Tag: Steve Mulroy

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Opinion Viewpoint

After TrumpCare’s Fall

Now that the thrown-together Frankenstein’s monster that was TrumpCare has failed in Congress, the time may be ripe for common sense reforms which can save the essential elements of Obamacare. People who care about a humane system of universal coverage should be very clear about what needs to stay and what needs to be added.  

Keep What’s Good: We should acknowledge that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has done far more good than harm. It’s enabled over 20 million people to get access to health care, cutting our uninsured rate in half from 20 percent to 10 percent. Insurance companies can no longer deny people coverage for preexisting conditions, kick people off for getting sick, or deny essential benefits like cancer screenings, birth control, or mental health services. Young people can stay on their parents’ policies until they’re 26.  People no longer have to go bankrupt because of an unexpected health crisis or avoid preventive care because of cost, thus making themselves sicker.

Steve Mulroy

The ACA cost about one-third less than expected and decreased the budget in the process, far from the “disaster” claimed by Donald Trump and Paul Ryan.Contrary to Trump and Ryan, the ACA is not in a “death spiral.”  Enrollment last year in the ACA “health-care exchange” insurance markets was brisk and is expected to continue. True, it is possible that Republican officials can cause a death spiral if they continue to sabotage the ACA. GOP governors and HHS Secretary Tom Price can place regulatory chokeholds on the dreaded Obamacare.

Real Problems: The ACA does have problems. We’ve seen health premiums rise the last few years. True, they’re lower than they would have been without Obamacare (given the out-of-control, pre-ACA inflation rate), and the ACA subsidies have absorbed most of those extra costs for most people, but it would be troubling if this trend continues.

Worse, insurance companies have pulled out of the ACA health-care exchanges, such that in about one-third of U.S. counties, there is only one provider available, depriving consumers of choice and all of us the competition needed to keep health costs low.

The solution to both problems is to get more people, even healthy people, into the system. This lowers the per-person cost for everyone and incentivizes insurers to participate, increasing choice and competition.  

Real Solutions: We should thus “fix it, not nix it.” Here are some possibilities:

Single-Payer: We should be pushing hard for a “Medicare for all” plan.  Medicare has the lowest administrative overhead (only 2 percent) of any player in the system, including the supposedly efficient corporations, because it doesn’t have to advertise, market, or attract overpaid executives. This system could replace the ACA as we know it and solve in one fell swoop the problems of universal coverage, rising costs, and choice. Almost as good is Hillary Clinton’s proposal to expand Medicaid and reduce eligibility for Medicare (to, say, 50).

Public Option: If that’s not feasible, we can reintroduce the “public option,” which lobbyists took out of the original ACA bill.  Especially in counties with only one provider on its exchange, the government could offer competition with a public-run insurance plan — like Medicare. 

Miscellaneous Tweaks: We should insist on a grab bag of adjustments which would bring in customers, reduce costs, and provide long term stability.

Carrots & Sticks: Everyone’s supposed to buy health insurance or pay a penalty if they don’t. The penalty’s small enough that young, healthy people would rather pay it than sign up for insurance. This needs to change. To that “stick” we can add the “carrot” of increased subsidies to get people to buy into the system.

Bargain Down Drug Prices: Thanks to a Bush-era sellout to Big Pharma, the federal government is currently barred from negotiating to reduce prescription drug prices. This should change, too.

Extend the “Risk Corridors”: The parties ought to be able to agree to extend the so-called “risk corridors.” Under the “corridors,” insurers pitch into a pool, which compensates insurers who lose money on the exchanges. These “pools” are due to expire. Yes, it’s a bailout of big corporations, but it’s one way — politically, the easiest way—to keep the health exchanges functioning. 

For more information (on both sides), check out this Friday’s all-day symposium on the Future of the ACA, held at the University of Memphis Law School.

Former County Commissioner Steve Mulroy, the Associate Dean at the University of Memphis Law School, prepared these points for a Federalist Society symposium on health care this week.

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Politics Politics Feature

Is Terry Roland a Bully?

Tempers flared during Monday’s regular meeting of the Shelby County Commission. Big time.

And the surface turbulence led to the uncovering of a behind-the-scenes matter involving a claim by several other commissioners that commission chairman Terry Roland has engaged in threatening behavior toward them.

The precipitating issue was the commission’s consideration of a proposal from former Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton to build two educational residence facilities for convicted juvenile offenders in Frayser and in Millington.

The commission voted 8-2 to endorse the project, a sort of combination charter school/incarceration model that would locate juveniles in a dormitory situation close to their families. Called the NewPath Restorative Campuses, the proposed facilities would be run by a nonprofit group and would be privately funded, for the most part, requiring no outlay of county money.

The project would be boosted by an allocation of state funding — some $17.5 million that is now going to the Wilder detention facility in Fayette County — and that fact was cited by Roland as a reason for his support.

“He’s not asking us for any money,” Roland noted about Herenton, a former school superintendent who is now executive director of the W.E.B. DuBois Consortium of Charter Schools and who would direct the facilities’ educational operations. “They’d be spending $47 million for each facility,” said Roland, and would be generating 600 jobs for his own community of Millington.

The commission’s vote of approval indicates that most commissioners bought into that reasoning. Commissioner Walter Bailey was one who did not, however.

Though he praised Herenton as an individual and a professional, Bailey demurred, citing what he said was incomplete information about the project, as well as his aversion to what was basically a privatization of functions that were traditionally public.

Herenton became visibly angry, criticizing Bailey for having “the audacity to pontificate” and telling the commissioner, an African American like himself, that 85 percent of the juveniles to be housed “look like you and me,” and would be the beneficiaries of superior educational and wraparound services currently unavailable to them.

Still steaming after the vote, Herenton was heard to mutter the word “bullshit” in regard to Bailey’s objection.

