Tag: Steve Cohen

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Overton Park Parking Plan Gets $3M in Federal Funding

Credit: Overton Park/Facebook

The project to forever eliminate parking on the Overton Park Greensward got $3 million in federal funding Wednesday. 

The U.S. House passed six spending bills Wednesday totaling more than $400 billion. Some of that money includes discretionary spending for projects all over the country, including the $3 million to further the Overton Park parking plan. 

U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen announced the funding Thursday morning, noting that he voted for the bill that includes it. Cohen said the bill includes more than $17 million for Memphis projects, including $4 million for the renovation of the historic cobblestones at the river’s edge Downtown.

The new Overton Park parking plan was announced in March (more at the link below). It came after decades of complaints about Greensward parking, testy debates during Memphis City Hall meetings, a mediation process that ended at an impasse, a compromise plan that would have taken some acres from the Greensward, a hopeful new plan that would have built a parking deck on Prentiss Place and left the Greensward intact, and then the removal of that proposal after it proved too costly in favor of the previous compromise plan that would remove part of the Greensward. 

New parking plan restores Greensward, forest

The new plan preserves the entirety of the Greensward, restores 17 acres of parkland that has stood unused behind chainlink fences, swaps land between the park and the Memphis Zoo, and forever ends the zoo’s use of the Greensward for overflow parking. 

Much work is to be done before that happens, though, said Tina Sullivan, executive director of the Overton Park Conservancy (OPC), which oversees the park for the city. The $3 million, she said, will help that work get done, make for quality work, and, maybe, get that work done more quickly.

Memphis Flyer: How big of a deal is this federal funding to the project?

Tina Sullivan: This is a huge deal. We knew we had this wonderful solution in hand and we knew we had the support of stakeholders on both sides and the city of Memphis. But we also knew it was going to cost a lot to implement, and that was gonna require everyone to go out and raise more money. Congressman Cohen delivered in getting this to sail through the House process.

I know there is still work to be done, and that we have a little bit more to go before it’s completely finalized, but this allows us to implement a better solution in a shorter timeframe than we would have. This will allow us to have a high-quality result on every piece of property that we’re going to touch with it. 

What needs to be done?

TS: The project moves the zoo maintenance facility over to that southeast corner [of Overton Park] and allows the zoo to repave that current maintenance area [current home of the city’s General Services facility] for members parking. 

There’s a lot of work that needs to be done in that southeast corner to make it ready for the zoo to move in and make it ready for the Conservancy to move in to the Southern portion of that. There is a lot of work to be done on the zoo’s current maintenance area demolishing buildings and designing a new parking lot over there.

A lot of work needs to be done on the Greensward. We’re going to need to remediate the Greensward. Our vision is to have some sort of permanent barrier between the zoo parking lot and the rest of the park. So, I think the “berm” that was discussed in our early negotiations, that may soften into something that’s a visual and a physical barrier, but maybe not. Maybe it’ll be something a little more appropriate to the design of the park. So, that still needs to be designed and then implemented. 

Then, finally, part of this solution includes reclaiming that 17-acre tract of forest that’s been behind the zoo fence since for a couple of decades, at least. So, the zoo’s gonna need to move its exhibit space out from behind Rainbow Lake. And we need to take that big, chainlink fence down and move it over to establish a new zoo boundary in the forest. From there, we’ll have we’ll have some work to do in the forest, like invasive [plant] removal. 

There is a large amount of work yet to be done. That’s going to cost a lot of money.

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Blunt Talk

Steve Cohen (Photo: Jackson Baker)

Donald Trump’s visit to the Memphis area over the weekend, at the Landers Center in Southaven, may have served as many Democratic purposes as Republican ones.

The former president’s “American Freedom Tour” netted a few thousand butts in seats on Saturday to hear his familiar litany, at prices ranging from $45 to $3,995. As a payday, that’s not small change, and it followed by a day another well-attended bonanza for Trump in Nashville.

But Democrats in Memphis, a few miles north, got some profit from the occasion, as well. Among other things, they used the then-pending Trump visit on Saturday for an “anti-Trump GOTV Rally & Happy Hour” on Friday evening at the Poplar Avenue campaign headquarters of Democratic D.A. candidate Steve Mulroy.

After flashing some signs at the late-Friday drive-time traffic on Poplar, the group went inside and got together a counternarrative of sorts. The star of the occasion was 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen, who compared published ads for the Trump event to poorly done commercials he used to see on local TV for slapped-together country music shows.

