Tag: Terry Roland

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Editorial Opinion

De-Annexation Pollyannas

We know that politicians, even wise and knowledgeable ones, whose local constituencies lie primarily outside the current boundaries of the city of Memphis, may find it difficult to fully tell it like it is in the case of the de-annexation bill under consideration in the Tennessee General Assembly.

That fact might explain why Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell, whose views on city/county affairs are normally quite balanced, professes not to be unduly concerned about a bill which, on the face of things, threatens to dismember Memphis, depriving it of geographic areas that are prime sources of sustaining revenue.

At this moment, Luttrell necessarily has to be looking to that part of his bailiwick — suburban east Shelby County — that will supply the lion’s share of the votes in the pending election for the 8th District congressional seat which Luttrell is seeking in this year’s election. Fair enough. Sentiment in that area seems, on the basis of attitudes taken by its representatives in the legislature, to be either favorable toward the bill or indifferent to its consequences. However, if the final version of the bill, in its sanction of easy dissolutions, turns out to apply to all incorporated municipalities statewide, including all of those in Shelby County, they may have another think coming.

In any case, we note by contrast to Luttrell’s hands-off approach the response of Sheriff Bill Oldham, who has viewed with concern and simple common sense the increased burdens, financial and otherwise, that will accrue to his department if it becomes wholly responsible for law enforcement in areas that might separate from Memphis.

Unfortunately, the attitude of the Shelby County’s aforementioned suburban legislators seems characterized either by an attitude of vengefulness toward Memphis, as in the case of state Representative Curry Todd, or an affected Pollyanna-ism in the case of state Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris, both of Collierville. We find disingenuous Norris’ protestation that the bill doesn’t de-annex anybody but merely gives annexed populations the right to vote on their status. That’s especially misleading, given Norris’ public rebuke of Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland for laying out the consequences to Memphis of the bill, at least as originally written — notably the potential financial losses to an already cash-strapped city of from $27 million to $78 million.

Norris blithely upbraided Strickland for stressing the bill’s downside (one that the Greater Memphis Area Chamber of Commerce, other Tennessee mayors, and major business leaders like AutoZone founder Pitt Hyde and ranking officials of First Tennessee Bank have testified is realistic). According to Norris, Strickland should be emphasizing Memphis’ advantages to residents rather than what he calls “the parade of horribles” itemized by the Memphis mayor.

Norris seems to believe that the proponents of de-annexation are seeking to physically remove their areas miles away from Memphis, distant from the job opportunities and attractions and developed infrastructure that the city offers. The fact is, all these amenities would still be available to the de-annexed populations; the latter would simply cease to help pay for them. They would become exploiters of Memphis rather than partners in maintaining the city. He should know better, and probably does.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

UPDATE: De-annexation Bill Killed for Session

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

NASHVILLE — In a surprise action, the state Senate’s State and Local Committee has voted 5-3-1 (with chairman Ken Yager voting aye) to approve a motion by Senator Bill Ketron (R-Murfreesboro) sending the controversial de-annexation bill (HB 779/SB 749) to summer study.



Voting in the minority on the motion were the bill’s Senate sponsor, Bo Watson (R-Hixson) and Senator Mark Green (R-Clarksville), a key co-sponsor. It was Green’s absence on Tuesday that had postponed a vote until Wednesday’s reconvening of the committee.



The action means that all possible action on the bill is over with until, at earliest, the legislative session that begins in January 2017.



“We really had no idea this was going to happen. But it was the best possible result, obviously. This is really a victory for the entire state,” said Phil Trenary, the Greater Memphis Area Chamber of Commerce head who had been in Nashville last week and this week opposing the bill.

Though the suddenness of the committee’s action took Trenary and other onlookers by surprise, it had become obvious that the bill was in for rough sledding once it hit the Senate committee, where chairman Yager (R-Kingston) supervised a systematic vetting of its contents and numerous witnesses had criticized it in detail.

Some indication of what was to come was the fact that numerous amendments weakening the bill’s force were passed in committee on Tuesday by lopsided votes.

