Tag: Steve Basar

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Politics Politics Feature

There’s an 8th District Congressional Race!

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Yes, yes, in the wake of the Iowa caucuses, it would appear that the forthcoming March 1st Super Tuesday presidential primary in Tennessee is going to be hard-fought in both parties. And the down-ballot primaries for the one local race, that of general sessions clerk, will no doubt pick up some extra votes from the overflow.

But another political contest, involving any number of prominent local politicians, came out of nowhere on Monday to loom as this year’s feature race-to-be on the August 4th state primary ballot.

The outlook for this year’s race for the 8th District congressional seat transformed itself from a ho-hum incumbency-reelection effort into what is certain to be a hard-fought, free-for-all, with the surprise announcement that incumbent Republican congressman Stephen Fincher of Frog Jump, in Crockett County, would be bowing out after completing the present term, his third. Fincher’s stated reasons were of the sort that could certainly be taken literally, though they hinted at unsaid reasons that the state’s political class will doubtless spend a good deal of time guessing about.

Jackson Baker

Five hopefuls: (from l) Flinn, Kustoff, Kelsey, Leatherwood, and Basar.

“I have decided not to seek re-election to the 8th Congressional District seat this year,” the Republican congressman and well-known gospel singer said, in a prepared mid-morning news release. “I am humbled by the opportunity to serve the people of West Tennessee, but I never intended to become a career politician. The last six years have been the opportunity of a lifetime, and I am honored to have been given the chance to serve.”

But, while political observers were still scratching their heads in amazement, a small host of ambitious Republican politicians swung into action. Almost instantaneously came an announcement from radiologist/radio magnate George Flinn, who has sought the seat before, that he would be a candidate in the 8th again this year.

Flinn, a former Shelby County commissioner and frequent candidate for several other positions, suggested he had intended to challenge for the seat even before Fincher’s announcement and, by implication, might have influenced the incumbent’s decision: “I have been traveling in West Tennessee for the past few months and listening to citizens talk about their lives,  what is happening in our community. The overwhelming facts are that Congress has not been doing enough to address our needs. I have heard all of our concerns, and I am convinced that we must act. We are headed in the wrong direction, but we can fix things. That is why I am running for U.S. Congress in the 8th District of Tennessee.”

In rapid-fire order came announcements from other hopefuls, most of them clearly ad hoc statements prepared in haste.

There was this from former U.S. Attorney David Kustoff, who had previously run for Congress in the 7th District, much of which is now in the 8th District: “I want to thank Congressman Fincher for his service to our country and for fighting for conservative values in Washington. I strongly believe our state deserves a congressman who will continue the fight for Tennessee values and principles, and that is why I will be candidate for the 8th Congressional District. ”

And, not long after that, came word from Shelby County Register Tom Leatherwood, who had also previously sought election from the 7th. Said Leatherwood, who was already trying out the rudiments of a campaign speech: “I am throwing my hat into the ring for the 8th congressional seat. I believe I have a very strong, proven conservative record which will resonate in the district, having served two terms in the state Senate, where I helped kill a state income tax twice. I also served on the Senate Finance Committee, where we had to tell people no in order to balance the budget. This is the type of discipline I can bring to Washington.”

Virtually back-to-back announcements then came from state Senator Brian Kelsey and Shelby County Commissioner Steve Basar that they intended to seek the 8th District seat as well.  

Kelsey, who has long been expected to seek an open congressional seat, wasted no time in picking up a petition for the 8th District race at the Shelby County Election Commission and featured a photo of that act on his Twitter page. Basar, who had already floated a trial balloon for a candidacy in the 9th District against Democratic incumbent Steve Cohen, said a race in the 8th, where his domicile is, seemed a more obvious route to Congress. 

Neither Flinn’s entry nor Kustoff’s nor Leatherwood’s might have been unexpected, given their prior attempts at congressional service. Besides running in the 8th District in 2010, when he finished third in a three-way GOP primary race, Flinn ran unsuccessfully in 2012 as the GOP nominee against 9th District incumbent Cohen. He is well-known for his almost Trump-like willingness to self-fund his political races to the tune of millions.

Kustoff sought the 7th District seat in a four-way GOP primary in 2002 that also included then county commissioner, now state Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris and then City Councilman Brent Taylor. That race was won by current incumbent Marsha Blackburn. Reapportionment after 2010 resulted in the transfer of most of the east Shelby County portion of the 7th district into the 8th, which already included a generous section of northern Shelby County.

Leatherwood pointed out that he won 62 percent of the Shelby County vote in a 2008 direct primary challenge to Blackburn and that his Senate district included Tipton and Lauderdale counties, which also are contained in or overlap the 8th District. The county register also notes that Shelby County has accounted for as much as 55 percent of the total 8th District vote since the new district lines were established after the 2010 census.

That fact, the prominence of Shelby County in the 8th District, and especially of the Republican-dominated portions of Shelby County, may well have influenced Fincher’s decision not to seek reelection this year. He might have had thought processes similar to those of Blackburn, who did well in Shelby County against three natives of the county in the 2002 GOP primary but, as noted, lost the county to Leatherwood in 2008, and subsequently lobbied to move the western boundary of her district out of Shelby County.

Several Shelby Countians, including current Memphis City Council Chairman Kemp Conrad (who may yet be heard from this year), had in previous years thought out loud about a challenge in the 8th District, and have become a crowd, now that the district is an open seat.

Deadline for the Republican and Democratic primaries is April 7th. The Democratic front has been quiet apropos the 8th, but don’t expect that to last.

Jackson Baker

STANDARD BEARERS  — On exhibit at a fund-raiser at the James Lee House last month was an advance model of what will be sculptor Alan LeQuire’s permanent memorial to the Tennessee suffragists who fought for and won the vote for women in Tennessee — the decisive vote for the 19th (or Universal Suffrage) Amendment. The inset shows (l to r) Adrienne Pakis-Gillon, vice president of the Tennessee Woman Suffrage Monument, Inc. board; Perfect 36 member Jocelyn Wurzburg; and board president Paula Casey.

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Politics Politics Feature

Lee Harris Out, Steve Basar In?

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Though University of Memphis law professor and state Senate minority leader Lee Harris seems to have opted out of a contemplated Democratic primary challenge this year to incumbent congressman Steve Cohen for the 9th District congressional seat, a replacement of sorts may be in the wings.

That would be Shelby County Commissioner Steve Basar, a Republican, who confided to the Flyer on Monday that he is actively considering making a race for the seat. 

For decades, no Republican has finished higher than the low 40-percent range in congressional elections in the 9th, but Basar points out, for what it is worth, that in 2014 District Attorney General Amy Weirich, the Republican nominee, outpolled former Judge Joe Brown, the Democratic nominee, among the district’s voters.