Despite reports that the Trump affair was sold out, Cohen jested to his listeners that they could get “two for one” on the $9 seats. As for the $3,995 tickets, he said, “You get to go and shake hands with the president, and then they give you some stuff to clean your hands.”

Referring to the ex-president as a “narcissistic sociopath,” Cohen reflected on allegations of illegal activity by Trump recently made public by the ongoing congressional January 6th investigative committee. “He is openly and notoriously committing criminal acts against our government, like no other person in our political history has ever done,” Cohen said.

The congressman recounted how he feared for his life on the occasion of open insurrection in the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. He told of how, barricaded in his office, he picked up a prized possession for potential self-defense — a souvenir baseball bat given to him once by former Chicago White Sox baseball great Minnie Miñoso.

“Ironically enough,” Cohen said, “Minnie’s son, Charlie, tweeted me, as did many other people during the event, and he asked, ‘How’s everybody in the office?’ I said, ‘Everybody’s okay,’ and told Charlie, ‘I’m sitting here with your father’s bat.’ He texted me back, and he said, ‘If he was there, he’d be there with you — ready to use the bat.’”

Host for the Friday evening affair, at which several Democratic candidates in the August election took speaking turns, was D.A. candidate Mulroy, who in his own remarks was at pains to connect the persona of Donald Trump with that of his own election opponent, incumbent Republican D.A. Amy Weirich.

Simultaneously with the Democratic rally, a new TV commercial on Mulroy’s behalf was getting airtime. Just as Mulroy did verbally to his audience, the commercial, entitled “Peas in the Pod,” yoked the images of Trump and Weirich, cast against a video of the January 6th mob in action.

A voice-over said, “Trump is bringing his mob to Memphis. Trump and D.A. Amy Weirich both break the rules and are out of control.” The ad continued: “On D.A. Amy Weirich’s watch, crime has jumped almost every year,” and a graph or two was shown by way of documentation. The soundtrack continued: “Now Shelby County has the worst violent crime anywhere. The worst president, the worst district attorney. We can do better with former federal prosecutor Steve Mulroy.”

Mulroy and Weirich are not playing beanbag with each other. Last week, after Mulroy had announced the results of a poll, which he said showed him with a 12-percentage-point lead, Weirich responded, “It sounds like Professor Mulroy is having trouble raising money and is cooking up bogus poll numbers to try and get donations. When your entire platform is built around freeing criminals from jail, it’s hard to raise money beyond the radical out-of-town Defund the Police activists.”

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A Witness to History

From left: Author Jonathan Martin and U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen. (Photo by Jackson Baker).

Journalism is, in a much-repeated phrase, the first draft of history. And Memphians had the opportunity last Friday to hear directly from one of the foremost active draftsmen when The New York Times reporter Jonathan Martin and 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen engaged in a dialogue at Novel bookstore.

The subject was This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future, the best-selling volume co-written by Martin and fellow Times reporter Alexander Burns. (Simon & Schuster 455 pages, $29.99)

Acknowledging that a fair-sized library now exists of books written about the tumultuous rear-end of the Trump presidency, Martin explained: “We felt like we could do something that was more lasting, and that would have some more endurance, and perhaps even be looked back on by historians in the future, to get at what happened in this tumultuous period of American politics. But we had to do something bigger, too. Yes, 2020, but also 2021. And we didn’t just want to make January 6th a tacked-on epilogue, we wanted to make the 6th what it is — a central event in American history.”

The volume he and Burns ended up with, said Martin, “captures the totality of the American political system — president, congress, but also governors and mayors, too. We have a lot in there about politics beyond Washington, as well.”

Jested Cohen: “The title of the book captures that. When I first saw it, I thought it you were talking about all of the House bills. They shall not pass, either. But it’s about the fact that this is going to keep going.”

Confirming that last point, Martin said, I think that the larger thrust is that we’re still living this permanent campaign, that it’s not just Trump, it’s sort of the polarization in American politics that defines everything today in government. And that certainly didn’t end in November of 2020. That’s alive and well —  that sort of tribal tug between red and blue.”

The book begins in March of 2020, said Martin, “because two big things happen [then]. Biden gets the nomination and COVID hits America. I think those two events kick off more or less the 2020 campaign cycle.”

Martin noted, “There’s nothing in the Constitution about a losing candidate for President calling the winner or conceding defeat. It’s taken place over the years and we assume it will happen, but like a lot with Trump, you can’t make any assumptions about what is or is not going to happen.”

Cohen, playing the part of interlocutor, said, “I knew that he wouldn’t. He probably wouldn’t concede, he said in 2016. If he lost, he wasn’t  going to concede. It would depend on whether he won or not. But nobody really thought that he would go on for months and months and years and continue with this, the Big Lie. You did a lot early on in the book about Kevin McCarthy when he found out.”