Though six witnesses on Tuesday testified to the commmittee in favor of the bill, it had become obvious from previous testimony of bill opponents last week that resistance to it was serious, influential, and in depth.

Not only Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland but the mayors of two other affected cities, Chattanooga and Knoxville, had warned of the bill’s potentially ruinous effects, fiscal and otherwise, on targeted cities. Representatives of the state’s business community, including Pitt Hyde of AutoZone, and two ranking officers of First Tennessee Bank, seconded that point of view.

Even senators considered friendly to the idea of allowing urban de-annexation procedures had visibly cooled to the provisions of the de-annexation measure sent over from the House after swift ands lopsided passage there.

Those provisions had limited the bill’s effects to only five urban areas which had pursued state law in annexations that the bill, in a provision whose constitutionality was in doubt, considered “egregious.”

Other objectionable provisions included the bill’s allowance of a low ceiling — 10 percent of an annexed area’s population on a petition — to call a de-annexation referendum.

PREVIOUSLY (3-29-16): The ongoing debate in the General Assembly on a bill to allow de-annexation by areas of Memphis and other Tennessee cities that were annexed since the passage of Public Law 1101 in 1998, was renewed Tuesday in the state Senate’s State and Local Committee.

Two amendments to the House bill were approved last week by the Senate committee — one clarifying certain issues of debt obllgations remaining for any de-annexed residents and another expanding the reach of the bill to all municipalities statewide, not just Memphis and the four other urban areas alleged to have pursued “egregious” annexations since the 1998 date.

Both those amendments were regarded as concessions to the delegation that testified in the committee against the bill last week — which included Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke, and Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero, as well as AutoZone founder Pitt Hyde and two officials of First Tennessee Bank.

Jackson Baker

Phil Trenary

Last week’s testifiers made the point that the de-annexation bill received by the House was overly punitive and potentially financially ruinous to the cities affected. (Strickland testified that de-annexation by all the areas annexed by Memphis since 1998 could cost the already cash-strapped city the loss of property tax revenues ranging from $27 at minimum to a maximum of $78 million.)

Chairman Yager began the renewed hearing on Tuesday before a standing-room-only audience, noting that the witnesses against the bill last Wednesday had been opposed to it and professing a desire “to be fair-minded on an issue this polarizing,” then announcing that six new witnesses favoring the bill would be heard.

The first was Patricia Possel of South Cordova, who said, “The city of Memphis tried to silence us,” and went on to note that her area had been annexed July 1, 2012, more than four years before the next scheduled election in South Cordova.

She called the situation “taxation without representation,” and spoke, in a trembling voice, of the murder of a neighbor, Susan McDonald, in 2015 — clearly, an indication to her that crime had followed upon her neighborhood’s annexation by the city as something of a direct consequence.

Finally, she said, there had been “no disclosure” of any kind to her or other homeowners, at the time of their purchasing property, that they were located within one of Memphis’ annexation preserves, about to lose its independence.

Next up was Terry Roland, the chairman of the Shelby County Commission, who announced that he had heard “bad numbers” being testified to by representatives of the city last week and wanted to present “the straight skinny.” According to his own figures, the de-annexation from Memphis of South Cordova and Windyke-Southwind, the last two areas annexed, would result in a financial gain to Memphis of $3 million — not, as had been claimed, a deficit of $13 million.

Roland also spoke, as he has for years, of the constant departure of citizens from Memphis because of high and unreasonable property taxes. He said that 68,000 people had left Shelby county for DeSoto County, Mississippi in the years 2001-2010.

Roland did concede that if all 10 areas annexed by Memphis since 1998 were able to de-annex themselves (as the original House bill provided), the city would end up the loser, financially, but he made it clear he considered that prospect far-fetched.

The two Shelby County witnesses were followed by John Emerson of Alamo (who had been introduced by Yager earlier as “the father of de-annexation” and who pronounced it absurd that representatives of cities habitually spoke as if there a law of nature that urban municipalities could only expand and never contract.

