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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Mayor, Sheriff Among the Apparent Winners in Game of Budget Poker

JB

Those weighing in at Wednesday’s lengthy budget session included (l to r) Commissioners Eddie Jones Terry Roland, and Mark Billingsley and Mayor Mark Luttrell.

Wednesday’s meeting of the Shelby County Commission’s budget committee began with a prayer (commissioned by budget chair Heidi Shafer and delivered by member Willie Brooks), continued as a lengthy wrangle likened by one member to a poker game, and ended with a provisional conclusion that nobody thinks will hold up on Monday, when the full Commission meets to vote for real on a budget and tax rate.

In the end, though members present had just voted overwhelmingly for budget increases that would likely mean a tax increase, it was generally agreed that County Mayor Mark Luttrell, who wants a stable property tax rate at the current level of $4.37, will have his way.

That means the probable end of an ongoing wish by several Republican members to have a one-cent tax decrease for fiscal 2015-16, though it kept alive an innovative proposal by Democratic member Reginald Milton to parcel out money to each of the Commission’s 13 members for “enhancement” opportunities in their districts.

What it almost surely does not mean is that an 8-2 vote on a motion by senior Democratic member Walter Bailey to grant generous increases to the Sheriff’s Department, the county’s Public Defender, and the Regional One Medical Center will hold up on Monday.

Bailey’s proposal — granting increases of $1.8 million to the sheriff, $1 million to the Public Defender, and $1.2 million to the Med — was generally seen, even by its mainly Democratic supporters, as a means of artificially raising the stakes so as to ensure an ultimate compromise budget at the stay-even level desired by the administration.

Earlier in the meeting, administration CAO Harvey Kennedy had proposed halving the increase requests of these and other divisions, returning budget discussions to a point close to what had seemed to be a consensus reached by all parties in a marathon special Commission session of May 20.

An important difference is that the Sheriff’s Department, which had not been allocated its half a loaf in that earlier meeting but was shut out of a budget increase, was now billeted for $900,000 — a change in status which some saw as the result of vote-trading and behind-the-scenes political maneuvering.

After Wednesday’s committee meeting, Luttrell was asked if he and Bailey were functioning as de facto allies, and his ghost of a smile seemed a sufficient answer. During Wednesday’s discussion on the budget, Luttrell had made the assertion — remarkable for a Republican official and wholly at odds with the professed assumptions of the Commission’s GOP members — that it was not the county tax rate but “liveability” issues that were driving residents out into suburban areas adjacent to Shelby County.

That remark was a follow-up of sorts to the Mayor’s stance at the marathon May 20 meeting, when he opposed a sentiment building up for a one-cent tax decrease. Luttrell had argued than that a potential $1 million-plus sum left over from division of a presumed $6 million “surplus” would better be used on behalf of county infrastructure and the need to counter blight.

Luttrell put that thesis forward again on Wednesday, adding that debt-service requirements and uncertainties regarding future school budgets were additional reasons to go slow on tax reduction.

The Mayor’s position regarding blight and infrastructure may have been a contributing factor to budget chair Shafer’s successful motion on Wednesday broadening Milton’s proposal for district-by-district allocation of grant funds by making provision for infrastructure-like purposes. A total of $1.3 million was provisionally approved for all purposes.

Debate on the grant-proposal issue had occurred early in Wednesday’s discussion, and it exposed modest disagreements within GOP ranks, with Commissioner Mark Billingsley of Germantown, the lone dissenter in an 8-1 approval vote, objecting that a one-cent tax reduction should come first and Terry Roland of Millington contending that both results were possible.

Roland indeed maintained again Wednesday, as he has in several recent meetings, that the Luttrell administration had additional financial reserves that it was not admitting to. Kennedy and county finance officer Mike Swift would recite figures to refute such a notion.

Roland’s response to the ultimately successful Bailey motion (which occurred almost anti-climactically, out of nowhere, at the very end of the meeting) was from the other end of his rhetorical stick, as he made a show of proffering thanks to the majority who approved it, saying it would enhance his status as a Tipton County landowner.