Other commissioners had misgivings, as well. Mark Billingsley, who joined Bailey in abstaining on the vote, and George Chism and David Reaves, both of whom voted no, all cited what they said was a lack of specific information about the project.

After the vote, Reaves became involved in a disagreement with Roland that resulted in an actual physical altercation. It took place off the main commission chamber in a back room that is often used for conferences.

Roland and Reaves differ in their accounts of what happened. According to Roland, Reaves approached him and “put his finger on my nose.” The commission chairman said that Reaves then accused him of “selling out my race” by supporting the Herenton proposal.

Both commissioners agree on what came next. Roland shoved Reaves.

“All I did was get him out of my face,” Roland said. “I was clearly in the right. The dude came up on me.”

“I never touched the man,” said Reaves, who further denies mentioning the word “race” in the context claimed by Roland. “I told Terry he was selling out his constituents,” said Reaves, who added that he was confident that, based on the political history of Memphis and Shelby County, people in Millington, like those in Bartlett, would object to giving former Mayor Herenton an unconditional approval for his project.

He said that if he mentioned the word “race,” it was probably to suggest that Roland, an announced candidate for county mayor in 2018, was using his support for the project to play politics on behalf of his political race.

Commissioner Heidi Shafer, who was in the back room conferring on a matter with Kim Hackney, assistant CAO for the county administration, became aware of the fracas and rushed out to locate a deputy sheriff serving as bailiff, returning with him to find the disturbance apparently over.

“I couldn’t really tell who did what to whom,” Shafer said. About Roland, she said, “Terry’s definitely not a turn-the-other-cheek kind.”

Reaves later identified Billingsley and Chism as other commissioners toward whom Roland had displayed “bullying” and threatening behavior. Both confirmed having had such experiences.

Said Billingsley: “Terry has threatened to beat me up in front of several county staffers in the hallway. He consistently displays bullying behavior. Anybody who disagrees with him about anything is met with great hostility. That’s unbelievably unprofessional. There’s no place for it in government, and it sets a very poor example for a community that already has too much hostility on its hands.”

Chism had a similar account: “Terry once lost his temper with me. He was very aggressive, and there were people in the office that heard it. It was all over a resolution that I wouldn’t co-sponsor, but he insisted he wanted my name on it.” Chism said Roland was “way over the line,” but that he “immediately apologized.”

These new claims of belligerent behavior on Roland’s part are reminders of previous circumstances involving the Millington commissioner and his colleagues. Former Commissioner Steve Mulroy said back in 2011 that Roland had cornered him in the commission library and said, “You and I are never going to agree. There’s only one way to settle things. We’re going downstairs, and I’m going to whip your ass!”

At the time, Roland said, “Aw, heck, I was just kidding with him,” and, though Mulroy still insists he believes Roland was serious in his threat, the two commissioners would ultimately let the matter subside with jocular references to a potential boxing match for charity.

In 2012, Roland was the featured speaker at a meeting of the Collierville Republican Club when several fellow GOP Commissioners, who favored another approach, began heckling him.

Interpreting a muttered phrase from then-Commissioner Chris Thomas as a disrespectful jibe about his late father (Thomas denied saying anything of the sort), Roland threatened to “knock you out of that chair.” Then-Commissioner Wyatt Bunker called the Collierville police, who arrived after the meeting was over but found nothing amiss.

On that occasion, Roland insisted he was the one being bullied, and he had similar words for his disagreement with Reaves Monday. “I’m not going to let politics get in the way of making a good decision to help our people,” he said. “I’m not going to be bullied. I’m trying to do what’s good for everybody.”

And Roland reciprocated Reaves’ charges of political motivation by accusing Reaves, Billingsley, and Chism of being partisans of Roland’s potential mayoral opponent, current county Trustee David Lenoir. He said the three also were supporters of former U.S. Attorney David Kustoff in the 8th Congressional District GOP primary and that he, by contrast, intended to remain neutral.

Meanwhile, Billingsley revealed that in April he had queried then-County Attorney (now appellate Judge-designate) Ross Dyer, as follows: “It is unfortunate I have to inquire for a county attorney opinion, but I have no other choice. If a Shelby County commissioner contacts another Shelby County commissioner … and threatens their ability to put items on the… Commission agenda, threatens lack of funding, and threatens their ability to serve in their [elected] capacity, based on their personal animosity [toward] that individual, would this be considered official misconduct? Additionally, is there a process for reporting?”

Dyer, whose investiture as a Judge in the Court of Criminal Appeals will take place this Thursday, promised at the time that an answer would be forthcoming at some point from himself or from his staff.

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Politics Politics Feature

Terry Roland Makes His Move

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

JB

Terry Roland

Don’t look now, but the 2018 Shelby County mayor’s race has formally begun. Shelby County Commission chairman Terry Roland has scheduled a “campaign kick-off event” for Saturday morning, from 8 to 10:30 a.m. at the Old Timers Restaurant in Millington.

Roland has been advertising his intent to run for county mayor for some time and, with this early announcement, clearly hopes to steal a march on the other known serious Republican entry, County Trustee David Lenoir. Roland says he hopes to unite the urban, rural, and suburban areas of Shelby County in common cause and to spur the county’s economic growth through aggressive use, a la metropolitan Nashville, of TIFF financing.  

• “[FedEx Founder] Fred Smith treats packages better than Delta Airlines treats their passengers,” said Ninth District congressman Steve Cohen last Wednesday in a luncheon address to the Memphis Economic Club. Cohen thereby launched a dual complaint 1) at the failure of Congress to establish comfortable seating standards for air travel, and 2) at Delta, for closing down its Memphis hub and drastically cutting flights from Memphis International Airport.

The congressman was none too charitable, either, with President Obama, handing the president the following grades on an alliterative trio of issues Cohen has considered urgent: A on Cuba; C-minus on commutations; and D-minus on cannabis.

