemption should have begun in 2004, it also determined such findings “would not likely affect the validity of a tax sale that has otherwise become final.”

According to Greg Gallagher, a delinquent tax attorney with the Shelby County Trustee’s office, the issue was that Suggs-Smith lacked proof of her tax-exempt status at the time of the tax sale.

“Unfortunately, she had already lost ownership of the property by the time the BOE came in and said, ‘Well, we think the property was used as a nonprofit starting in 2004. But you no longer own the property, so we don’t have jurisdiction.’ It was a done deal. It had been sold,” said Debra Gates, chief administrator for the Shelby County Trustee’s office.

Suggs-Smith says she has an agreement with the Shelby County Land Bank to select a new property, but she said she has been turned down for two buildings and is awaiting a response on a third. Meanwhile, without an office, she says Census Tract 61 Neighborhood Council’s membership has dwindled down from about 20 active members to only a handful of people.

“When we lost the building, people stopped coming. There are only a few of us left cutting vacant lots here and there and serving a few meals for the people left in our Meals on Wheels program,” Suggs-Smith said.

As for her old property on Cannon, today, it sits vacant. It was purchased by an investment group in 2008, and Suggs-Smith said renters lived there for awhile. But it’s remained empty for years. A “For Rent” sign hangs in the window.

“Every time I pass by that house I get angry,” Suggs-Smith said. “It’s just sitting there. It’s going to become part of the blight scene.”

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Patterson’s Legacy

Democrat Paul Mattila and Republican Ray Butler have several things in common besides the fact that they both aspire to win the August special general election for the office of Shelby County trustee. Most importantly, each was demonstrably a close associate of longtime trustee Bob Patterson, who died unexpectedly earlier this year.

As governmental liaison and general factotum in Patterson’s office, Mattila — who currently serves as interim trustee after being chosen by the majority Democrats on the Shelby County Commission — was constantly in his boss’ company over the last several years. Similarly, it was unusual for Patterson to attend a political function without having at his side Butler, a CPA who served as his campaign treasurer and all-purpose adviser.

The two appeared together Monday night at the Madison Avenue bistro Neil’s for a debate sponsored by the libertarian/conservative group Defenders of Freedom. Each had something of a claque on hand, and each acquitted himself well. Both were at pains to portray themselves as having been policy confidantes at large, not just role players. Both pledged to maintain the “team” left behind by Patterson.

Late in the debate, an audience member asked a question directed at a crucial point. Who had Patterson intended to be his successor, Mattila or Butler? That gave Democrat Mattila a chance to make a claim that, on several occasions, the former trustee had conferred that designation on himself. Significantly, Mattila contended, looking directly at his opponent, one of those occasions was a lunch at Applebee’s between himself, Patterson, and Butler.

The claim took on special resonance when Butler not only made no effort to refute it but said quietly, “That’s right.” In his own turn, he pointed out that Patterson, for all of his across-the-boards popularity, took special pride in his Republican affiliation. Therefore, argued Butler, he himself could best continue the Patterson tradition.

Mattila got another boost on the point when, after the debate was over, moderator Angelo Cobrasci confided that Patterson had told him last Christmas that “if anything were to happen to him,” he — Cobrasci — should do what he could to help Mattila succeed him in office.

A caveat, though: Mattila made a point of saying, “I’m not running as Bob Patterson. I’m running as Paul Mattila.” In the final analysis, the race is still between himself and Butler — two no doubt well-prepared and perhaps equally credentialed familiars of the well-regarded man who preceded them.

• Barack Obama‘s final victory last week in his marathon Democratic primary showdown with Hillary Clinton had quick repercussions in Tennessee, one of the states which had landed in Clinton’s column back on Super Tuesday (February 4th).

Key state Democrats, including formerly uncommitted governor Phil Bredesen and state party chairman Grey Sasser, gathered in Nashville on Wednesday to proclaim their support of Obama, a day after the Illinois senator’s delegate total went over the top following yet another split decision in the final two state primaries. (Obama won Montana; Clinton won South Dakota.)

That unity meeting was followed by another one, held locally on Saturday at the Union Avenue campaign headquarters of 9th District congressman Steve Cohen, an Obama super-delegate, who, along with city councilman Myron Lowery, a Clinton super-delegate, presided over an affirmation of support for Obama by Obama delegates Cherry Davis, Eddie Neal, and Janis Fullilove and Clinton delegates Henry Hooper, Betsy Reed, and David Upton.

• It turns out that Mayhill Fowler, the amateur journalist and blogger (for the Huffington Post) who made waves with recent items about Obama and former president Bill Clinton, has a Memphis background that bears somewhat significantly on her current activities.

Fowler, now a resident of Oakland, California, is the granddaughter of the late Memphis mayor Watkins Overton, who served 14 (discontinuous) years as the city’s chief executive, his last term ending in the 1950s. Fowler told Howie Kurtz of The Washington Post last week that her mother and Overton’s daughter, the late May Hill Overton Anderson, had banned all talk of politics in her household, believing that it “had destroyed her family.”

But, says Fowler on her personal blog (Junehill, Owl and a Green Dog, Too), “now that my mother has passed away, my innate love of politics, suppressed since a grade school adventure, rises again … .”

Obama and Clinton may wish it hadn’t. Fowler’s surreptitiously gathered disclosures of an Obama comment about “bitter” small-town voters and Clinton’s scourging of a “scumbag” profiler of him in Vanity Fair proved to be huge embarrassments for both men.