If Basar should end up in a race against Cohen, that would create a situation whereby not only would the two main contestants in this predominantly black district be white, they would both be Jewish as well.

Harris has not yet been reached for comment, but the Flyer learned last week that he had changed his mind about running and had so informed Cohen, who confirmed receiving such a voice mail to that effect from Harris. The congressman said he would defer to Harris concerning any further statement on the matter.

UPDATE News of state Senator Harris’ change of mind regarding a race for the 9th District congressional seat, which was first noted by the Flyer last week, was made formal this week with Harris’ release of the following statement:

Late last year, I was approached by several Memphians who want to see a new generation of leadership. Their faith in me is humbling and, at their request, I promised that I would consider running for Congress. I have had an opportunity to serve my community in the Memphis city council, in the Tennessee senate, and as one of the top Democrats in the state, all of which have been honors that I never could have expected. However, after careful consideration, I have decided that now is not the time for me to run for Congress. I will continue to serve this community in the Tennessee senate, do my best to bring Memphians together, and continue to focus on getting things done
.

Tennessee Senate Minority Leader Lee Harris (D-Memphis)

• As was the case of its two previous full meetings in January, the Shelby County Commission managed on Monday to minimize the controversies — the main one being an ongoing power struggle with the administration of county Mayor Mark Luttrell — that have flared up regularly during the year or so since the election of 2014. 

As was the case on Monday, the meeting of January 11th had owed much of its briskness to the relative sketchiness of its agenda, though the main reason why it moved along so fast may have been simply the determination of its presiding officer, chairman Terry Roland, to get things out of the way in time for everybody to be home to view that night’s NCAA collegiate football championship.

In fact, that meeting had literally concluded with Roland intoning the words, “Roll, Tide!” — an exhortation not to be found in Roberts’ Rules of Order, but one that was properly consummated later on by the University of Alabama’s convincing win over the Clemson Tigers in the championship game.

Football fanships aside, some fundamental disagreements do remain — even if in relatively muted form.

A subsequent special meeting of the commission last Thursday, held to announce and ratify the body’s legislative agenda for 2016, had also been a relatively pro forma affair — though four suburban Republican commissioners — David Reaves, Mark Billingsley, Heidi Shafer, and George Chism — dissented from a resolution requesting a three-year moratorium on further expansion of the state’s Achievement School District. 

In December, the ASD announced plans to take over four more “failing” schools from the Shelby County Schools District, bringing to 30-odd the total number, most of which are located in Memphis. That resulted in protests from SCS, which operates its own i-Zone program for under-performing schools, and in proposed legislation to limit ASD’s powers or even to terminate it.

Monday’s commission meeting, though it was free of any extended dustups, as well, contained one clear disagreement of sorts that was barely spoken to. This was in the form of a resolution to award some $6,500 to the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center to support activities on behalf of the homeless.

Like several other grants on Monday’s agenda, this one lumped together financial outlays from several of the commissioners, each of whom has a de facto budget for such contributions, which do require approval by the full body. The grant was sponsored by Commissioners Reginald Milton and Walter Bailey. 

Commissioner Justin Ford, chair of the general government committee, which initiated the grant, and, like the two sponsors, an urban Democrat, added another $1,500 from his district kitty, bringing the total of the MGLCC grant up to $8,000.

Just before the vote was taken, Basar made a point of reminding his fellow commissioners that, when the vote was taken during last year’s budget session to provide each commissioner with a $100,000 fund from which to make individual contributions, the expected protocol would be for the commission as a whole to honor the request. His own vote would be in line with that expectation, he said.

That may have been Basar’s way of voting to approve the grant while partly dissociating himself from it. A few other commissioners — again, suburban Republicans — were more direct. Reaves voted no, while Billingsley and Roland abstained. Another Republican, Shafer, had left the meeting. There had been no public discussion as such, but, asked later on for his reasoning in opposing the grant outright, Reaves said he doubted that his constituents would be in favor of awarding funds to the designated recipient.

Thus it was that a social issue, one that in previous years, even some recent ones, might have aroused some uncomfortable debate, had diminished to the point of being a relative blip on the radar screen. But a blip it still is.

For the record, there was one moment of complete public harmony at Monday’s meeting. It occurred as the first order of business, with a special resolution honoring Memphis Police director Toney Armstrong, soon to be director of security for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, for “27 years of exemplary service in local law enforcement.”

The vote for that resolution was unanimous, and all 13 commission members happily gathered themselves around Armstrong later for a group portrait.

• Though it is almost certainly going nowhere, a bill has been introduced in the General Assembly that would prohibit presidential candidates who are not “natural born” from being on a Tennessee ballot or from receiving the state’s electoral votes. The sponsors of the measure, clearly aimed at Texas Senator Ted Cruz, are state Senator Jeff Yarbro and state Representative Jason Powell, both of Nashville.

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Politics Politics Feature

Election Commission Zigs; County Commission Zags

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Jackson Baker

Rich Holden

The announcement Monday by Rich Holden of his decision to retire as Shelby County Election Commission administrator at the end of the year belongs to the category of events that are both surprising and instantly seen as inevitable, once they occur.

For years Holden has borne the brunt of virtually nonstop criticism for a seemingly endless series of glitches and issues that have bedeviled the county’s electoral process. These have run the gamut from the issuance of ballots improperly matched up with the appropriate districts to snarls in vote-counting to what critics charged was a disregarding of quirks in the county’s voting machines.

At various times, Holden was the recipient of sanctions from the Election Commission itself, votes of no confidence by the Memphis City Council and the Shelby County Commission, and demands by local elected officials for federal investigations of his office.

Holden’s problems began as far back as the time of his appointment in 2009 by a commission that had become newly majority-Republican in the previous election cycle, when the state House of Representatives tipped over to GOP control.

Since the Senate had already come under a Republican majority, that made the GOP the state’s official majority party, and Tennessee law provides that not only the state Election Commission but each of the 95 county election commissions shall consist of a 3-2 majority in favor of the party which controls the legislature.

For decades, that fact resulted in anomalies like the presence of pretend-Democrats in control of election commissions in several ancestrally Republican East Tennessee counties where there were as many actual Democrats as there were aardvarks.

In Shelby County, however, the two parties had for some time coexisted in a condition of rough equivalence, and the change-over from Democratic to Republican control in the administration of elections had the potential of controversy under the best of circumstances.

And that fact was accentuated in 2009 by a fast-track post-election effort of the new GOP majority on the county Election Commission to transition Holden, who had been a Republican member of the commission, into the administrator’s job, which had long been held by Democratic CAO James Johnson.

The move was initially staved off by a statement of caution from former state Attorney General Robert Cooper, but would eventually come to pass, with Holden acceding to the position of administrator and Johnson becoming a Democratic commission member.