Cohen was kinder to himself, ticking off a list of things he’s accomplished, then mimicking Donald Trump’s voice to boast “lots of wins this year, and some of them were YUGE!”

It is beginning to seem clear that, for the very first time since his initial successful congressional race in 2006, Cohen is actually going to get a pass this year. No serious challenger is in sight after the dropout, several weeks ago, of state Senator Lee Harris. M. LaTroy Williams, a perennial, has filed, as has Cohen. Justin Ford, a member of the well-known political clan and a Shelby County commissioner, picked up a petition in January, but there has been no obvious follow-through since. 

 Meanwhile, the 8th Congressional District Republican primary field contracted a bit, with the withdrawal last week of Shelby County Commissioner Steve Basar, who keeps running into closed lanes and traffic jams as he looks for a route upward and outward in his political career. 

Since his narrow 2012 victory over former Commissioner Marilyn Loeffel in a special primary election to fill a seat vacated by Commissioner Mike Carpenter, pharmaceutical executive Basar has run into one roadblock after another in the process of inheriting Carpenter’s mantle as a Republican distrusted and regarded as a RINO (Republican in Name Only) by some other GOP members. 

Basar was thwarted by fellow Republicans in two attempts to gain the commission chairmanship and votes with some consistency with commission Democrats. He has floated notions of running for Memphis mayor and Shelby County mayor and late last year had talked of opposing Cohen in the 9th District before the 8th District race opened up with the announcement of incumbent Stephen Fincher that he would not seek reelection.

Like several others, Basar declared his interest in the 8th District seat, but later determined that the road was overcrowded with better-funded opponents, five of them from Shelby County, where 55 percent of the district’s voters reside. Hence, his exit.

The next Shelby Countian who may be edged to the shoulder could be County Register Tom Leatherwood, once something of a GOP militant in the state Senate but in recent years seemingly content with a low-profile reputation as a competent and none-too-partisan administrator of his county office.

With some logic, however, Leatherwood seems to believe that he has enough wherewithal and residual support from outer-county conservatives to hold his own and perhaps sneak through to victory in the 8th District’s multi-candidate battle royale. 

Another candidate with similar hopes of prevailing in the end, despite not being regarded just now as a favorite, is Memphis radiologist/businessman George Flinn, a former county commissioner and frequent candidate who commands serious attention because of his oft-demonstrated ability to lavishly self-fund.

But most of the tout talk going on in local political circles concerns three other Shelby Countians — County Mayor Mark Luttrell, state Senator Brian Kelsey, and former U.S. Attorney David Kustoff.

Luttrell became an instant favorite upon his entry into the race last month, mainly on the strength of his electoral track record, dominant governmental position, and preexistent political network in Shelby County. But he also has good connections in other parts of the district — Crockett County, where he was born and raised; Madison County, where he attended college at Union University, and Tipton County, where several of his near relations are prominent. And he has strong ties to the Sheriffs’ Association network through his stint as Shelby County sheriff.

Before Luttrell’s entry, Kustoff, who has scored well in his fund-raising efforts, seemed to be having good luck cornering the support of influential Shelby County Republicans, who value his work in numerous GOP campaigns, including his direction of the 2000 statewide effort of then presidential candidate George W. Bush. A good many local GOP activists appear to be holding fast for Kustoff against the magnetic draw of Luttrell. 

And there’s Kelsey, an ambitious politician with a well-deserved reputation as a legislative wave-maker, especially among movement conservatives. In addition to his political base in Shelby County, Kelsey has support from Jackson GOP power broker Jimmy Wallace, who paved the way for Fincher’s campaign in 2010. And, though Kelsey’s maverick ways may have earned him as many detractors as allies in Nashville, he was the recent beneficiary of a big-ticket fund-raiser in the state’s capital, hosted by six fellow state senators across the GOP spectrum.

The superfluity (if you will) of candidates from Shelby County could be a threat to any and all of them, of course. Jackson businessman Brad Greer entered the race with this salvo: “I am concerned that rural West Tennessee will not be adequately represented by the Memphis/Shelby County lifelong politicians who have jumped into this race.” 

Greer won a straw poll of Republican candidates at the recent Madison County GOP Lincoln Day dinner. There’s a possible parallel to the 7th District GOP congressional primary of 2002, when Kustoff, then-city Councilman Brent Taylor, and then-county Commissioner Mark Norris split the county’s vote, allowing Nashville-area candidate Marsha Blackburn to claim a relatively easy win.


BEAMING UP ON SATURDAY

Jackson Baker

Ur-Trekkie Steve Mulroy

This month, the Shelby County Commission seems to be on trek … er, on track to commemorate the 50th anniversary of a famous cult TV show. That would be Star Trek, the subject of an anniversary celebration from 3 to 6 p.m. on Saturday, April 9th, at Laurelwood Booksellers.

According to a press release from the event’s moderator, assistant University of Memphis Law School dean and former Shelby County Commissioner Steve Mulroy, activities on that occasion will include “a trivia contest, a panel discussion featuring the Commercial Appeal‘s John Beifuss, and the screening of an episode.”

The county commission could get into the act with the passage of a resolution declaring April 9th “Star Trek Day in Shelby County.” Such a resolution, recognizing the show as “‘pioneering television, using the metaphors of science fiction to explore social issues,’ as well as for its groundbreaking racially diverse cast” will be presented by Commissioner Reginald Milton, a self-professed Trekkie himself, at a committee session of the commission on Wednesday.

If all goes well and the resolution gets committee approval, it will be beamed up on the agenda and formally approved during the commission’s regularly scheduled public meeting next Monday. The resolution goes beyond this year and would mark April 9th as a date for annual observance of “Star Trek Day” in Shelby County. The first such observance was declared by the commission on April 9, 2014, which happened to be the last day as a member of the commission for Mulroy, an Ur-Trekkie and the sponsor of the resolution that year.