Martin, in a tongue-in-cheek reference to the House Republican leader, said, “Yeah, your good friend and colleague, Kevin McCarthy.”

Cohen expanded: “Let me tell you, for those of you who don’t know much about Kevin McCarthy. Most of  y’all are old enough probably to know of a guy in Memphis named Clair VanderSchaaf. Clair VanderSchaaf was sharper than Kevin McCarthy.” (VanderSchaaf was a Republican member of the Shelby County Commission back in the early ’80s when Cohen was a Democratic member of that body.)

Martin described McCarthy as a onetime back-bencher from California, who, as a state senator there, had “loved the celebrity aura around [Governor Arnold] Schwarzenegger. That was a sort of magnetic thing for him serving with Schwarzenegger, and he gets to Washington in 2006.” Years later, in Donald Trump’s time in the White House, McCarthy had worked his way into the Republican leadership. “And here’s Kevin McCarthy. He’s flying on Air Force One. He’s at Mar-a-Lago. He’s at Camp David, he’s in the West Wing, and that is heavy stuff for Kevin McCarthy, because [he was] unlike a lot of senior lawmakers who’ve seen all the trappings. He really enjoyed that. So McCarthy realized that he had, in pretty short order, to get close to Trump and stay close to Trump. That was, for four years, the name of the game for Kevin, up until January 6th.”

One of the Martin-Burns book’s news-making disclosures involved excerpts from tapes that Martin got access to, making  it clear that McCarthy was aghast at Trump’s role in fueling the January 6th insurrection and was casting about for the best way of getting the defeated president out of office as quickly as possible — whether by the 25th Amendment or by persuading Trump to leave voluntarily. “He’s desperate to get Trump out of office,” Martin said. Finally, the GOP House leader decided “the Democrats are going to impeach him anyway.”

As we know, however, the impeachment by the House failed to get a conviction in the Senate, and McCarthy found it expedient to cozy back up with Trump.

Then there was the case of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, also repulsed by Trump’s role in the crisis. Said Martin: “I see McConnell late on the night of January 6, walking out of the Capitol, [about] one in the morning. He sees me, and beckons me, and says, ‘What do you hear about the 25th?’ And what he means by that is, what are you hearing among your sources, both in Congress and in the cabinet, about getting Trump out of office with the 25th Amendment? That’s a pretty extraordinary thing to even consider, but he’s looking for intelligence at one in the morning about how we get Trump out of office, the 25th Amendment, and I told him what I’d heard, which was mostly speculation. And then I turned to McConnell and said, ‘Well, how are you feeling right now?’ That’s not a question I would typically ask — how he’s feeling about things. He’s not the Barbara Walters type of guy.”

Martin said that McConnell told him he felt exhilarated. “How could he feel exhilarated? Given the last two days — including a Georgia Senate election that would cost McConnell his Senate majority? He said Trump put a gun to his head, ‘and he pulled the trigger. And he’s totally discredited now.’ Because the thought process then was, you know, this is [McConnell’s] Liberation Day. He got everything out of Trump that he could: Three justices,  a tax cut, and now this guy has gone and he’s discredited himself so he could wash his hands of the guy entirely. This is a win-win, right?”

But after a first-blush excoriation of Trump on the Senate floor, McConnell, too, would fall silent.

Asked by Cohen who had fared well in the crisis, Martin named, among others, the U.S. military (for steering clear of any complicity with the abortive presidential coup), Vice President Mike Pence, who resisted Trump and did his constitutional duty in certifying the electoral votes on January 6th, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Martin was one of the few reporters (“maybe the only one,” he said), who had first-hand experience of the forced removal of senators from the chamber during the insurrection. “All  those moments that you see in [the book] are what I witnessed, including [South Carolina Republican] Lindsey Graham, famously shouting as Capitol police officers were briefing the senators. When they were in seclusion, the Capitol police officers were trying to keep the senators apprised of what was happening. But they didn’t really have a ton of information, because they didn’t know if the Capitol was secure yet. And so this poor Capitol police officer is saying, ‘you know, we’re trying to figure out what’s happening over there, and we’re doing our best. Please remain calm here.’ He’s just biding time. And Graham shouts him down and says, ‘You do whatever is necessary. Use any force necessary. Retake the hill, but that’s the seat of American government!’ in a demanding sort of tone. And [Democrat] Sherrod Brown from Ohio is in the back of the room and says ‘Shut up, Lindsey!’ And then somebody else says, ‘There’s no cameras on, Lindsey!’ ” 

As in the book itself, there was more to talk about on Friday, much more, including the unhappy current predicament of Trump’s successor in the presidency, Joe Biden.

