JB
Bryan Carson
Weather permitting, the predicament of local Democratic chairman Bryan Carson may be resolved Saturday afternoon at a special called meeting of the Shelby County Democratic Party executive committee.
Within the last 24 hours, however, the executive committee meeting was declared closed to the media and the general public — apparently at the behest of an 11-member steering committee.
It was this steering committee that unanimously voted a “No Confidence” finding on Carson at a closed meeting held Wednesday night in the offices of a Teamsters Union local.
That meeting was held to discuss complications relating to Carson’s alleged failure to meet deadlines for financial disclosures that had been overdue to a state oversight agency.
On the same day of the meeting, Carson reported that he had submitted to the Tennessee Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance in Nashville a financial disclosure statement that had been due on October 28.
At Saturday’s meeting, to be held at 2:30 at the IBEW headquarters building on Madison, the full 73-member executive committee will be presented the particulars of Wednesday night’s meeting and possibly also the results of a financial audit conducted over the last month by a task force of the steering committee.
The executive committee will presumably have the option of accepting or rejecting the steering committee’s No Confidence vote and could take further disciplinary action, up to and including the termination of Carson’s chairmanship, which is due to expire in any case on March 28.
On that date, the SCDP will participate in its regular biennial convention, at which a new executive committee will be elected and a chairman named for the next two years. Carson has said he will not seek reelection but told the Flyer Wednesday night he intended to serve out his term.
Upon learning that Saturday’s meeting would be a closed one, executive committee member Steve Steffens expressed outrage at what he called “an appalling lack of transparency,” and said, “We’re a public body and should act like one.” Steffens objected further that the executive committee was apparently being asked to make a snap judgment on potentially complex materials that had not been shared with the committee previously.