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Politics Politics Feature

It Was What It Was

The year 2014 began with a call for unity from several of the political principals of Memphis and Shelby County — remarkable circumstances given that just ahead was another one of those knock-down, drawn-out election brawls that characterize a big-ballot election year.

Speaking at an annual prayer breakfast on January 1st, 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen called for an end to bipartisan bickering in Congress and touted the achievements of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) (aka Obamacare). Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell asked for civility in county government, and Memphis Mayor A C Wharton, amid a good deal of wrangling over city pension reform, among other matters, said something similar and declared, “I’m through with whose fault it is!”

Surely no one is surprised that few of these hopes were fully realized in the course of 2014.

Not that some concrete things didn’t get done. The nervy national website Wonkette crowned Tennessee state Representative Stacey Campfield (R-Knoxville) “S***muffin of the Year,” and, lo and behold, the voters of Knox County would come to a similar conclusion down the line, voting out the incumbent madcap whose most famous bills had come to be known, fairly or otherwise, as “Don’t Say Gay” and “Starve the Children.”

State Senator Brian Kelsey had mixed results, losing again on a renewed effort to force Governor Bill Haslam into a big-time school voucher program and in a quixotic attempt to strip Shelby County of two of its elected judges but getting his props from those — including a majority of Tennessee voters — who supported his constitutional amendment to abolish an income tax in Tennessee for all time.

All four constitutional amendments on the state ballot would pass — including one to strip away what had been some fairly ironclad protections of a woman’s right to an abortion and another to transform the selection and tenure procedures for state appellate judges. Another little-noticed amendment guaranteeing veterans the right to hold charity raffles also passed.

The battle over the key three amendments all reflected a growing concern that Republican-dominated state authority had begun to enlarge its control over local governments and individual citizens alike, not only in the nature of the constitutional amendments but in the legislature’s effort to override local authority in matters including firearms management, public school oversight, public wage policy, and the ability of localities to establish their own ethical mandates.

Shelby County Democrats, who had been swept by the GOP in 2010, had a spirited primary election, with most attention focusing on the mayor’s race between former County Commissioner Deidre Malone, incumbent Commissioner Steve Mulroy, and former school board member and New Olivet Baptist Church pastor Kenneth Whalum Jr.

When votes were counted on May 6th, Malone emerged to become the head of a Democratic ticket that would challenge several well-established Republican incumbents. Democrats’ hopes were high at first, but two of their expected election-day stalwarts began to suffer self-destructive moments at an alarming rate.

The two were lawyer Joe Brown — the “Judge Joe Brown” of nationally syndicated TV fame; and County Commissioner Henri Brooks, a former legislator who had an abrasive way about her but who had recently won laurels as the watchdog on Juvenile Court who had forced the Department of Justice (DOJ) to mandate a series of reforms.

Both District Attorney General candidate Brown, through his celebrity and what was thought to be his ability to bankroll much of the Democratic ticket’s activity, and Juvenile court Clerk candidate Brooks, riding high on her DOJ desserts, were thought to be boons, but they rapidly became busts.

Brown, it turned out, had virtually no money to pass around, even for his own campaign efforts, and he got himself arrested for contempt in Juvenile Court. When, late in the campaign, he launched a series of lurid and seemingly unfounded attacks upon the private life of his opponent, Republican D.A. Amy Weirich, he was dead in the water.

Brooks engaged in successive misfires — browbeating a Hispanic witness before the commission; assaulting a woman she was competing with for a parking spot; and, finally, turning out not to have a legal residence within the commission district she represented.

The bottom line: Shelby County Democrats — underfunded, under-organized, and riven by internal rivalries — were overwhelmed once again on August 7th, with county Mayor Mark Luttrell, Weirich, and Sheriff Bill Oldham leading a Republican ticket that won everything except the office of county assessor, where conscientious Democratic incumbent Cheyenne Johnson held on against a little-known GOP challenger.

All things considered, the judicial races on August 7th went to the known and familiar, with almost all incumbents winning reelection on a lengthy ballot in which virtually every position in every court —General Sessions, Circuit, Criminal, Chancery, and Probate — was under challenge.

Meanwhile, 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen, who had dispatched a series of Democratic Primary and general election challengers since his first election to Congress in 2006, faced what appeared in advance to be his most formidable primary foe yet in lawyer Ricky Wilkins. Cohen won again — though only by a 2-to-1 ratio, unlike the 4-to-1 victories he was used to.

The final elections of the year, including the referenda for the aforementioned package of constitutional amendments, would take place on November 4th.

But for the amendments, there was no suspense to speak of. Two Democrats running for the U.S. Senate — Gordon Ball and Terry Adams, both Knoxville lawyers — had run a spirited and close race in the primary, but winner Ball ran way behind Republican incumbent Senator Lamar Alexander, despite Alexander’s having barely eked out a primary win over unsung Tea Party favorite Joe Carr.

Haslam, the Republican gubernatorial incumbent, easily put away Charlie Brown, an unknown quantity from East Tennessee who had won the Democratic primary mainly on the strength of his comic-strip name.

Throughout the year, there had been persistent wrangles in City Hall between Wharton and members of the city council over dozens of matters — including pension and health-care changes, development proposals, and failures to communicate — with the result that influential councilmen like 2014 council Chairman Jim Stickland and Harold Collins were possible rivals to Wharton in a 2015 mayoral race that might draw in a generous handful of other serious candidates.

Toward year’s end, though, Wharton pulled off a series of coups — announcing new Target and IKEA facilities and appearing to finesse the pension and school-debt matters — that underscored his status as the candidate to beat.

In Nashville, Haslam seemed to have achieved the high ground, finally, with his espousal of a bona fide Medicaid-expansion plan, “Insure Tennessee,” and a determination to defend the Hall income tax and at least some version of educational standards. But battles over these matters and new attacks on legal abortion loomed.

We shall see what we shall see.