Will Biden run again? Martin: “The great question now that every Democrat is talking about privately at least is, what’s Biden going to do? And when’s he gonna do it? And I think if this midterm really turns out Democrats, and effectively it becomes a vote of no confidence in the current government, like you’d have in a parliamentary system, I think the pressure on Biden really increases to make up his mind. And I think that clock starts ticking on midnight of Election Day this year, that he’s got to start giving some guidance as well.”

Cohen’s response: “I don’t think he’ll run. Yeah, he’s got to say he’s gonna run because otherwise he’s a lame duck. Right. But I think the realities are it’s not going to be. The polls are atrocious and he’s getting older every day.”

The conversation was well worth a listen, and the book wholly deserving of a read.

Guilty disclosure: Martin, who passes through Memphis fairly often, credited the Memphis Flyer with being an important source of local information for him, political and otherwise. “I never fail to pick up a copy when I’m here.”

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Details Emerge on Snuff District Lake, Floating Dock at Cobblestone Landing

Credit: Wikipedia

A lake could be created next to the Snuff District and a floating entertainment dock could be headed to Cobblestone Landing, according to legislation proposed by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis). 

Cohen said he proposed the two “Memphis-centric projects” for the 2022 Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) on behalf of the city of Memphis. These projects are part of riverfront improvements proposed by Mayor Jim Strickland in December. 

Credit: City of Memphis/YouTube

Those plans would build two new riverboat docks on the Mississippi. But it would also create a two-million-square-foot lake for swimming, paddling, and fishing in the north end of Wolf River Harbor next to the burgeoning Snuff District in Uptown. It would also include a new “floating entertainment dock” at Cobblestone Landing.  

Credit: City of Memphis/YouTube

A statement from his office Wednesday afternoon said the bill would allow “the Wolf River to create a lake adjacent to the historic downtown Snuff District,” done, apparently, by damming the Wolf River. It would also accommodate a floating entertainment dock at Cobblestone Landing.

“Both projects will transform our city and appeal to residents and tourists alike,” Cohen said in a Wednesday statement. 

Details on the floating dock are scanty. Information from the bill says only the project is hoped to ”entice visitors and the Downtown workforce down to the harbor’s edge at Cobblestone Landing.”

Credit: City of Memphis/YouTube

To create the lake, labeled Sunset Lake in a city YouTube video, a dam would be built in the harbor a mile and half north of its entrance at the tip of Mud Island. The lake’s water elevation would be determined by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which, according to the bill, “have been supportive of the project concept.” The water quality of the lake would be “improved” to “allow enhanced recreational usages including kayaking, swimming, and fishing.”

Credit: City of Memphis/YouTube

“The new lake will allow visitors to have access to the riverine environment of the Mississippi River which is found in more remote reaches of the river but is available in Uptown/Downtown Memphis,” reads the bill material. 

The bill says the lake would be sandwiched between the $62 million project to repurpose the snuff factory to the east (with 294 housing units and 10,000 square feet of retail space) and the hundreds of residents of Harbor Town on the west, ”who will benefit from access to such a great public amenity.” A “strong possibility” exists that visitors to the lake could access it by Downtown’s Big River Trail.

Credit: City of Memphis/YouTube

Strickland unveiled his riverfront proposals to the Memphis City Council in December. He mentioned them again in his State of the City address in January. 

“We have a unique opportunity to expand Beale Street Landing and Greenbelt Park docks, as well as, create a lake and a series of additional docks and other improvements along the riverfront to increase economic development in the area and improve the quality of life for residents,” he said. 

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Cohen Bill Would Likely Lower TVA CEO Salary

TVA president and CEO Jeff Lyash. (Credit: Toby Sells)

A new bill would likely lower the pay for Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) CEO, bringing the controversial salary down to a level comparable with those of CEOs at other public utilities. 

TVA CEO Jeff Lyash made $9.9 million last year. His base salary of $1.1 million was upped from a series of bonuses after he helped the federal utility meet or exceed some long-term and short-term corporate goals. His salary makes Lyash the highest-paid federal employee, far outpacing even the U.S. President’s pay of $400,000.

TVA has long defended its pay. For one, it says, salaries are not paid with taxpayer dollars but with revenue from electricity sales. Also, TVA has said pay, especially for its CEO, must be high to recruit and retain leaders who could make such salaries at other companies. 

See our interactive infographic here.