The newly configured commission hit a bump with the 2010 county election, the first major partisan election under the new management, when an apparent electronic glitch erroneously recorded thousands of potential election-day voters as already having cast ballots in the early-voting period, with hundreds of them being turned away before the problem was discovered and corrected.

Given that the slate of Republican candidates swept that election over their Democratic opponents, the losing Democrats thought they smelled a fish and sued to have the results overturned. They were supported by a series of itemized charges— some of them alleging chicaneries that seemed fanciful enough for a James Bond saga — from Black Box Voting, an out-of-state watchdog organization.

The list of allegations was pruned down to a series of possible technical irregularities before trial, and then-Chancellor Arnold Goldin dismissed the plaintiffs’ suit as not meeting the standards for declaring the election result “incurably uncertain,” as required for the trial to be pursued. The numerical gaps between winner and loser had, in any case, seemed far larger than could have been affected by the election-day glitch.

But the seeds of suspicion had sprouted, and the almost dependable eruption of new glitches in election after election ever since has done little to restore trust between the two parties vis-à-vis the election process.

The basis of contention shifted in the course of time from suspicion of fraud to simple negligence or mismanagement, and the spotlight shifted away from members of the commission itself to Holden. Following the mismatching of thousands of races to precincts in ballots issued in the August 2012 county election, the commission members, Democrats and Republicans alike, agreed to put Holden on six-month probation.

He emerged with his job intact, but allegations and complaints continued, from Democratic members of the commission and self-appointed watchdogs like Steve Ross and Joe Weinberg. Most recently, Weinberg made a point of publicizing a new case of apparent wrong ballots being issued to specific voters, this one based on a challenge originally raised by John Marek, one of the losing candidates in the recent election for the Memphis City Council’s District 5.

And state Representative G.A. Hardaway had of late gone so far as to call for a criminal investigation of Holden.

There often seemed to be a good deal of overreach by Holden’s critics, and no doubt partisan motives played a role in his tribulations, as did a general need to find a scapegoat for problems and circumstances beyond the province of a single individual. And, though generally good-natured and uncomplaining, the husky ex-Marine sometimes evinced a stubbornness in the face of complaints that others found frustrating.

In any case, Holden is at last off the hot seat. The five-member Election Commission, so often at odds with itself, will now have to agree on a successor.

• The Shelby County Commission, another local body accustomed to a fair amount of contentiousness, eased into its annual holiday break with a Monday meeting that lacked any of the clashes between members that have become routine, and, for the time being, avoided as well any resumption of the commission’s ongoing conflict with the administration of county Mayor Mark Luttrell.

And, as a result of the defeat at Wednesday’s committee sessions of a resolution from Commissioner Steve Basar requiring approval by the county commission and city council of any potential merger of the city/county Economic Development and Growth Engine Board (EDGE) with the Community Redevelopment Agency, Basar had withdrawn his resolution from Monday’s agenda.

The main order of business for the commission on Monday was to approve further incremental grants to community organizations, projects, and charities deemed to be deserving by members of the commission acting under their recently adopted license to dispense such lagniappes on a district-by-district basis.

One indication of Monday’s laid-back pre-holiday mood came in the form of a quip from commission chairman Terry Roland to Luttrell’s CAO, Harvey Kennedy, who had previously complained that the microphone at his desk in the well of the commission auditorium was malfunctioning.

“Well, Cap, you see we got your button fixed, and you don’t even need to use it,” cracked Roland, during a lull in proceedings. (The breeziness of addressing Kennedy, a former Navy captain, as “Cap” was an interesting indicator of the commission’s relations with the administration, as well.)

The lack of action Monday on either the EDGE issue or the conflict between the commission and the administration does not mean that either is a closed matter, of course. There will doubtless be further actions on the commission (and on the city council, as well) to revise the terms of the relationship with EDGE so as to give members of the legislative bodies more active say on industrial recruitment matters than their presence on the EDGE board as ex officio members currently allows.

And there are ongoing discussions behind the scenes to break the stalemate over the commission’s wish to complete the installation of former Commissioner Julian Bolton to act as an independent attorney on behalf of the commission. Basically, the commission insists on the basis of the County Charter that it has that right; Luttrell and County Attorney Ross Dyer insist on the basis of the self-same charter that they do not.

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Politics Politics Feature

Wharton, Strickland Remain Close in Mayoral Race

With three weeks to go, the race for Memphis mayor is still a coin-toss affair. By most reckonings, incumbent Mayor A C Wharton and City Councilman Jim Strickland are running virtually neck and neck.

That circumstance was confirmed by a recent Mason-Dixon poll, published in The Commercial Appeal, which had Wharton at 30 percent and Strickland at 25 percent, with City Councilman Harold Collins and Memphis Police Association President Mike Williams at 12 percent each. Arguments promptly raged as to the nature of the sampling, but the general picture seemed clear enough. And so were candidates’ responses.

Strickland’s support among white voters and along the Poplar Corridor in general was obvious and unlikely to diminish much, if at all, by election day. If anything, came the word from his camp, his standing in the poll was low-balled. Strickland, who has certainly not forsworn the black vote but was lagging there, accelerated his appearances at African-American churches and other predominantly black venues to augment his prospects.

Wharton was maintaining a plurality among black voters, who constitute almost two-thirds of the eligible electorate, and was in the low double-digits among whites. The mayor kept pitching to his strength and was emphasizing support from fellow office-holders and established sources, including The Commercial Appeal, which gave him its endorsement.

Collins and Williams, meanwhile, maintained they were within striking distance and were working hard to present themselves as the change agents of choice in an environment in which voter discontent was obvious, both anecdotally and as measured in the polls.

The four principal mayoral candidates will participate next Tuesday at noon at the University Club in what could be the climactic mayoral forum in what has been a series of them this year. The forum is sponsored under the joint auspices of the Rotary Club of Memphis and the Flyer.

• Politics is politics, and education is education, but all too often, especially in Memphis and Shelby County in recent times, the two have merged. 

Everybody in Shelby County surely got their fill of education politics per se during the the city/county school merger controversy that raged from December 2010 to August 2014, when the six suburban municipalities of Shelby County got their independent school districts up and running, more or less.

But what’s this? Here, in its entirety, is an item reported in the current issue of the Nashville-based Tennessee Journal:

“The Memphis-Shelby County Education Association claimed through its attorney Wednesday to have seceded from the Tennessee Education Association and the National Education Association. Relations had been tense since Keith Williams, a former M-SCEA president whose term ended in July, was hired last month as the new executive director. 