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Politics Politics Feature

As Early Voting Starts, a Burst of Kumbaya

CREDIT: JB

Toward the end of Monday’s regular meeting of the Shelby County Commission, which had featured the final resolution of a month-long stand-off on approval of Chairman Justin Ford’s appointment of committee chairs, Commissioner Mark Billingsley, a Germantown Republican, conferred praise on the relative bipartisan unanimity of the day.

Billingsley went on to offer kudos for the inaugural “coffee and conversation” event sponsored by Ford last Friday, involving commissioners and guests at large, which he termed the kind of “positive” news often overlooked by the media. 

Indeed, there was a fair amount of kumbaya on the political scene last week, a modest cessation of conflict, even as the calendar slipped into the final month of the fall political campaign and early voting began on Wednesday of this week. 

One example of concord took place last Thursday at the Madison Hotel in a forum on Constitutional Amendment 2, one of four amendments on the November 4th ballot. The participants in the event, sponsored by the Federalist Society were Republican John Ryder and Democrat Steve Mulroy, both lawyers and both well-known for their partisan political involvement.

Ryder is a GOP national committeeman from Tennessee and general counsel of the Republican National Committee, and he was the chief architect of his party’s national redistricting efforts after the census of 2010. Mulroy, a Democrat and law professor, recently completed two terms on the Shelby County Commission and was a candidate earlier this year for his party’s nomination for Shelby County mayor.

Yet, both had no problem agreeing on the need for Amendment 2, which would constitutionally authenticate a variant of the oft-contested “Tennessee Plan” for appointment of state appellate judges. Like Governor Bill Haslam and former state Supreme Court Justice George Brown of Memphis, who had appeared at a public forum at the Kroc Center earlier in the week, both Ryder and Mulroy saw Amendment 2 as balancing the need for judicial independence with that of citizen input.

Essentially, the amendment provides for gubernatorial appointment of appellate judges, coupled with a need for ratification by both houses of the General Assembly. Judges would be subject to retention elections every eight years, as they are at present.

Along with the requirement for legislative approval (within a 60-day window for response), the amendment would do away with the current judicial nominating commission, which has previously been charged with making suggestions to the governor on the front end of the appointment process.

Ryder and Mulroy agreed, as had Haslam and Brown at the earlier forum, that direct election of appellate judges would introduce too much political involvement and financial influence into the naming process — a result of what Ryder called “an excess of Jacksonian democracy.”

While Amendment 2 has its opponents (notably lawyer John Jay Hooker of Nashville, who for years has litigated in favor of direct election of appellate judges), the most hotly contested of the four constitutional amendments on the ballot is unquestionably Amendment 1, which has generated considerable political activity and big-time war chests on both sides of the issue.

Basically, Amendment 1 would nullify a 2000 state Supreme Court decision, which provided protections of abortion rights that in some ways were stronger than those afforded by the federal courts. Opponents of abortion welcome the amendment, while supporters fear the “slippery slope” effect of its language allowing potential legislative action on abortion, even in cases involving rape, incest, and threats to the life of the mother.

JB

Director Ashley Coffield, Congressman Steve Cohen, and honoree Beverly Marrero at Planned Parenthood event

Planned Parenthood of Memphis, which is aggressively resisting Amendment 1, honored former state Senator Beverly Marrero at a fund-raising event for the its campaign last Thursday night. •  Realistically, the battle for leadership on the Shelby County Commission is over for the time being — or at least in remission. By a vote, on Monday, of 11 for, one opposed, and one abstaining, the commission formally sustained Chairman Ford’s choices for committee chairs and thereby ended any immediate prospect of a challenge to his leadership. Monday’s vote was a reprise of a preliminary vote in Ford’s favor at last Wednesday’s committee meetings.

Given that last week’s vote had been similarly lopsided, there was very little fighting left to do at the regular commission meeting, and Democrat Walter Bailey, who had been the chief Ford resister, was content to cast his no vote, the only one against the appointments, as quietly and uneventfully as possible. The only other break from unanimity was an abstaining vote from Democrat Van Turner, chairman of the general government committee, which handled the appointments matter. 

The lack of drama reflected the currently anti-climactic state of a controversy that had seen Ford’s appointments blocked and referred back to committee by a 7-6 vote — six Democrats and Republican Steve Basar — on a motion made by the disgruntled Bailey at the regular Commission meeting of September 22nd.

And the relatively matter-of-fact denouement occurred, despite some serious prodding from others, on both sides of the issue, who evidently thought the contest was still on. 

Over the weekend, Norma Lester, a vocal Democratic representative on the Shelby County Election Commission, released the text of an “open letter” to fellow Democrats. The letter expressed Lester’s view that Ford, who was elected chairman of the reconstituted commission last month on the strength of his own vote, plus those of six Republicans, had subsequently fulfilled GOP wishes in the manner of the committee chairmanships.

Lester echoed Bailey’s charge that a “deal” had been cut on the chairmanship appointments between Ford and the GOP members who supported his chairmanship bid. Particularly controversial was the naming, for the second year in a row, of Republican member Heidi Shafer as chair of the commission’s budget committee.

Bailey had slammed what he called “political machinations” involved in both Ford’s election and his subsequent naming of committee chairs. Lester’s weekend letter seconded Bailey’s accusations of deal-making and “getting in bed with Republicans,” and made a charge of “blatant betrayal, which is what happened with young Ford and [is] the basis for the contempt amongst fellow Democrats.”

A visibly subdued Bailey restricted his objections on Monday to asking that the two appointments issue items be pulled off the commission’s consent agenda, leaving them potentially subject to debate.

But all Bailey had to say was “I again voice my objection.”

JB

Political activists turned up en masse for Saturday’s nuptials of well-known blogger Steve Ross and Ellyn Daniel, daughter of former state Rep. Jeanne Richardson.