“The entire industry is competing for this talent as we all work toward a collective goal of a carbon-free energy future,” TVA spokesman Scott Brooks said in a statement. “That’s why we routinely benchmark with other utility peers to create a competitive compensation system. This ensures we have a well-rounded, diverse and skilled workforce that can deliver the outcomes our customers expect, including keeping rates low.”

However, TVA has been heavily criticized on the compensation. In 2020, President Donald Trump called Lyash’s pay “ridiculous” and threatened (but failed) to cut that pay “by a lot.” 

In February, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Knoxville) and Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis) filed a bill to make TVA’s top salaries more transparent. The bill would require the government-owned corporation to list salary information for any employee making more than around $240,000. 

“Southeastern communities should be able to evaluate if those salaries match the service provided by TVA.”

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Knoxville)

“TVA’s top earners are paid generously, and Southeastern communities should be able to evaluate if those salaries match the service provided by TVA,” Burchett said in a statement at the time. “Compensation transparency from TVA’s key decision makers is important for maintaining the public’s trust.”

A bill filed by Cohen Friday takes the issue further, likely lowering pay for Lyash and other TVA executives. Current law only requires TVA’s salaries to be on par with any other power provider in the U.S., including private, for-profit companies. Cohen’s bill would make compensation comparable to “compensation of executives in public utilities in both the U.S. and Canada.”    

“It is past time to get realistic about TVA salaries and to do so fairly and transparently.”

Rep. Steve Cohen

“It is past time to get realistic about TVA salaries and to do so fairly and transparently,” Cohen said in a statement. “Electricity generation and transmission managed from Knoxville should not earn its CEO three times what a typical Canadian utility CEO makes. The comparison I am suggesting may open some eyes and restore some reality to compensation at TVA.”

A statement from Cohen’s office said a review by the Congressional Research Service found CEOs of “Canadian power companies make significantly less in annual total reported compensation than American CEOs.”

Salaries are not paid with taxpayer dollars but with revenue from electricity sales.

In May 2020, former Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander — a longtime TVA supporter — claimed (in a Knoxville News-Sentinel opinion piece) that Lyash’s salary ranked in the bottom fourth among “big utility CEO salaries.” 

“The Tennessee Valley Authority plays in the big leagues.”

former Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander

“The Tennessee Valley Authority plays in the big leagues,” Alexander said. “It is our country’s largest public utility, a $10 billion company serving 10 million residents in seven states. Big utilities pay big salaries to attract the best executives.”

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Meanwhile, Back at the GOP …

Brown Dudley (Photo: Courtesy Brown Dudley)

Surprise! Republicans, who have generally ended up mounting a pro forma opposition to long-term 9th District Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen (if anything at all), may have a serious contender this year — Brown Dudley, who is associated with Independent Bank and was the entrepreneur behind resale establishment Plato’s Closet.

According to his recently filed financial disclosure, first-time candidate Dudley raised $385,968 in the first quarter of the year and has $292,771.69 on hand. That’s real money at this point. He has two opponents on the GOP primary ballot in August — Charlotte Bergmann, a perennial candidate, and Leo AwGoWhat, a performance artist of sorts, also a perennial. Neither should give Dudley a tussle.

Even with redistricting, which modified the northern or rural/suburban part of the district, the 9th is still heavily Democratic in its demographics, though, and Cohen will not be financially handicapped in the race. He reports first-quarter receipts of $297,528.50 and cash on hand totaling $1,372,863.23. His opponent in the Democratic primary is M. Latroy Alexandria-Williams, another perennial.

Dudley, by the way, professes open-mindedness on the subjects of LGBTQ rights and climate change.

• Another potential surprise confrontation on the August ballot is for the District 31 state Senate seat (Germantown, East Memphis) being vacated by Republican Brian Kelsey. Democrat Ruby Powell-Dennis is unopposed on the Democratic ballot. The surprise is that Brent Taylor, who has had virtually wall-to-wall support from the GOP establishment (as well as from Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, a nominal Democrat), may be opposed in the Republican primary by a candidate with financial resources close to Taylor’s on-hand total of $442,566.62.

Brandon Toney (Photo: Courtesy Kristina Garner)

The operative term here is “may.” Taylor’s would-be primary opponent, Brandon Toney, will find out this week if the state GOP executive committee permits him to be on the primary ballot.

On his financial disclosure, Toney, a nurse practitioner, lists cash on hand of $404,964.86 — a competitive sum, though almost all of it is money loaned by Toney to himself.