“Ken Foster, the director for 15 years, was ousted. TEA has notified teachers it has set up a new ‘TEA West’ office to serve them, and that despite actions of M-SCEA leaders, they are still members of TEA and NEA. According to a TEA email, TEA West was established ‘after M-SCEA leadership refused to allow NEA officials to conduct an audit, broke the agreement of the Memphis-Shelby County [schools] merger, forced out the long-serving executive director, and now has claimed to disaffiliate from TEA-NEA.'” 

For the record, the Keith Williams mentioned here is the same Keith Williams who is considered one of the main contenders in the race for the District 3 City Council seat being vacated by Harold Collins, now a candidate for mayor.

Williams’ pugnacity as an opponent of the charter surrender that was voted on by a majority of the old Memphis City Schools board on December 20, 2010, was rivaled only by that of then board member Kenneth Whalum Jr., now a candidate for the Super District 9, Position 2 seat.

As previously indicated in this space, Whalum is running as the unofficial head of a like-minded “education slate,” and, unsurprisingly perhaps, Williams is one of the six members of that slate he has endorsed.

By all accounts, the other major candidate for the District 3 seat is Patrice Robinson, who served alongside Whalum on the old MCS board and was a member of the majority which cast the fateful vote to surrender the MCS charter.

Robinson — who has been running hard in the current District 3 race, holding one meet-and-greet affair per week — previously tangled in the race for the District 9 Shelby County Commission seat now held by Justin Ford, who was able to eke out a win in that winner-take-all race.

Unlike that race, this one for city council is subject to a run-off if no one candidate is able to win a majority, and, inasmuch as the field includes five other candidates — some with name recognition from previous races of their own — it is not impossible that this latest showdown between Williams and Robinson will have another chapter beyond October 8th.

The other active contenders for the District 3 seat are Tanya Cooper, also an educator and the daughter of state Representative Barbara Cooper; Kevin Mott; Sherman Kilimanjaro; and Coleman Thompson. Rhonda Banks is listed on the ballot as a candidate, but she has suspended her race and is now supporting Robinson. • Runoffs, if they should be called for in the District 3 race or in any of the other six district races, will not be held on November 8th, as originally scheduled and announced as a runoff date, but on November 19th. This is according to a new clarification by the Shelby County Election Commission of state election law, which calls for runoffs to occur no sooner than 30 days from the posted election day and no longer than 45 days.

The clarification happens incidentally to avoid the awkwardness of holding an election on a date, November 8, which falls on a Sunday.

 

• Meanwhile, one de facto “runoff” election has already been held — that for the chairmanship of the Shelby County Commission. The commission’s original vote for chairman was held a month ago — on August 10th, when East Memphis Republican member Steve Basar won the election by a single vote.

Then, in a bizarre turnabout, one hour after the election, Memphis Democrat Eddie Jones, who had abstained for most of the ballot rounds that day before casting what had turned out to be the decisive vote for Basar, unexpectedly asked for a reconsideration ­— i.e., a revote on the matter.

Parliamentary protocol allows for such a reconsideration if the person seeking it was a member of the prevailing side on the original vote, and Jones, who had in the meantime had several sotto voce conversations with another chairmanship contender, Millington Republican Terry Roland, qualified.

After a vote which narrowly approved reconsideration, another vote was held, in which — thanks largely to a spoiler candidacy by Collierville Republican George Chism — neither the now un-elected Basar nor Roland could prevail, and a new election was called for this week, to accommodate Jones, who said he would be unable to attend the intervening commission meeting on August 14th.

Come Monday, and the new election was the first order of business after the commission’s approval of a consent agenda. With interim chair Van Turner presiding (outgoing chair Ford’s term having formally terminated), new nominations for chairman were called for, and the same three candidates as before — Basar, Roland, and Chism — were put in nomination.

Tellingly, Roland was nominated this time by Jones. In the end, after two ballots, Roland won election on the basis of five Republican votes, including his own, and those of two Democrats, Jones and Ford.

As a preamble to Monday’s rescheduled chairmanship election, several citizens, representing Democratic, Republican, and perhaps independent constituencies, had appeared before the commission, challenging its members to cast their votes on some basis other than deal-making.

Whatever degree of public cynicism that may have represented, victor Roland, whose election was a springboard of sorts for the county mayor’s race he intends to run in 2018, sought to be reassuring. Before the vote, he promised “from my heart” that, if elected, he would “break my neck” on behalf of his colleagues of all persuasions. After the vote, he professed to be humbled.

Basar — who, besides his two recent setbacks, had suffered an unanticipated loss to Ford in last year’s chairmanship vote ­— was sounding philosophical even before Monday’s vote was taken. “Déjà vu all over again,” he said.

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Politics Politics Feature

Politics or Government in Shelby County?

CREDIT: JB

Even as most political attention locally is trained on an ongoing city election season, Shelby County government has a political crisis on its hands in the form of an ongoing power struggle between branches of government.

When the Shelby County Commission concluded its last public meeting of the 2014-15 cycle on Monday, it was still in a state of uncertainty and division as to the nature of its own leadership in the year to come, having elected Steve Basar as its chairman two weeks ago, only to un-elect him in a reconsideration vote an hour later.

But the commissioners seemed to have less difficulty on Monday in unifying against a common foe: the administration of Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell, which has gotten involved in a power struggle with the commission — one that consistently has put the two entities at loggerheads as to just who is the boss in the county system.

The contest was joined in two ways on Monday. First, when Luttrell requested and was given the opportunity to address the commission to open the meeting, in his remarks, the mayor made an effort to review some of the differences between his administration and the commission on budgetary and spending priorities and proposed a forthcoming “summit” with the county’s legislative body to review priorities and to try to get them in sync.

One item mentioned in the mayor’s remarks — a workforce development grant of $175,000 to Seedco, a national nonprofit organization, to train local residents for retail positions — would become the focus of a debate and test-case vote, one that the mayor, who opposed the grant, would lose by a 10-2 vote.

Luttrell’s opposition to the Seedco grant, much of which would be in conjunction with the opening of a Just-A-Buck dollar store, was that routing economically at-risk citizens into relatively low-paying retail-sales positions was not the proper focus for the county’s workforce-development efforts.

In the commission’s later debate on the Seedco grant, the mayor’s position was supported by Commissioners Basar and David Reaves, two Republicans who often find themselves on opposite sides of the commission’s internal politics, but who concurred in opposition to the grant.

Basar, as Luttrell had, challenged the emphasis on retail sales vs. higher-paying kinds of employment, and pointed out that Seedco had in 2012 been charged by the federal government with fraud in its New York City job-placement operation.

Reaves made the point that the commission, once having made a grant to Seedco, would have no further oversight over its disposition, contrasting that with workforce development programs conducted under two existing entities, the Greater Memphis Alliance for a Competitive Workforce (GMACW), operated under the auspices of the city/county EDGE board, and the federally sponsored Workforce Investment Network (WIN).