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Politics Politics Feature

Shelby County Commission’s Last Go-Round

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

The final meeting of the version of the county commission that was elected four years ago began on Monday with a show of harmony, with mutual compliments, and some last commemorative poetry by limerick-writing Commissioner Steve Mulroy, and expired with a last sputter of disputation. In between, it advanced on two fronts and retreated on another.

Though it might not have appeared so to those unversed in the habits and ways of the county legislative body, this culminating session of the Class of 2010 also offered a symbolic forecast of better times ahead economically. It was during the heyday of the housing boom that went bust in the late aughts — leaving the county, the state, and the nation in financial doldrums — that ace zoning lawyers Ron Harkavy and Homer “Scrappy” Brannan were omnipresent figures in the Vasco Smith County Administration Building.

It seemed like years, and probably was, when the two of them had last appeared at the same commission meeting, each serving as attorneys for clients seeking commissioners’ approval for ambitious building plans. But there they were on Monday, reprising their joint presence at last week’s committee meetings — Harkavy representing the Belz Investment Company on behalf of a new residential development in southeast Shelby County; Brannan representing the Bank of Bartlett in upholding another development further north.

Both were successful, and it was a reminder of old times — say, the early 2000s, when the building boom so dominated commission meetings that worried commissioners actually had to propose a moratorium to slow down the proliferation of sprawl.

The matter of residence was, in yet another way, a major focus of Monday’s meeting, in its overwhelming approval of a resolution on residency requirements for commission members proposed by Mulroy, a Democrat and the body’s leading liberal, and amended by Republican Commissioners Heidi Shafer and Terry Roland. The commission thereby wrote the final chapter of the Henri Brooks saga and set precedents for the future.

The resolution, which provides a checklist of items to satisfy the county charter’s existing residency requirements, was strongly resisted by senior Democrat Walter Bailey, who had been the commission’s major defender of Brooks in her successful effort to stave off legal eviction from the commission after the apparent discovery that she no longer lived in the district she was elected to serve.

Bailey, who has called the Brooks affair a “witch hunt,” has continued to maintain that the commission has no authority to impose or enforce such rules, citing a decision last month by Chancellor Kenny Armstrong upholding Brooks’ appeal of a finding by County Attorney Marcy Ingram that vacated Brooks’ seat in conformity with the county charter. Other commissioners pointed out that Armstrong had actually ruled that it was the commission, rather than the county attorney, that could decide on the matter, thereby affirming the body’s authority.

In any case, Bailey said the commission should operate on the principle of “good faith” and not pursue vendettas. He was backed up in that by Commissioner Sidney Chism, who went so far as to suggest that his colleagues were out to “kill” Brooks.

Most commissioners, though, clearly felt such thinking was over-protective and counter not only to the county charter but to the same traditions of residency enforcement that governs the placement of school children and the right to vote in a given precinct.

Moreover, they had just as clearly soured on Brooks. Commissioner Mark Billingsley said his constituents had concluded that some members of the commission were “not trustworthy.” And according to Mike Ritz, Brooks had “cheated” her constituents by not attending any commission meetings since her attorneys had managed to ensure that she could remain on the body until the end of her term this month. “She’s been cheating them for years,” he added. Shafer said pointedly that the rules up for adoption were meant to prevent efforts “to defraud the voters.”

Jackson Baker

Back on the scene Monday were zoning lawyers Ron Harkavy (top, with Commissioner Heidi Shafer), and “Scrappy” Branan (bottom, left, with Bank of Bartlett president Harold Byrd and Commissioner Terry Roland);

Essentially, the amended resolution provided 10 different items to determine a challenged commissioner’s residency — ranging from utility bills to drivers licenses to documents certifying public assistance or government benefits — and required that only three of them be produced. The resolution passed 8-to-3, though it was understood that it might be met down the line with court challenges.

The commission took another important concrete step in approving a third and final reading of an ordinance proposed by Commissioner Ritz raising the pay of Shelby County Schools board members to $15,000, with the board chairman to receive $16,000. Though that amount was roughly only half the compensation received by county commission members and should be regarded as a “stipend” rather than a salary, it was still a three-fold increase for school board members.

In evident agreement with Ritz that such an increase was overdue, particularly in a “post-controversy” (meaning post-merger) environment, the commission approved the ordinance by the lopsided margin of 10-to-1.

But if comity was to be had in most ways Monday, it fell short on the last item of the day — and of this commission’s tenure. Despite the presence of numerous citizens and clergy members testifying on its behalf, a resolution co-sponsored by Mulroy and Bailey “amending and clarifying the personnel policy of Shelby County regarding nondiscrimination,” fell short by one vote of the seven votes required for passage. 

The same resolution, which specifically added language safeguarding county government employment rights for gay and transgendered persons, had been given preliminary approval by the commission’s general government committee last week. A highlight of the often tempestuous debate on Monday was an angry exchange between Democrat Chism, a supporter of the resolution, and Millington Republican Roland, who opposed it.

The specific language of the resolution was needed in the same way that specific language had been needed in civil rights legislation to end discrimination against blacks, said Chism, an African American. Discrimination, said Chism, “happened to me all of my life. Nobody saw it until the law changed.” Roland shouted back that the resolution was but the vanguard of a homosexual agenda. “It’s an agenda!” he repeated.

In the aftermath of the resolution’s near-miss, a disappointed Mulroy, who had authored the original nondiscrimination resolution of 2009, noted that Brooks, had she been there, would likely have been the necessary seventh vote, and that Chairman James Harvey, who abstained from voting, had proclaimed on multiple occasions, in front of numerous witnesses, that the resolution should be passed but that he, Harvey, who aspires to run for Memphis mayor next year, might have to abstain for “political” reasons.

Another term-limited commissioner, Ritz, may be a principal in the city election, as well. The former commission chairman, who has moved from Germantown into Memphis, said he is eying a possible Memphis City Council race. There is, it would seem, life after county commission service.