There were clashes of temper on Wednesday, as when Shafer asked CFO Swift how much of a potential deficit the Bailey proposal would create ($1.8 million, would be his answer), and she angrily cut Commissioner off Commissioner Steve Basar, with whom she has differed on several issues, when he attempted to supply the answer himself.

There were moments of comic relief, too, as when Roland at one point began a comment to Luttrell, “I love you to death…,” and before the Millington commissioner could supply the inevitable “but” clause, Luttrell responded, “Oh, I know you love me, Commissioner.”

The two appeared together briefly after the meeting, assuring each other — and the media — that there would be a meeting of the minds on Monday at the full Commission’s public session.

There had clearly been a good deal of horse-trading and bartering between principals, not all of it on public view Wednesday, and one of the apparent winners seemed to be Sheriff Bill Oldham, who not only stood to get a nice hunk of the money he’d requested but was spared on Wednesday the voiced suspicions and expressions of scorn from Roland and others that had been his lot in several recent meetings.

“The Sheriff can take us to arbitration,” had been one explanation offered by Democratic Commissioner Van Turner during the debate. That was on top of Luttrell’s insistence on showing “proper deference” to the sheriff as the county’s chief law enforcement officer.

Roland brushed aside his previously expressed concerns about Oldham’s employment of aide Sidney Chism and other matters. “I was willing to give a little….At the end of the day, this is not about me and Sidney. It’s about the taxpayers of Shelby County.”

Beyond that, said Roland, “What we’re likely to come back to was the thing proposed by Harvey Kennedy\. At the end of the day, I think we’ll come up with something that looks like what the Mayor’s proposal is. I will say that, for the record.”

And that apparent accord was in line with an almost anti-climactic vote, after the lengthy budget discussion, approving the current tax-rate of $4.37.

Monday, of course, could be another matter. There has been a fair amount of to-and-fro and overturning of applecarts during this budget season, and there could still be more.

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Politics Politics Feature

Party Purity

The most surprising aspect of last week’s decision by the Shelby County Democratic Executive Committee to censure several party officials for “disloyalty,” i.e., siding with Republicans in electoral situations, was the unanimity of the committee’s vote.

Not a peep of dissent was heard from the membership, as veteran committee member Del Gill read out the bill of particulars against state Senator Reginald Tate, state Representative Joe Towns, Shelby County Commissioner Sidney Chism, and state Executive Committee Member Hazel Moore.

All were accused of violating what the censure resolution called “existing protocols for bona fides, loyalty, and political behavior.”

Chism was cited for efforts to dissuade Democratic sheriff’s candidate Bennie Cobb from running against incumbent Sheriff Bill Oldham, a Republican, so as to allow Oldham “to be the only filed candidate of any party for the position.” Tate, Towns, and Moore were censured for their presence “at a campaign opener and fund-raising event” for Republican Jimmy Moore, the incumbent Circuit Court clerk, a longtime former Democrat before changing his nominal party affiliation in the 1990s.

Gill, a Democratic primary candidate for the Circuit Court clerkship now held by Moore, and a longtime advocate of strict party-loyalty requirements, was the prime mover in seeking the censure resolution.

The censure resolution was in the same spirit of the one voted last year against Shelby County Commission Chair James Harvey — who was cited in September for awarding chairmanship of the commission’s key budget committee to Republican Commissioner Heidi Shafer. An unspoken premise of that censure was that Harvey, who was about to become commission chair, had bargained with GOP members to achieve their support for the chairman position.

It is uncertain what effect the censure resolution will have on the party status of Tate, Towns, and Chism, although the censure resolution, in its final sentence, states, “The Democratic Party reserves the rights under Tennessee Election Codes to control who appears on its ballot.”

Gill informed the Flyer that, in his words, “the party could declare these persons ‘non bona fide’ Democrats if further violations of party conduct are affirmed by the executive committee. They would then not be able to file a future petition for Democratic Party candidacy.”