The commission would have significant input in either of those workforce development programs without having to “spend a nickel,” said Reaves, who called the proposed Seedco grant an exercise in “pork.” He offered a motion, seconded by Basar, to refer the matter of the Seedco grant back to committee while the commission looked into doing something with GMACW or WIN.

The motion went down, however, and it became apparent that something more than pure cost-accounting or workforce-development policy was involved in the debate when influential GOP Commissioner Heidi Shafer, the body’s budget chair and normally an opponent of grants in principle, came down hard for the Seedco grant.

Shafer has made no secret of her view that the Luttrell administration had arrogated too much authority to itself, particularly in its dealings with the commission during recent budget negotiations, when the administration declared a $6 million surplus but opposed efforts by Republican members to offset enough of that amount to allow for a one-cent decrease in the county tax rate.

Other members, Democrats and Republicans, have nursed other grievances, and there developed an apparent post-budget consensus on the commission for the body to look into having its own legal recourse and independent vetting sources.

The commission has meanwhile pressed for more candor from the administration on the county fiscal situation and secured an administration pledge in last week’s committee sessions for a “truing-up” this fall of the county’s fluid revenue status.

At one point in Monday’s discussion of the Seedco grant, after Luttrell had left the auditorium, GOP Commissioner Terry Roland confronted administration CAO Harvey Kennedy with an accusation that “it was kind of disrespectful for the mayor to come up here and talk about a summit when he has run roughshod over us for five years. … When you look at that charter, what it says is that this body has the power. … At the end of the day, we are the governing body.”

Later in the debate, Kennedy called Roland’s characterization of relations between the commission and administration “extremely inaccurate” and insisted that the county charter provided “shared responsibility” for the branches of government and that “we don’t work for the commission.”

Whatever the case, relations between the two branches could hardly be more strained, and it would seem that Luttrell’s desired “summit” with the commission, if and when it ends up taking place, could be the last best chance of patching things up.

Meanwhile, the commission will attempt once again to resolve its chairmanship question at its September 14th public meeting, with Commissioner Van Turner, a first-term Democrat, presiding as acting chair.


DOGGING THE VOTE:

JB




Three candidates in the Memphis city election who are running along similar and somewhat unorthodox lines are including an emphasis on shoring up animal rights in their platforms and
collaborated in a meet-and-greet at the Overton Bark dog park at
Overton Park on Saturday.



It didn’t take long for this little terrier, belonging to an attendee, to commit himself and come looking for a constituent service — to wit, a dog biscuit — from (l to r) mayoral candidate Mike Williams; Lynn Moss, candidate for City Council, District 9, Position 2; and Robin Spielberger, candidate for Super district 9, Position 1.



Two other issues held in common by the three are support for
retaining the Mid-South Coliseum and restoration of lost benefits for
city employees.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

The Shelby County Commission Kerfluffle

“It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” Those lines are familiar to most students of literature as the first words in Charles Dickens’ classic A Tale of Two Cities. After Monday, they may have a somewhat different meaning to Steve Basar, a member of the Shelby County Commission.

Basar, who represents an East Memphis district and has a major concern with economic development, has desired to be chairman of the commission for some time. Two years ago, he was elected to serve as the body’s vice chair, an office which, once upon a time, positioned one to ascend to the chairmanship in a year’s time. Harboring such expectations, which were reinforced by another commission tradition, that the chairmanship should be rotated from year to year by party, Republican Basar made ready for his ascension to the chairmanship a year ago, at the end of outgoing Democrat James Harvey’s one-year term.

Like Harvey before him, Basar even had a speech ready. But, for reasons that have never been fully explained and that may be as much personal as political, Basar was not elected. His fellow Republicans, whom he expected to serve as his base, not only deserted him, they ended up voting in Democratic Commissioner Justin Ford.

Stunned and understandably aggrieved, Basar fell into a pattern of cooperating with the commission’s Democrats on key matters. The positive lure of bipartisanship may have been one of his reasons, but there were other reasons for the de facto alliance, which has held firm for most of the succeeding time. For, just as Basar felt he’d been done wrong by his fellow Republicans, the Democrats on the commission were suspicious that Ford, to gain his chairmanship, had made some deal with the Republicans.

Nobody wants to use the term “payback,” but the ad hoc Basar/Democrat coalition set out on a systematic campaign to depose chairman Ford, and, if not that, then at least to set limits on his powers. They succeeded in the latter aim, reducing from eight to seven the number of commission votes necessary to overrule the chairman’s control of the agenda.

Came Monday, and Basar, more or less on the strength of his Democratic alliance, won election as chairman by the whisker-width of a single vote. The best of times. 

But payback is a two-edged sword, and to the astonishment of Basar (and everyone else, except whoever was in on the deal), the new chairman-elect saw his chairmanship abruptly taken away from him an hour after he got it, when one of his previous voters, whether induced or not, went over to the other side and forced a reconsideration vote that went against Basar. The worst of times.

For the time being, the commission is leaderless and won’t have another chairmanship election until next month. Other people’s ambitions, and other factors, including no doubt some real issues, went into this outcome. But, at root, what it signifies is that political gamesmanship has gotten the upper hand in what is constitutionally the supreme legislative body in Shelby County and which has real business to accomplish. Any more of this hanky-panky just won’t do.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Spreading Blessings

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Monday’s televised debate involving five Memphis mayoral candidates may have a significant effect on public attitudes toward the contestants. It certainly gave them all greater currency.

As almost all the initial media coverage indicated, the central event of the forum was a one-on-one verbal slugfest between Mayor A C Wharton and Councilman Jim Strickland, whom Wharton and most observers regard as the the major challenger to the mayor’s incumbency.

But each of the other candidates involved — Councilman Harold Collins, Memphis Police Association president Mike Williams, and former Memphis School Board member Sharon Webb — had an opportunity, as well, to define themselves to a general audience that, for the most part, has been unfamiliar with them.

Collins and Williams, both of whom proved to be articulate and knowledgeable about the issues confronting city government, probably enhanced their vote potential.

Webb’s case is harder to evaluate. In her favor is the fact of being the only woman in the race, coupled with a likable presence and a way of making the case that “it’s time for a woman to take over” that is both eloquent and passionate. Detracting from her prospects, though, is her obvious unfamiliarity with city issues, the same weakness that caused her to draw a blank in a TV debate the last time she ran for mayor in the special election of 2009.

The exchange of attacks and insults between Wharton and Strickland clearly provided the most intense moments of the forum, which was televised by WMC-TV, Action News 5, and was co-sponsored by the Memphis Association of Black Journalists and the League of Women Voters.