Toney’s problem is that he was one of a handful of potential Republican primary candidates statewide whose bona fides were denied by the state party last week. The ostensible reason, according to Shelby GOP chair Cary Vaughn, who professes neutrality in the matter, is that Toney has failed a requirement that Republican primary candidates must have voted in any one of the last four GOP primaries.

Toney and his local campaign manager, Kristina Garner, are crying foul and calling his exclusion a put-up job on Taylor’s behalf. They maintain that Toney has done solid grunt work for past Republican candidates, including former President Donald Trump, and was not able to vote in recent primaries because he was doing around-the-clock work combatting the Covid-19 pandemic at Mid-South Pulmonary Specialists.

Toney has appealed his original denial and has submitted additional evidence of his party credentials to the state GOP executive committee, which will meet and weigh the matter before week’s end. If he should be certified to run, he would become something relatively rare — a Republican candidate opposed to private-school vouchers (though his three children attend private schools) and in favor of accepting federal Medicaid support. “I’m not a ‘moderate.’ I’m just determined to be sensible,” he says.

• The aforementioned Republican chair Vaughn says that former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, who will be the keynote speaker at this weekend’s annual GOP Lincoln Day banquet at the Agricenter, is not meant to be a symbol of the Republican Party but as someone who can aid local GOP fundraising efforts. Meadows is under fire these days for his alleged ties to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

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Tennessee EV Charging Network Gets $88M Jolt

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

Charging stations for electric vehicles are headed to gas stations, food stores, and truck stops across Tennessee thanks, in part, to $88.3 million from the federal government. 

The state will get more than $13 million in the current fiscal year to begin the program, part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) announced Thursday by the U.S. Department of Energy. The rest of the funds will be delivered over the next five years. 

Tennessee’s share of the funds is part of a larger, $7.5 billion effort from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to build a nationwide system of charging stations. The move is hoped to make electric vehicles reliable for short and long distance trips.    

”For too long, Tennessee has had unreliable and inconsistent charging facilities along its roads and highways, inconveniencing drivers and putting a drag on our regional economy,” U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis) said in a statement. “These overdue investments will strengthen our state’s critical infrastructure — paving the way for cleaner, easier driving and supporting good-paying union jobs.”

The country’s current system now has a network of about 100,000 charging stations. The Biden Adminstration’s goal with the new funding is to expand that network to 500,000 chargers. 

The new money directs states to work with the private sector to build this network. This is “best achieved by harnessing the existing nationwide network of refueling locations,” according to lobbyists for refueling stations. The bill gives priority for charging stations at “travel centers, food retailers, and convenience stores,” according to the National Association of Truck Stop Operators (NATSO) and the Society of Independent Gasoline Marketers of America (SIGMA). The bill will not allow other companies to install charging stations and states cannot install them at rest areas.

The truck stop organization says its existing network offers convenience, amenities, security, food, and competitive and transparent pricing, all usually less a mile from an interstate. Gas station advocates say their stores will be able to offer charging in “communities where most residents cannot reliably charge their electric vehicles overnight” and that they are more suited for quick-stop charging that may not require a complete fill up.   

“Our industry understands that electric vehicle drivers will expect their driving and refueling experience to be as safe, seamless, and predictable as it is today,” reads a joint statement from NATSO and SIGMA. “There is no ‘range anxiety’ today for drivers of gas-powered vehicles. That is achievable for electric vehicles as well.”

The new network is hoped to help grow electric vehicle sales in the U.S. to 50 percent of the entire automobile market by 2030.    

”The U.S. market share of plug-in electric vehicle sales is only one-third the size of the Chinese [electric vehicle] market,” reads a statement form theWhiteHouse. “The President believes that must change.”

Credit: Tennessee Valley Authority/ TVA’s Electric Highway Coalition

 Last year, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) launched the Electric Highway Coalition to bolster the electric charging network across its service area and into other states. That coalition has grown to 14 other energy providers across 29 states and the District of Columbia.  This push is hoped to install a network of fast charging stations across these areas with stations located less than 100 miles from each other.  

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Here We Go Again: A Revised Version of the Congressional Map

(from Tennessee State Government)


It turns out that the redistricting map of congressional districts that the General Assembly’s majority Republicans trotted out last week has already undergone significant change — and it ain’t over yet.

It will be recalled that last week’s map pretty much left the boundaries of the 9th District in Shelby County itself as they had been for the last 10 years, extending eastward from the Shelby County riverfront and taking in most, but not all, of Memphis proper. But the 2020 Census demonstrated that Shelby, like the rest of West Tennessee, had lagged behind Middle Tennessee in population growth, and the 9th needed to expand, area-wise, to include the proportionate number of citizens.