Categories
Memphis Gaydar News

Shelby County Commission Committee Approves Amendments to Non-Discrimination Policy

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Kal Rocket and Ellyahnna Hall at the Shelby County Commission committee meeting

  • Jackson Baker
  • Kal Rocket and Ellyahnna Hall at the Shelby County Commission committee meeting

“Sexual identity,” “gender identity,” and “gender expression” may soon be added to the non-discrimination policy for Shelby County government employees. The Shelby County Commission will vote on the amendment in their full meeting on Monday, but yesterday, the commission’s General Government committee approved the addition.

The commission passed a non-discrimination policy several years ago, but the terms “sexual identity,” “gender identity,” and “gender expression” were omitted from the final version in favor of the more generic “non-merit factors.” The policy’s original sponsor, Shelby County Commissioner Steve Mulroy, is now attempting to get those words inserted back into the policy’s language.

The Tennessee Equality Project has posted a petition on their website urging the commissioners to vote in favor of the change on Monday.

Flyer political reporter Jackson Baker was at the commission meeting yesterday and has posted a full account on his Politics Beat Blog.

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News News Blog

Appeal to Save Nineteenth Century Club Withdrawn

Nineteenth Century Club

  • Nineteenth Century Club

Standing on the sidewalk outside the crumbling and boarded-up Nineteenth Century Club, attorneys Steve Mulroy and Webb Brewer announced that the plaintiff in an appeal to save the stately historic home at 1433 Union has decided to withdraw. That means the building’s owners, the Lin family, may go forward with any plans they have for the property.

“We continue to believe we had a strong case legally, but without a buyer to purchase and preserve the property, any legal victory would be a hollow victory,” Mulroy said.

The plaintiff in the case is a former member of the Nineteenth Century Club who believes the club’s vote to auction the property violated its bylaws because the entire membership wasn’t notified about the planned sale. The property was sold at auction after a vote was held by some members of the Nineteenth Century Club. The club’s president Lynn Heathcott donated the money from the sale to the Children’s Museum of Memphis. Heathcott has contended that the club could not afford the repairs on the property, which was in violation of Memphis Fire Department code, leaving no other option than to sell it at auction.

Chancery Court Judge Walter Evans declared the sale of the property had been properly conducted, but the plaintiff appealed. Memphis Heritage had been helping promote public awareness around the plight of the building, which they believe the Lins intend to demolish to make way for a strip mall with a Chinese restaurant. The Lins currently own New Hunan Restaurant on Park, Kublai Khan Crazy Mongolian Stir Fry on Airways, and Red Fish Sushi Asian Bistro in Lakeland. The Nineteenth Century Club is one of the few historic properties left on shopping center-heavy Union Avenue.

When the plaintiff appealed, there were two potential buyers who had offered to purchase the property from the Lins. One was from Nashville, and the other was from California. But both deals have since fallen through. Memphis Heritage members had raised $100,000 to pay a bond for the appeal.

“We didn’t want to put our donor money at risk when there wasn’t a clear-cut idea for a buyer,” said Memphis Heritage president Joey Hagen.

Mulroy said the $100,000 would be distributed back to the Memphis Heritage donors.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Henri Brooks and Joe Brown: Beyond the Storm

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

If, for partisans of the Shelby County Democratic Party, the period just before the current month got under way was the calm before the storm, what has happened since has been the storm.

Believe it or not, there are several Democratic candidates on the county general election ballot — including Deidre Malone, the party’s candidate for Shelby county mayor, who is running an intelligent, well-conceived campaign involving several ad hoc support groups; and Cheyenne Johnson, the incumbent Shelby County assessor, who is widely regarded as having served effectively, and who proved her appeal to a general public with an impressive reelection win just two years ago.

But two other Democrats on the ballot have monopolized all the attention of late, effectively drawing it away from Malone, Johnson, and other Democratic nominees. Worse, most of the publicity attracted by those candidates — Henri Brooks, candidate for Juvenile Court clerk, and Joe Brown, candidate for district attorney general — has been negative.

To be sure, both Brooks and Brown have seen a closing of the ranks behind them of core supporters — backers of Brooks, especially, have been active, filling the County Commission’s interim meeting room on Monday, making it S.R.O. for yet another showdown on her residential status — but general elections in Shelby County are not won solely on the basis of partisan support.

And both Brooks and Brown seem to have burned more bridges than they have built to swing voters, despite what had initially seemed good prospects for expanding their bases.

Brooks, a term-limited county commissioner, began the election year on a wave of relative acclaim, having almost single-handedly forced the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate conditions at Juvenile Court and subsequently to mandate reforms in the court’s procedure. Really, all Brooks had to do to sustain good election chances was to make nice in the way of most candidates, doing at least minimal outreach beyond her African-American inner-city constituency.

Instead, she managed to alienate considerable numbers of white and Hispanic voters in the course of a stormy commission debate about minority contracting on county construction projects (one in which her rhetoric undercut the tenable logic of her case); incurred a misdemeanor assault charge in a needless wrangle over a parking-lot space; and, finally, was discovered not to be inhabiting her listed residence, leading to serious efforts by fellow commissioners to declare her ineligible to serve and to vacate her seat.

Brooks has so far come out ahead in a series of skirmishes on the residential matter. She won a declaratory judgment last week from Chancellor Kenny Armstrong invalidating County Attorney Marcy Ingram’s finding that Brooks’ seat should be vacated. Armstrong ruled that only the commission could make such a finding.

And when the commission took up the matter on Monday, in the aforementioned jam-packed meeting room, no agreement on going forward could be reached by Brooks’ 12 colleagues. After a lengthy and contentious session, the commission concurred on a resolution to meet again on a still undefined date later this month, but there was a general consensus, at least privately, that Brooks would be able to run out the clock — on the basis of her attorneys’ appeals, if by no other means — and will be able to finish her term of office.

But that tactical victory, and the ongoing fuss about Brooks, could turn out to be Pyrrhic for her election chances.