Oddly, for an incumbent facing a challenge to his reelection, the mayor was the more aggressive in seeking out points of difference, and his assertiveness was nicely complemented with periodic references to the value of experience and a show of wit — as when he dubbed Strickland “Dr. No” for favoring clamps on police funding as budget chairman.

Contrasting that with Strickland’s emphasis on public safety as a campaign theme, the mayor said, “I think candidate Strickland ought to be introduced to Councilman Strickland, because they are two different people.”

Strickland responded by putting the blame for a reduced police presence on budgets prepared by the mayor, and he showed some polemical skill of his own in attacking redundancies in Wharton’s administration, by suggesting that the mayor was trying to be “Noah,” making allowances for two of everything.

Strickland and Wharton also quarreled over their relative support for summer jobs for youth, with each claiming credit for what appeared to be different programs in different eras.

While the bickering between the two may have shed some light on areas of city government, it also drew out both men as able combatants, with the normally easy-going Wharton showing some unaccustomed swagger — as well as the kind of agility that allowed him to co-opt emcee Joe Birch’s introductory description of Memphis as “a city on the move” as a motto for his administration.

Strickland, meanwhile, seemed to flourish under the mayor’s goading, which forced him away from his usual bullet-point recitations — that can turn into rote — into some impressively vigorous improvisations.

The Wharton-Strickland duel also gave Collins and Williams some good moments, allowing Collins, for example, to appear statesman-like in commenting on the “Tom and Jerry Show” aspects of the scrap, while Williams, commenting on the exchange of accusations between Wharton and Strickland on police issues, made the plague-on-both-their-houses observation that the city’s active police force had shrunk from 2,500 to 2,000 on their watch. He was enabled thereby to tilt the police debate away from self-serving arguments about benefits into the realm of public safety.

Collins, too, had a telling retort to the mayor’s experience factor, adding Wharton’s seven years as Shelby County mayor to the six he has served as mayor of Memphis and contending that those 13 years have not netted much for the community.

All things considered, the debate did not occasion any major breakaways in the direction of a particular candidate. If anything, it tended to equalize things, in the direction of all-have-won-all-must-have-prizes.

But there are several more mayoral forums planned, all of them — like the one Monday night — good free-media opportunities for the less well-endowed candidates to catch up to the ones with bankrolls.

• In a bizarre turnaround, the Shelby County Commission elected a new chairman, Steve Basar, as its first order of business Monday, withdrew the honor an hour later in a reconsideration vote, then decided to defer further action on the chairmanship until next month.

Basar, a Republican member who served as vice chair of the commission last year, suffered his second consecutive disappointment. He had expected to be named chairmen last year, only to lose out to Democrat Justin Ford when Basar’s GOP colleagues withheld their support from him.

This one had to feel all the more crushing, since Basar had believed himself to be the chairman-elect and was clearly savoring the triumph, until the reconsideration vote was called for by Democrat Eddie Jones, whose vote for Basar on a final ballot had originally broken a deadlock in Basar’s favor.

Jones offered no explanation for his change of heart, though Basar would note to reporters afterward that “you saw who was sitting next to each other.” Basar sat on one side of Jones; on the other side was fellow Republican Terry Roland, who had also sought the chairmanship and served notice that, given another shot at it, he was prepared to try again.

In deference to Jones, who will be absent at the commission meeting of August 24th, the next chairmanship vote will take place on September 14th, with current vice chair Van Turner, a Democrat, presiding. As County Attorney Ross Dyer noted on Monday, current chair Justin Ford’s term will run out at the end of August. The unexpected — and unprecedented — circumstance of Monday had its roots in the shifting alliance structure of the commission, which, ever since last year’s post-election reorganization, had drifted into a quasi-party-line division in which six Democrats, plus Republican Basar, had been one faction, with the other faction consisting of five Republicans plus Ford, who won his chairmanship with GOP support.

Jackson Baker

Former Chattanooga congressman Zach Wamp was in Memphis on Monday, convening a meeting at Owen Brennan’s Restaurant of supporters of the presidential candidacy of Florida Senator Mario Rubio. Here, Wamp consults with Rubio’s West Tennessee chairman, Germantown state Senator Brian Kelsey.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

County Commission Election Next Week

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Even as candidates for city office gird for an October 8th election, which is still weeks away from its stretch drive, another election of some possible consequence is just around the corner.

On Monday, the Shelby County Commission will elect a chairman to serve  for the 2015-16 period, and, while other commissioners are quite likely considering their options in case of deadlock, at least two members of the commission — Steve Basar and Terry Roland — are more or less publicly running.

Both, interestingly enough, on a 13-member body which has a Democratic majority of one, are Republicans. Basar, however, is a de facto Democratic candidate, hoping to gain through an active coalition with members of the other party an office which he believes himself to have been unfairly deprived of by members of his own party.

A year ago, Basar, an East Memphis Republican who was then serving as commission vice chair, confidently expected elevation to the chairmanship as a matter of course.

For the first several years after the commission became subject to partisan elections in the mid-1990s, the tradition was to elect a chairman from one party in a given year, along with a vice chairman from the other. At the end of that year, the vice chair would be formally elected to become chair for the next year, in a routine whereby the succession to chairman was essentially foreordained, and the commission’s chairmanship was, by what was termed a “gentlemen’s agreement,” rotated by party annually.

That was the format which Basar expected to apply to his own case when a newly elected commission met to select a chairman after the conclusion of the August 2014 county election.

But Basar encountered a body which contained five new members, and the once-predictable rites of succession to the chairmanship had been jimmied and could no longer be depended on.

That all began with the election for chairman in 2011, when then Republican vice chair Mike Carpenter, who had angered his GOP colleagues by what they considered too close a collaboration with the commission’s Democrats, failed to get Republican votes, and Democratic chairman Sidney Chism parlayed the resulting deadlock into reelection for a second consecutive term.

From that point on, even as the principle of rotating chairmanships seemed to have reasserted itself to some degree, there was always an element of suspense in the matter of electing a chair, as well as a fair amount of intrigue.

When Republican Mike Ritz succeeded Democrat Chism as chair in 2012, he in effect became chief strategist for the Democratic majority’s opposition to independent suburban school districts and ran afoul of his GOP colleagues, as Carpenter had done previously.

In 2013, as Chism had done before him, Ritz sought a second consecutive term, but once again the Republican minority coalesced around what they considered a sympathetic Democrat, James Harvey, who won with their support. And, in 2014, GOP members continued with what had seemingly become a strategy of supporting a compliant Democrat over a fellow Republican, backing eventual winner Justin Ford over a stunned Basar.

In the wake of his defeat, Basar entered into a coalition with the commission’s Democrats on key vote after key vote, beginning with their efforts to limit Ford’s chairmanship powers last fall, and continuing through this year’s budget negotiations.