Accordingly, the first map proposed to expand the 9th northward, taking in the whole of predominantly rural Tipton County rather than restoring sections of East Memphis that a dominant GOP gave to Republican congressman David Kustoff’s 8th District after the 2010 census.

That solution satisfied the Republican map-makers, who knew that the heavily African-American demographics of Memphis made it impossible to gerrymander the 9th into a Republican-leaning district. And it allowed Kustoff to hold on to the affluent East Memphis areas that the 8th gained after the previous census. The 8th would, in any case, continue to be solidly Republican.

But the GOP mapmakers had not reckoned with the desire of Tipton Countians, quickly made public via their legislative surrogates in the Assembly, to keep as much as possible of their domain aligned with the 8th District, predominantly Republican and rural, like themselves.

So the mapmakers went back to work and have come up with a second provisional version of the 8th/9th split. This one would allow the greater part of Tipton County, that portion east of Highway 51, to remain within the 8th District. To compensate for the population shift, portions of Shelby County would return to the 9th District. 

Kustoff would still have what wags in state government call the “finger of love,” the dagger-shaped salient that, after the 2010 Census, was  carved out westward into Memphis territory and includes a generous  hunk of the affluent Poplar Corridor. Indeed, along its margins, the salient would be marginally enlarged in favor of the 8th District.

For his part, Cohen — though disappointed in his wish to regain East Memphis territories that had long been in the 9th District — was more or less satisfied. He would surrender 30,000 Tipton citizens who were included in the first map but would gain the same number of Shelby Countians. “So that’s good. I picked up some in Southeast Shelby [Ashland] Lake, Forest Hill, as well as Bartlett, Morningstar, and maybe more Cordova. I didn’t lose any of the University of Memphis, maybe a parking lot or dormitory on Poplar,  not much,  and I got the Galloway Golf Course back.”

The Memphis congressman seemed content as well to represent the western portion of Tipton County, including a quaintly named community he identified as “Pecker Point.” A little investigation revealed that the proper name for that tiny hamlet — go ahead and google it — is actually “Peckerwood Point,” a fact confirmed by another political figure, former Shelby County Commissioner Terry Roland.

Roland, who claims ancestral connections with the community and unabashedly embraces the unusual vernacular of its name, is also interested in the final outlines, still to be determined, of the 9th Congressional District. A resident of Millington, Roland is musing about a possible run for the 9th Congressional seat, presumably as a Republican. He also had recently floated a trial balloon about a possible race for Shelby County Mayor as an independent.  

Though he has held office as a Republican and is a professed admirer of former President Trump, Roland maintains, “Really, I’ve been moving away from this idea of having to be a Democrat or a Republican. That partisanship is not what public service is about.”

Roland also expressed dismay at what he saw as the motivations of the map-makers in the legislature, citing the aforementioned “finger of love” in the 8th District as an example. “That’s gerrymandering, pure and simple,” he said.

However the district lines end up at the hands of the Republican supermajority members, who have apparently carved up the Nashville area to eliminate the long-term Democratic congressman there, the label of “gerrymandering” would seem to be irrefutable.

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Politics Politics Feature

Moving the Goalposts

Current boundaries of the 9th Congressional District (Photo: Wikipedia)

Among the several factors that may change the political map, in Tennessee as elsewhere, are the numbers from the 2020 census. As a result of them, the dimensions of numerous governmental districts are due to change — with effects highly noticeable in Shelby County and West Tennessee.

Both the 9th Congressional District, which includes most of Memphis and is currently represented by Democrat Steve Cohen, and the 8th Congressional District, which contains a key sliver of East Memphis and is represented by Republican David Kustoff, will have to expand their boundaries to approximate the average district population in Tennessee, which the Census Bureau found to be 767,871.

Inasmuch as the 2020 population of the 9th District was certified as 690,749, and that of the 8th District as 716,347, both West Tennessee districts will need to stretch their limits. The 9th District actually lost 14,376 people from its 2010 population of 705,125, a diminishment of 2 percent. The 8th, by contrast, grew by 11,227 people from 705,120, a gain of 1.6 percent. But, since both districts fell below the stage growth average of 8.49 percent, their boundaries will expand.

New configurations will occur elsewhere in the state, as well — particularly in Middle Tennessee, where several districts that experienced population booms in the last decade will have to shrink. The state’s population as a whole is now reckoned at 6.91 million, representing an increase of something like 564,000 people in a decade. But Tennessee’s growth pattern still lagged behind the national average, so Tennessee will continue with its current lineup of nine congressional seats with no additional seats added.