As for Judge Joe Brown (as the former Criminal Court judge was billed during the 15 years of his nationally syndicated TV arbitration show), the aura of de facto ticket booster that his celebrity had initially gained him had already sagged due to an extended period of inactivity during May and June.

Brown had let it be known that, as of July 1st, things would be different. And he was right about that, if wildly wrong about which direction the difference would take. Speaking to a group of supporters last week, he responded grumpily to a TV station’s prodding him about the deleterious effect of an ongoing divorce on his surprisingly scanty campaign finances.

A supporter filmed and posted online Brown’s angry, rambling suggestion that the media should turn its attention instead to the matter of what he called the “down low” sexuality of his opponent, incumbent District Attorney General Amy Weirich, whose lifestyle is regarded as that of a conventional wife and mother. 

Brown’s unsubstantiated remarks generated a predictable and virtually universal outrage, but he declined to disavow them, calling himself an “entertainer” running for office.

Doubtful as it is that swing voters will be amused, they were “summoned” by the newly visible Brown to a meet-and-greet this Wednesday night at the Central Train Station on Main.

• Interestingly enough, County Commissioner Justin Ford was scheduled to be the host for another meet-and-greet on Wednesday — this one for aunt Ophelia Ford‘s reelection campaign in state Senate District 29. 

It will be remembered that Commissioner Ford won his primary race in the new Commission District 9 in something of a stealth manner against two highly active opponents, former school board member Patrice Robinson and Memphis Education Association President Keith Williams. During most of the spring primary campaign, there was talk in both of those two campaigns that the race was between the two of them, that Ford had been redistricted away from his main source of support in the South Memphis environs of N. J. Ford Funeral Home, and so forth.

When votes were counted on the evening of May 6th, however, it was Justin Ford who came out ahead, having put on something of a late rush and, perhaps as importantly, riding the residual cachet that belongs to the Ford name.

Reports of a decline in the Ford political dynasty have been somewhat exaggerated. Take a look: There is a Ford on the County Commission, another (Edmund Ford) on the City Council, and, however battered by bad publicity, adverse revelations about her attendance (more of which is likely to come) and doubts about her competence, Ophelia has so far managed to remain in the state Senate.

There is no doubt that City Councilman Lee Harris, is running a smart, vigorous, and apparently well-supported and financed campaign to unseat Senator Ford, and he has the further advantage of the free media that comes from being in the public eye as a highly active member of the council.

But there is a rule of thumb about incumbents having the edge in three-way races, and the fact is that the Democratic primary race in state Senate District 29 is a three-way — a four-way, really, inasmuch as Ricky Dixon and Herman Sawyer are on the ballot along with Ford and Harris.

Either Dixon or Sawyer could siphon anti-incumbent votes away from challenger Harris, but Dixon is a threat in his own right. Brother of former state Senator Roscoe Dixon, also a Tennessee Waltz figure, candidate Dixon has run before, most recently as the Democratic nominee in 2010 for Circuit Court clerk, netting 44 percent of the votes in that race.

What happens in the remaining month or so before election day on August 7th will be crucial. If Harris can translate his endorsements and campaign appearances into visible evidence of support during early voting, which begins on Friday, July 18th, he could be on his way to a new political venue.

If so, Harris will have accomplished something not yet done by anybody — defeating a Ford for reelection. Even with someone so visibly tarnished as Ophelia Ford, that might not be so easy.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Shelby County’s Tax-Rate Impasse

First, the good news. (Long pause). Yeah, right. Now, for the bad news: This is the budget season for Memphis city government and Shelby County government, and, with the clock ticking (the 2014-15 fiscal year begins, in theory, on

July 1st), both local governments are clearly having trouble getting their books in order for what comes next.

In county government’s case, there are several end-of-cycle issues that didn’t get resolved at the County Commission’s regular Monday meeting and have been slotted for resolution in a special called meeting for June 26th. The most important of these is the matter of a county tax rate, and the holdup there has to do — wouldn’t you know it? — with fallout from the long-running city vs. county showdown on school reorganization.

The chief difference between a tax-rate resolution offered by Republican Commissioner Heidi Shafer and one suggested by Democrat Steve Mulroy is whether an additional 4 cents on suburban residents’ tax obligation — accruing to the building of a new Arlington High School 10 years ago — should be removed, as Shafer and her mainly GOP and suburban allies want, with the tax burden being equalized for city and county residents alike. Or, as Mulroy and his Democratic allies insist, the differential tax rates should be continued.

The Shafer argument is essentially that school reorganization — the complicated segue from merger to unity to post-merger and municipal school independence — has changed the relevant school jurisdictions so as to make the additional 4-cent tax burden unfair and even, as Shafer supporter Terry Roland argued, “illegal.”

County finance officer Mike Swift shares the concern, to the point of recommending that the additional tax be substituted for by using a portion of the local-option sales tax collected in the suburban areas in order to pay off the remaining $11.68 million left on the rural-bond issue that built the Arlington school.

At Monday’s commission meeting, Mulroy and Commissioner Mike Ritz, a Germantown resident and a Republican, but an established dissenter from the GOP position on schools, argued that disallowing the suburban tax differential cheats the original deal reached in 2003, whereby Memphis-based commissioners agreed to waive the Memphis City Schools share of a 3:1 split in the city’s favor on capital construction funding so as to allow county residents alone to build the Arlington school with rural school bonds.

Moreover, said Mulroy and Ritz, the local-option solution would divert funds that could be used for general county purposes.

It is a technical controversy, to be sure, but one with real consequences to taxpayers and one that allows both sides to plead the issue of fairness.

Neither side could get a majority on Monday, and, if there is no agreement on June 26th, there is only one opportunity left, at the Commission’s regular meeting on July 7th, for a tax rate to be established in a timely manner. County attorney Marcy Ingram has warned of fiscal consequences to established county services if that doesn’t happen.