Basar still wants to be commission chairman, though he has also offered himself as a possible successor to Paul Morris, who is stepping down as chairman of the Downtown Memphis Commission.

Meanwhile, Roland makes no bones about it: He wants to be Shelby County Mayor, is essentially already running for that office, which is up again in 2018, and clearly believes that becoming commission chairman would give him a leg up on that race.

Roland hails from Millington, was elected to the commission as a GOP firebrand, and can still comport himself that way, depending on the issue. But he has made an obvious effort to mute his partisanship and work across party lines. He led the effort to put the commission on record as supporting Governor Bill Haslam‘s Insure Tennessee proposal, and the successful resolution to rename the Shelby County Courthose for the late civil rights icon D’Army Bailey was proposed by Roland.

• Meanwhile, on the Wednesday agenda of the commission’s general government committee is the still simmering issue of the Nathan Bedford Forrest statue and Forrest graves in what was formerly Forrest Park (Health Sciences Park).

Again before the commission is a resolution sponsored by Commissioner Walter Bailey that would put the commission on record as supporting the Memphis City Council’s ordinance to remove the statue, which was due for a second reading at this week’s council meeting. The commission’s resolution supporting the council’s intent was deferred from the committee’s July 22nd meeting.

Any action by the commission would be purely symbolic, inasmuch as only the council has authority regarding disposition of the statue. But whatever the commission does would definitely have an effect on public opinion during what is expected to be a lengthy course of litigation over the issue.

The city council’s sentiment has so far remained unanimous for removal, but indications are that reservations by suburban members of the county commission could make for controversy.

The commission’s budget committee is likely to get into something of a thicket, too. Budget chair Heidi Shafer wants the commission to take up the issue of establishing a staff or hiring an individual to perform for the commission the same kind of independent vetting service over financial matters that the Congressional Budget Office does for members of Congress.

Shafer and other members of the commission, on both sides of the party line, were plainly vexed by seemingly disparate accountings issued by the administration of Mayor Mark Luttrell and County Trustee David Lenoir, respectively, on the actual amount of an end-of-fiscal-year surplus.

There is a strong and bipartisan sentiment on the commission to assert the body’s independence vis-à-vis the administration, as was also indicated recently by the commission’s open exploration of the prospect of hiring its own attorney, at least for ad hoc matters.

• It was neither the most surprising action nor the most momentous one of the 2015 Memphis election season, but the joint endorsement of Councilman Harold Collins‘ mayoral campaign on Monday by the Memphis Fire Fighters Association and an independent firefighters’ group was another sign of an apparent recent surge of support for Collins.

The councilman from Whitehaven was fairly universally judged to have acquitted himself well in a four-way mayoral forum last week put on by several local women’s groups at First Congregational Church.

And, though Collins’ financial receipts still lag behind those of Mayor A C Wharton and Councilman Jim Strickland, they have been significant enough to suggest the possibility that talk of a two-man mayoral race between Wharton and Strickland may have been overdone — or, at any rate, premature.

The opening by Mayor Wharton on Sunday of a Whitehaven-based headquarters on Elvis Presley Boulevard, to complement another headquarters on Poplar Avenue (to be inaugurated this coming Sunday), is a clear indication that the mayor has a two-front war on his hands.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Commission Plays 52-Pickup

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Early on in Monday’s regular business session of the Shelby County Commission, Commissioner  Melvin Burgess, a Democrat, moved to defer for two weeks a vote on appointing someone to fill a Judicial Commission vacancy, on the grounds that a discussion on the matter would crowd out some necessary and potentially lengthy deliberations on the county budget and tax rate for fiscal 2015-16.

That was either a face-value statement, as Burgess insisted, or a political maneuver, as the Republican members of the commission — or most of them — suspected, and very shortly the provisional consensus on a budget/tax rate combination that had apparently been reached in a lengthy commission session on May 20th began to come asunder.

Several of the GOP members — conspicuously excluding Steve Basar, who supported Burgess’ motion — objected that most of the 15 applicants for Judicial Commissioner were sitting in the commission audience and had cleared their personal slates in order to be present for the scheduled vote.

; Privately, they began to sense that some deal had been made that involved trade-offs of various kinds, and Basar’s support of the Burgess motion convinced some of them, at least, of something that Commissioner David Reaves, a GOP member from Bartlett, was willing to voice later on:

“It all goes back to the chairmanship vote,” Reaves said, referring to a reorganizational vote of the newly elected commission last fall. Basar, who had been vice chair of the previous commission, had expected to be elected chairman but was stunned to find that most of his fellow Republicans were committed to other candidates. In the end, a majority of Republicans united behind Democrat Justin Ford, who had often voted with the GOP contingent during his first term.

Whatever the reason for that reversal — and they were probably as much personal as political — it made for a commission divided along clearly partisan lines, with the body’s Democrats, plus Basar, on one side, and the Republicans, plus Ford, on the other.

For weeks last fall, the two factions waged procedural warfare, with the Democratic/Basar coalition seeking either to unseat Ford as chairman or to drastically limit his authority. In the end, Ford survived, though with modestly curtailed prerogatives, and the showdown eased up. It, indeed, had been largely forgotten, until Monday, when Burgess made his motion. 

Ford, as chairman, attempted to disallow any deferral, but in the resultant vote, Burgess’ fellow Democrats, plus Basar, prevailed.

“Basar tipped his hand,” Reaves said. “He’s looking toward September, for the next chairman’s vote and trying to gain some leverage. Why else would he vote that way? It allowed us to figure out quickly that he had flopped.”

Basar denied any such motive, but he agreed that the Republicans began to shift, more or less in unison, to a common strategy, “once they saw me voting again with the Democrats.”

One consequence was a defeat for a long-pending ordinance proposed by Basar to apply pedestrian safety laws to unincorporated areas of Shelby County. Basar needed nine votes, but Republicans Reaves and Terry Roland, who had agreed to help him meet his quota, withdrew their support.

Subsequently, the old arithmetic of Democrats-plus-Basar versus Republicans-plus-Ford reasserted itself on vote after vote, preventing agreement on matters that, as of the marathon commission meeting of May 20th, had seemed either settled or within easy reach. 

The commissioners had then seemed to agree on a formula dividing some $1.8 million equally between each of the 13 commissioners for them to distribute to non-profit organizations in their districts. That matter, now involving a lesser sum of $1.3 million and altered to include other services and recipients beyond non-profits, was referred back to committee on Monday.

More importantly, a sense of distrust had arisen among the commission Republicans regarding what they thought had been a common commitment to use part of a $6 million surplus claimed by the administration of Mayor Mark Luttrell to lower the county tax rate one cent, from $4.37 to $4.36. 