Again, both the 8th and 9th Districts in Tennessee will have to grow geographically to catch up with the state average of population per district. That will undoubtedly cause some tension and horse-trading as state lawmakers, who must make the determination of new district lines for congressional and state offices, set to the task, which has a deadline of April 7, 2022. (In the case of local government districts, for commission, council, and school districts, the deadline is January 1, 2022.)

The situation recalls a previous significant change in the boundaries of Districts 8 and 9 that occurred in 2011 after the 2010 census. That reapportionment process was the first overseen by a Republican legislative majority, and it resulted in the surrender of a prize hunk of donor-rich East Memphis turf from Cohen’s 9th District to the 8th. Cohen was compensated by territory to the north of Shelby County in Millington.

Given the fact of continued GOP dominance of the General Assembly, the valuable East Memphis salient is liable to stay in Kustoff’s 8th District. The 9th will have to expand somewhere else in the 8th District, which surrounds it — a fact that creates a whack-a-mole situation for Kustoff, who’ll have to compensate, possibly from the adjoining 7th District.

Meanwhile, several legislative districts in Shelby County are seriously under-strength in relation to average statewide population figures. These include state Senate districts 29, 30, and 33 — now held by Democrats Raumesh Akbari, Sara Kyle, and Katrina Robinson, respectively — and state House Districts 86, 90, 91, and 93 — represented currently by Democrats Barbara Cooper, Torrey Harris, London Lamar, and G.A. Hardaway, respectively.

Significant changes are likely to occur also in legislative reapportionment, possibly in the loss of a seat or two in Shelby County.

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News Blog News Feature

U.S. Lawmakers Aim to Ban Primates As Pets

Credit: Memphis Zoo

Should federal law forbid owning a chimpanzee as a pet? 

That was a question before federal legislators, including Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis) on Thursday. Lawmakers reviewed the Captive Primate Safety Act in a Water, Oceans, and Wildlife hearing of the House Natural Resources Committee.

The bill would make a federal law against the purchase, trade, or transport of any live species of nonhuman primate like chimpanzees, galagos, gibbons, gorillas, lemurs, lorises, monkeys, orangutans, tarsiers, or any hybrid of such a species. 

The bill was introduced in May by Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon) and has 53 co-sponsors in the House. The bill passed the House in a previous session, Blumenauer said, “only to die a lingering death the Senate.” However, he hopes the bill has a shot with the new Democratic majority in the Senate, where he believes the sponsor Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) will “be able to get it over the finish line.”

In testimony Thursday, Blumenauer said most people cannot provide the special housing and social structure primates require and “puts their welfare at risk.”

“Even if you’re not a huge fan of animal welfare, you ought to be concerned about human welfare because this behavior puts humans at risk either from the transmission of disease or serious injury or death,” he said. “When primates reach adolescence, they often demonstrate aggression towards those who they perceive as lower-ranking members of their troop. 

“When kept as pets, this means these teenagers can inflict great physical harm on children, friends, and neighbors.”

Blumenauer recounted the story of a woman in eastern Oregon who was attacked by her 200-pound chimpanzee last month. The woman and her mother sustained injuries to their torsos, legs, and arms. The chimpanzee had to be shot, he said, and “was killed for expressing normal behaviors in a lifetime of captivity.” 

He also recalled the story of Connecticut’s Charla Nash, whose pet chimp, Travis, mauled her in 2009. The attack was so severe, Nash needed and received a face transplant. Toxicology reports found Travis had been given tea laced with Xanax on the day of the account, perhaps explaining his aggressive behavior, officials said. 

(Credit: Wikipedia) Travis the chimpanzee

Cohen cited a report from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, which said about 75 percent of wild primate populations are declining. He asked Steve Guertin, deputy director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, whether or not U.S. primate pet ownership played a role in the declines. 

“The pet trade of nonhuman primates certainly drives a market that contributes to the decline of wild populations, and the U.S. is a part of that trade,” Guertin said. “However, we believe that the primary threat to the conservation of the species globally is the removal of primates in the wild. This is poaching. This is bushmeat. This is illegal trafficking.”

For this, Guertin said his department’s focus is on law enforcement to shut down poachers and shut down criminal networks of animal traffickers. 

Tennessee, like many other states, already has laws on the books against owning a primate as a pet. Here, primates are categorized as Class I wildlife, species that are “inherently dangerous to humans.” They’re in the same class as wolves, bears, elephants, rhinoceroses, lions, and more. In Tennessee, this class of wildlife can only be possessed by zoos, circuses, and commercial propagators.