Short of such a draconian move as that, the real issue is: What practical difference will the censure make?

Harvey, who is not known to have apologized for anything, had filed this year for the office of Shelby County Mayor — as a Democrat — and had been allowed to speak to the same executive committee that voted last week’s censures, along with three other mayoral candidates, at the committee’s February meeting.

He withdrew his filing for county mayor at the deadline for withdrawal, two weeks ago, but not, it seems, out of any concern — his or anybody else’s — about party fidelity.

The issue of ecumenism versus political purity is certain to resurface during this year’s election contests, at least on the Democratic side, with various candidates already vowing to pick over their primary opponents’ voting records with an eye toward finding telltale votes in Republican primaries.

Local Democratic Party Chairman Bryan Carson says the rule of thumb for certifying a candidate on the Democratic ballot is whether he or she has voted in a Republican primary more than once in the last five election cycles.

Apropos that, a visitor at last week’s censure meeting, one Tom Reasons of Dyersburg, who says he is running this year as a Democrat against 8th District GOP Congressman Stephen Fincher, offered an interesting excuse for having voted in the most recent Republican presidential primary. It was in order, he explained, to help pick the “worst” GOP nominee for President Obama to run against.

• The past weekend saw several political events bearing on the forthcoming May 6th primaries for countywide office. One of the key ones, a forum involving all three Democratic candidates for county mayor, took place on Saturday at Caritas Village in Binghamton, at a luncheon of the Democratic Women of Shelby County.

The candidates, who appeared in alphabetical order, were former County Commissioner Deidre Malone, current Commissioner Steve Mulroy, and the Rev. Kenneth Whalum, a former school board member. All had their talking points, and all got them said.

As she has at previous events, Malone reminded the audience of her political credentials, including a prior run for mayor in 2010, and her business credentials (a former ALSAC-St. Jude administrator, she now operates a PR company). And she looked past her current Democratic rivals to assail “the current Republican county mayor,” Mark Luttrell, for what she said was inattention to the needs of the less fortunate and for his refusal even to offer opinions on “things that are important to Democrats.”

She said her business experience would allow her to repair what was an “inefficient” county operation under Luttrell.

Asked about the county’s shift of Title X funding for women’s health issues from Planned Parenthood, the traditional recipient of the funding, to Christ Community Health Services (CCHS), Malone pronounced it a “mistake” and vowed “to do something about it” as county mayor.

She may have felt that Mulroy was vulnerable on that score, in that he had voted in 2011 with the majority to award the Title X contract to CCHS. Mulroy, though, was able to address the issue from what he felt was a position of strength. Earlier in the week, he had held a press conference announcing his dissatisfaction with CCHS for, among other things, allowing its service level to drop precipitately for two years in a row from the level previously maintained by Planned Parenthood.

He said at the press conference and repeated on Saturday that he had voted in 2011 to switch from Planned Parenthood to CCHS only after realizing that there were already nine votes on the commission to approve CCHS (two more than needed) and that he used his position on the prevailing side to insist on strict monitoring to assure that CCHS a) engaged in no religious proselytizing and b) didn’t attempt to steer patients away from abortion.

Because of CCHS’s sub-par service levels, said Mulroy, he was insisting that the county re-bid the contract, using independent medical experts to score the bidding agencies for expertise.

Thus did the commissioner attempt to solidify his position with pro-choice Democrats who felt that Planned Parenthood, identified by the political right with the abortion issue, had been targeted by state and federal sources for separation from its historic Title X role. Mulroy described himself as the commission’s chief progressive activist on a variety of hot-button issues.

Whalum continued, as in the past, to burnish his maverick credentials, proclaiming,” I am the underdog candidate for Shelby County mayor. All of the pundits, all of the professionals are saying, ‘Whalum doesn’t have a chance. He doesn’t have any money. He can’t get the support of the political professionals.’ I don’t need it and I don’t want it.”