The GOP members now began to suspect behind-the-scenes collusion between the administration, which had never been sold on the tax decrease, preferring to use any left-over differential on infrastructure, and Democratic members, who, now supported by Basar, were proposing to raise several sums apparently agreed upon on May 20th — notably for the Sheriff’s Department and Juvenile Court, each of which were seeking significant increases.

Consequently, Roland proposed a 4-cent reduction in the tax rate (“as a way of getting one cent,” he would later acknowledge).That went down, by the same quasi-party line vote as before, as did a follow-up vote for the 1-cent reduction.

In the end, a “flat” or stable tax rate at the current level of $4.37 received the same 7-6 vote distribution for the first of three required votes, and all budget items were deferred or referred back to committee.

In a true sense, nothing got resolved on Monday, though several commission meetings, both scheduled and ad hoc, are sure to revisit the budget/tax rate matters between now and the July 1st fiscal-year deadline. And several members, seeing the prospect of consensus slipping further way, are foreseeing that an official arbitration process will need to be invoked.

“Irresponsible,” was Chairman Ford’s verdict on Monday’s meeting.

• On the mayoral-race front, most observers are now betting that the Rev. Kenneth Whalum Jr., the New Olivet Baptist Church pastor and former school board member, will run for mayor, despite his insistence that he will defer to Memphis Police Association President Mike Williams, a declared candidate.

“He’s making noise like he is,” said Williams last week at Broadway Pizza, after one in a series of what will be several organizational meetings, noting that “I have never asked Whalum about not running. …  I’m just moving at my pace. Even if he runs, we’re still going to be friends. … My destiny has nothing to do with his destiny.”


•Oh, and make room for Robert “Prince Mongo” Hodges on your tout sheet. The Zambodian prince, a frequent mayoral candidate in the past, says he’ll pull a petition for mayor next week.


• And, almost unnoticed, Joe Cooper (yes, that Joe Cooper) has put together a potentially effective campaign team in his latest quest for a political comeback as a candidate for the City Council Super District 9, Position 2 seat.

Cooper says he expects to spend $100,000 on his race and has engaged the professional consulting team of Matt Kuhn and Mike Lipe to help him do it. Gene Buehler and Karla Willingham Templeton are Cooper’s campaign co-chairs.

Cooper, who serves wrestling legend Jerry Lawler as an agent and manager, says that Thursday of this week will be officially recognized as “Jerry Lawler Day” in both Memphis and Jackson, Tennessee, with Mayor A C Wharton said to be ready to issue a proclamation in his City Hall office on Thursday and Jackson Mayor Jerry Gist honoring Lawler similarly on Thursday night.


• So, guess who else is being touted for Mayor. Yep, Harold Ford Jr.

But not of Memphis, Ford’s erstwhile home base. No, the transplanted former 9th District congressman and 2006 U.S. Senate candidate, is apparently being talked up for mayor of New York, his current abode — the most recent hints of such a prospect coming from Bloomberg Business, which reported last week on a Lincoln Center “American Songbook” gala that, according to the periodical, honored Ford for his fund-raising efforts on behalf of the center.

Said the article: “‘Mayor’ was on the lips of some guests, though not Ford’s. Asked about his interest in leading the city, Ford, who once considered a run for a U.S. Senate seat from New York and has endorsed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race, said ‘I’m a new father for the second time, that’s what I’m focused on.'” 

The next mayoral race in New York will occur in 2017. Current Mayor Bill de Blasio, an avowed liberal, is in some quarters considered vulnerable to a challenge from the center or right.

Categories
News News Blog

Forum Opens Public Discussion Regarding Future of Fairgrounds

CREDIT: Alexandra Pusateri

Taylor Berger (left) and Kyle Veazey (right) opened the forum for discussion from speakers.

  • Alexandra Pusateri
  • Taylor Berger (left) and Kyle Veazey (right) opened the forum for discussion from speakers.

On a chilly Wednesday night, a mishmash of locals concerned about the future state of the old Fairgrounds property gathered in a Midtown theater. At the Circuit Playhouse, local entrepreneur Taylor Berger and his organization Make Memphis hosted a moderated forum of speakers to provide some public input into the potential of the old Fairgrounds and the Mid-South Coliseum redevelopment.

The forum, moderated by politics reporter Kyle Veazey of The Commercial Appeal, mostly focused on the Fairgrounds’ proposed $233 million redevelopment and the idea of turning that area of Midtown into a Tourism Development Zone (TDZ). By designating the three-mile area as such, the city can use the excess sales tax that would come from a revitalized Fairgrounds — and its surrounding areas, including Overton Square and Cooper Young — to pay off the $176 million public revenue bonds, over 30 years, that would be required to fund its redevelopment.

It was mentioned multiple times throughout the night that the city administration had been invited, but there was no appearance from anyone in city government in the audience except Wanda Halbert, the Memphis City councilmember who represents District 4 and the area that includes the Fairgrounds. Shelby County commissioners, on the other hand, were plenty.

In his designated few minutes, Shelby County Commissioner Steve Basar mentioned the interest of the bond that would occur over the time it takes to repay the loan, taking away $55 million away from the city during that time.

“[$233 million] is not the total tax dollars going into the project,” Basar said. “It doesn’t include the interest. So when you’re all done, you’re talking about a $300-million project plus. You’re tying up this revenue stream for 30 years.”

The current plans proposed for the old Fairgrounds would include an amateur sports complex, hotel, and retail space spanning over 400,000 square feet. Getting approval from the State Building Commission is the next step for the city to move forward on the project. 

“I’m here to support whatever it is you want to do,” said Reginald Milton, Shelby County commissioner. “If you don’t want to do this, that’s fine. If you do want to do it, that’s fine. I just don’t want us to be the ones to affect what you want out of this.”

Other county commissioners pledged to keep an eye on the project and listen to citizens speaking about the issue.

Non-elected officials also spoke at the forum, including Shawn Massey, who works with the Shopping Center Group.

“Midtown is under-retailed from a retailer’s perspective,” Massey said. “It’s a great community. It’s got lots of density, but there’s a lot of leakage. There’s a lot of Midtowners going and shopping in other parts of Memphis and not shopping at their home.”

Charles “Chooch” Pickard, an architect who is running for city council this year, asked if other ideas besides youth sports may be more viable for the old Fairgrounds.

“Wouldn’t a tourist destination based on music and sports history be a bigger draw?” Pickard said. “I’d rather we base the TDZ on authentic Memphis history tourism, of which there are still a lot of untapped options.”

Mike McCarthy, a proponent to save the Mid-South Coliseum, gathered over 3,000 signatures to save the building itself from demolition, surpassing the goal his group had set earlier in the month.