Three residents of Chattanooga suburbs that had been annexed followed, with variations on some of the themes already addressed. (One of them announced that he did not turn on TV to watch “baseball, football, or Dancing With the Stars,” but was a regular watcher of congressional hearings and stayed up late to watch them. He had determined from that practice that public political debates and processes were essentially shams.)

From that point, the stream of amendments that was interrupted by the close of last Wednesday’s hearing ensued again — the first of them authorized by chairman Yager himself and directly addressing the complaint that Strickland had made of the original House bill — that, while it did require newly de-annexed citizens to continue paying their share of the city’s general obligation debt on a pro rata basis, it did not stipulate anything regarding residual pension and OPEB obligation on the part of those residents.

The Yager amendment would include pensions and OPEB obligations on a pro-rated basis.

Senator Bo Watson of Hixson, a suburb of Chattanooga, and a sponsor of the de-annexation bill, challenged the logic of including those debts, which Watson suggested were “pay-as-you-go” by their nature and that ex post facto assessments would be improperly doubling up on charges to the residents.

He was backed up on those allegations by Senator Todd Gardenhire, another Chattanoogan, who testified from his point of view as a former member of a U.S. Department of Labor committee on pension obligations. In the course of seconding Watson’s assertions that including the new assessments would be double-billing de-annexed residents, Gardenhire got off a series of negative observations regarding the past fiscal performance of the city of Memphis.

Most of those observatios recapitulated criticisms made by state comptroller Justin Wilson about city bookkeeping practices during the administration of former Mayor A C Wharton. “The city of Memphis was not run like a business,” Gardenhire said.
Even so, the amendment was passed by the committee 6-1. It began to seem possible that the optimism for a favorable resolution expressed last week by Strickland and Chamber of Commerce president Phil Trenary might be justified.

That sense was furthered somewhat by discussion later of other new amendments, notably including one by chairman Yager that would raise from 10 to 20 percent the percentage of residents necessary to validate a petition for a de-annexation referendum. This one ultimately passed 7-0, and among those committee members agreeing with Yager that “the bar should be raised” on requirements for a de-annexation petition was state Senator Mark Norris (R-Collierville), a nominal supporter of the bill’s intent.

Not everything was roses. An amendment from state Senator Reginald Tate (D-Memphis) limited the Memphis areas eligible for de-annexation to South Cordova and Southwind-Windyke failed for lack of a second. And another, contemplated by Yager, requiring 66 percent, rather than a simple majority, for passage of a de-annexation referendum, was withdrawn by the chairman.

Asked afterward to assess Tuesday’s actions on the bill, the Trenary said the amendments made the bill “more realistic” but said he still continued to oppose it and was hopeful that the legislature as a whole ultimately would.

Roland’s reaction was one of satisfaction also, and he expressed the hope that the effect of the bill might still be limited to the two recently annexed areas of South Cordova and Southwind-Windyke. “They’re the only ones that are organized,” he pointed out.

An ultimate vote by the committee on the amended bill was delayed out of courtesy to the bill’s main sponsor, state Senator Mark Green of Clarksville, who was absent. (It was Green who last week compared the alleged “egregious” annexations by Memphis and other cities to a Russian occupation of Poland, and Norris wondered somewhat archly on Tuesday how the residents who moved to “Poland” in recent years should be counted in determining the right ceiling for a referendum petition.)

It is hard to imagine Green being altogether favorable to the amendments accepted Tuesday, but, in any case, whatever his opinion or the committee’s vote on the bill, the bill is not likely to be headed to the floor of either House or Senate anytime soon.

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Politics Politics Feature

Matters of Tenure on the Shelby County Commission

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Jackson Baker

Walter Bailey

No suggestion at Monday’s regular meeting of the Shelby County Commission could have been treated with more courtesy than the request by long-serving Democratic member Walter Bailey for an ordinance to amend the County Charter so as to eliminate all reference to term limits for county officials.

And no suggestion had so little chance of passage as Bailey’s ordinance, which, on the first of three readings, gained the votes of only three members — Bailey and fellow Democrats Justin Ford and Van Turner — on the 13-member body. 