Whether the eloquent minister is protesting too much can be debated, in that his personal abilities and grass-roots appeal have been amply noted in most public commentary, as has his leadership in the successful recent effort to turn back a proposed sales-tax increase to fund city pre-K programs.

“The city of Memphis is the county seat of Shelby County, not the toilet seat,” said Whalum, who described the imminent closing of several Memphis schools as symptomatic of serious community crisis, and promised to address that problem, “if we have to move all the county departments into the buildings they want to close.”

He promised to raise the pay for women in the county administration to a level commensurate with men and to bring in young people with fresh governmental ideas. Asked if he was pro-choice, Whalum answered as follows: “I am pro-choice. I represent the ultimate pro-choice person. ‘Choose ye this day.'”

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Politics Politics Feature

Jeff Sullivan’s Return

For those who like happy endings — or perhaps we should say “continuations” — to troubled stories, there’s the saga of Jeff Sullivan, a veteran political activist who, in the county election year of 2010, guided the successful election campaign for sheriff of then chief deputy Bill Oldham.

During the year or so after that, Sullivan served as a governmental liaison and spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Office and was often seen, for example, in the dock of the county commission auditorium making the case for this or that piece of legislation desired by the department. His wife Maura Black Sullivan, meanwhile, was also working her way up the governmental ladder and currently holds the position of deputy CAO for the city of Memphis.

Jeff Sullivan’s career hit an unforeseen snag in the aftermath of a bizarre incident in Nashville, where he had gone on official Sheriff’s Department business.

Late one evening, Sullivan, who admits to having had a drink or two in the bar of his downtown hotel, thought he’d seen an unauthorized person, a hotel employee, leaving his room, as he ascended to his floor in the hotel’s glass-sided elevator. This was around 10 p.m., an odd time for a housekeeping mission, Sullivan thought.

Finding nothing amiss in his room, he nevertheless went downstairs and apprised the clerks at the front desk of his concern. “They didn’t seem to care,” Sullivan recalls. Later on, seeing the employee in the hotel garage, Sullivan voiced his suspicions to her, and the employee denied anything untoward. Sullivan shrugged and went upstairs.

An hour or two later, after he’d turned in, there was a knock on his door. He opened it to find the hotel night manager who told him, “You’ve got to leave.”

Puzzled but in no mood to argue, Sullivan dressed and got his belongings ready to move to an adjoining hotel, where he intended to check in. He moved his car from the original hotel’s parking garage to that of the adjoining hotel. As he was registering for the rest of the night, he was approached by Nashville police, who’d been tipped by a partisan of the employee whom Sullivan had suspected that Sullivan was inebriated, a fact Sullivan denied then and denies now.

The long and short of it was that Sullivan was booked and charged with DUI and with refusing to take a breathalyzer test. The situation was complicated enough that Sullivan was first suspended with pay from his sensitive job with the Sheriff’s Department, then, as he awaited trial, saw his duties transferred to another employee. He resumed some real estate work that he’d been doing beforehand, and that might have been that.

Except that, several months after the hotel incident, Sullivan’s trial came around, and he was exonerated. Period, end of story?

Not quite. As soon as another election season, that of 2014, began to loom on the horizon, Sheriff Oldham, who was as happy as Sullivan was about the not-guilty verdict in Nashville, decided he needed Sullivan’s help again and asked him to come aboard as campaign strategist for his reelection race next year.

So Sullivan is back doing what he likes doing best, and, in the course of getting back in the political saddle, he has acquired at least one more client, magistrate Dan Michael, who’s seeking to become Juvenile Court judge.

So it is that, as the holiday season approaches, the skies have cleared, the storm has lifted, and the planets are back in their orbit. For Jeff Sullivan, anyhow. Of course, he still has to worry about getting his guys elected.          

• Oldham is not the only incumbent who’ll be seeking reelection next year, of course, nor is he the only one making active preparations for his race. Juvenile Court clerk Joy Touliatos and District Attorney General Amy Weirich both had well-attended fund-raisers within the last week.