The ordinance allows for a public referendum of county voters, and that provision allowed several members to abstain from voting on the premise that they would meanwhile consult their constituents, but this was largely a face-saving mechanism for Bailey and perhaps for themselves.

The fact is, as a number of commissioners say privately, and as David Reaves said out loud on Monday, most members of the current commission would not have been able to run successfully for their seats on the body if term limits had not been imposed.

In arguing for the ordinance, Bailey noted for the record that members of Congress and the state legislature are not bound by term limits and that the imposition of them on the commission arbitrarily deprives the public of needed experience on the part of members. Bailey himself, a member of a distinguished political family that included his late brother, author/civil rights icon D’Army Bailey, is the longest-serving member of the commission and, as he put it last week in committee, where his ordinance was first vetted, maybe the longest-serving public official in the state. He won office first in 1971, has served as chairman twice, and has served continuously, with the exception of four years, from 2006 to 2010, when the charter’s then-new term-limit requirement caused him to step down temporarily.

He is now serving his second term since being returned to the commission in 2010 and faces another mandatory withdrawal from service. • More local backdrop for the 8th District congressional race: As indicated last week, a victory by Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell in the crowded Republican primary field would occasion some frenetic maneuvering on the part of the county commissioners, inasmuch as Luttrell would thereby vacate his county position, opening it up to a reappointment process.

Luttrell, if  victorious in the congressional race, would presumably resign his mayoralty sometime between the general election in November and his January swearing-in in Washington. Meanwhile, the commission would have selected a new chair in September, according to its normal schedule. And whoever is chair when Luttrell ceases to be mayor automatically becomes interim Shelby County mayor for a maximum of 45 days, after which the commission will select a new one by majority vote.

As Commissioner Mark Billingsley of Germantown reminded his colleagues with copies of a handout he distributed Monday, the county charter makes no provision for an election to fill a vacancy in the mayor’s office “until a successor is elected and qualified at the next countywide election allowed by the state election laws.” Hence, whoever is selected by the commission upon the completion of the interim mayor’s service will serve as a fully pledged county mayor until the county general election of 2018.

There is no doubt that current commission chairman Terry Roland, a Millington Republican, wants to be the next county mayor. His intentions of running for the position in 2018 have been clear for months, and, in case anyone should forget the fact, he announces it periodically during meetings of the commission. (Roland pointedly did so at last Wednesday’s committee sessions and did so again at Monday’s regular commission meeting.)

It now appears, however, that Roland sees no need to seek reappointment to a second consecutive term as commission chairman in September (as numerous commission chairs have done in the last several years, with former member Sidney Chism, a Democrat, having brought off the trick). Roland is content to allow things to take their natural course in September, with Democratic member Turner the favorite to become the next chairman.

But Roland is certain to be front and center as a candidate for appointment as mayor when the commission convenes, sometime early in 2017, to serve as a successor to Luttrell through the election of 2018. And word has it that he believes he already has most of the votes in hand to overcome other candidates, including possible opponent David Lenoir, the county trustee, who intends to run for the office in the regular 2018 election cycle. Another possible contender for the commission’s mayoralty selection would be GOP Commissioner Steve Basar, whom Roland bested for the chairmanship last year in a hastily called revote after Basar had held the position for roughly an hour.

All of this would be moot, of course, should someone other than Luttrell win the congressional race. There are five other Shelby County Republicans in the field — Basar; radiologist/broadcast executive George Flinn; state Senator Brian Kelsey; County Register of Deeds Tom Leatherwood; and former U.S. Attorney David Kustoff.

And Jackson businessman Brad Greer must be delighted at the prospect that so many Shelby Countians in the race, dividing up the local vote, creates the real mathematical possibility of his winning. (Something like that happened in the 7th District congressional race of 2002, when Kustoff, then city council member Brent Taylor, and then County Commissioner Mark Norris split the Shelby County vote, allowing for an easy victory by Marsha Blackburn of Williamson County, who still represents the 7th District.)