Touliatos’ was at Ciao Bella in East Memphis last Thursday, and Weirich’s was at the Pickering Center in Germantown on Sunday. Touliatos and Weirich are both Republicans.

 

• School board races, most of them uncontested and all of them drawing light turnouts, were concluded last Thursday in the six incorporated municipalities of suburban Shelby County that intend to operate independent school districts beginning in 2014.

In Germantown, focus of controversy these days because three of its schools are slated for use by the existing unified Shelby County Schools district, there was one contested race out of five. In that Position 1 encounter, Linda Fisher, with 1,094 votes, defeated opponents Paige Michael (877) and Edgar Babian (616). Other elected Germantown school board members were Mark Dely, Natalie Williams, Lisa L. Parker, and Ken Hoover.

Bartlett had two contested races — one for Position 2, in which Erin Elliott Berry (1,487 votes) won out over Alison Shores (415); and another for Position 5, won by David Cook (1,552) over Sharon L. Farley (365). Unopposed for the Bartlett School Board were Jeff Norris, Shirley K. Jackson, and Bryan Woodruff.

In Millington, there were three contested races — Cecilia Haley (306) defeating Oscar L. Brown (236) for Position 2; Jennifer Ray Carroll (394) winning out over Tom Stephens (113) for Position 6; and Donald K. Holsinger (289) besting Charles P. Reed (235) for Position 7.

Unopposed winners in Millington were Gregory Ritter, Chuck Hurt, Cody Childress, and Louise Kennon.

In Lakeland, the top five finishers of seven contenders become the board. They are: Kevin Floyd (642); Laura Harrison (639); Kelley Hale (610); Matt Wright (556); and Teresa Henry (475). Also running were: James Andrew Griffith (288) and Greg Pater (94).

Arlington, which plans to consolidate its school efforts with those of Lakeland, elected five board members without opposition. They are: Danny Young, Barbara Fletcher, Kevin Yates, Kay Morgan Williams, and Dale A. Viox.

Collierville also elected five board members without opposition. They are: Kevin Vaughan, Wanda Chism, Mark Hansen, Cathy Messerly, and Wright Cox.

• Radio talk-show host Michael Reagan regaled a packed Life Choices audience at the University of Memphis Holiday Inn on Central last Thursday night with stories about himself — and about his father, the late former President Ronald Reagan.

One tale he told concerned his father’s morning-after preoccupation in 1981 with the fate of the brown suit he had been wearing when he was shot by the would-be assassin John Hinckley — and the then president’s unusual suggestion as to how the Hinckley family might make amends.

Lamenting that his new brown suit had been cut away from his body and shredded at the hospital, the stricken president said he’d been told the Hinckley family had lucrative oil interests and wondered, “Do you think they’d ever buy me a new suit?”

The occasion, sponsored by the group’s Ladies’ Auxiliary, was a fund-raising dinner for the organization’s Pregnancy Help Medical Clinics. The clinic promotes adoption as an alternative to abortion and provides medical and counseling support toward that end.

Another affecting story told by Michael Reagan concerned the affectionate relationship he developed with the affable but famously remote president relatively late in his adoptive father’s life and how that relationship continued even into the final stages of Ronald Reagan’s Alzheimer’s disease.

That story concluded with an account of how the former president, unable to speak and with his ability to recognize kith and kin long gone, still retained enough memory, as his son recalled, “to know that I was the man who gave him hugs” and, by taking “baby steps” toward the door and miming, insisted on one as Michael Reagan was leaving the Reagan household one day after a visit with step-mother Nancy Reagan.

The thrust of Michael Reagan’s remarks, in support of the host organization’s goal, was to emphasize that he, at least one sister, and both of Ronald Reagan’s wives, Jane Wyman and Nancy Davis Reagan, had been adopted children and were thus enabled to achieve productive lives. “We were a family put together by adoption,” as he put it.