Outlook on Convention Delegates

Some 400 Democrats betook themselves to First Baptist Church Broad last Saturday to make themselves eligible for formal Shelby County conventions on Saturday, March 19th, that will select from this pool of eligible members the delegates to the Democratic National Convention at Philadelphia this summer.

Yes, there will be two conventions on March 19th — one to be held at First Baptist Broad that will determine the identity of the delegates and alternates who will go to Philadelphia to represent the 9th Congressional District; and another, to be held the same day in Jackson, that will determine who goes to the national convention to represent the 8th Congressional District, which takes in a generous hunk of eastern Shelby County.

At both locations, the delegates to be selected will conform to the pattern of the two districts’ voting in last week’s “Super Tuesday” presidential primary in Tennessee, with the lion’s share of delegates and alternates going to Hillary Clinton, who won the primary vote handily, and a handful going to Bernie Sanders. 

In the case of the 9th District, that would be six delegates and one alternate for Clinton, with one delegate apportioned to Sanders. In the case of the 8th, it’s four delegates for Clinton and one for Sanders. Insofar as the math permits, the delegates are apportioned, half and half, by gender.

For the record, Clinton beat Sanders statewide by a two-to-one ratio. The ratio in Shelby County, whose African-American demographic (generally very supportive of Hillary Clinton) is higher, was four to one: Clinton, 66,465; Sanders, 15,985. 

The Democratic Party’s ex post facto process for selecting delegates differs from that of the Republicans, which required would-be delegates to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland to file for election on the Super Tuesday ballot on behalf of the specific presidential candidate they chose to represent. The chief vote-getters on each list became convention delegates in a ratio proportionate to how well their candidates did in head-to-head voting.

For the record, Donald Trump won 39 percent of the statewide Republican primary vote; Ted Cruz won 25 percent; Marco Rubio, 21 percent, Ben Carson, 8 percent; John Kasich, 5 percent. (Results rounded off.)

The preliminary delegate list released last week by the state Republican Party did not include the apportionment for Shelby County, but the county’s GOP primary results went as follows: Trump, 30 percent; Cruz, 29 percent; Rubio, 26 percent, Kasich, 8 percent, Carson, 6 percent, and “others,” 2 percent. (Again, results rounded off.)

If all of this appears to be a mite complicated, that’s because it is. Updates will be provided by the Flyer as they are received.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Lee Harris Out, Steve Basar In?

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tennessee Senate Minority Leader Lee Harris (D-Memphis)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Politics Politics Feature

Capitol Serendipity

Between the time these words are written on Tuesday morning and the time they are read, Wednesday (when Flyer copies first hit the street) or thereafter, Memphis officials will have made their presence known in Washington.

This is true in both a literal and a figurative sense — literal, in that both Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell and Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland are sure to have seen by a national audience; figurative, in that, in the nation’s capitol, in the state capitol of Nashville, and (not least) back home, the sighting(s) will create a positive vibe for various public purposes of importance to Memphis and Shelby County.

As has been well publicized, Luttrell was expressly invited to sit in the box of First Lady Michelle Obama during the State of the Union address by President ObamaTuesday night.

Luttrell’s presence was accounted for in a White House statement regarding all of the First Lady’s boxmates: “The guests personify President Obama’s time in office and, most importantly, they represent who we are as Americans: inclusive and compassionate, innovative, and courageous.”
In particular, Luttrell apparently was included because of his work on criminal justice reform — the subject of an address the county mayor delivered to a White House conference last year and one which Obama is keen to address, in light of several volatile and sometimes fatal incidents nationwide that have scarred citizen relations with police and with the legal system at large.
Prior to his elections as Shelby County sheriff and county mayor, Luttrell’s background had been in penal administration.

After the Luttrell invitation was made public, 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen evidently thought the newly inaugurated Strickland should be in on the action as well, and invited the mayor to the State of the Union address as his guest.

Strickland should not necessarily expect to get as much air time as his county counterpart Luttrell, but that prospect should not be discounted, either. There probably has not been a single State of the Union telecast since Cohen was first elected to Congress in 2006 at which the irrepressible Memphis congressman has not figured prominently, both before and after the speech itself, in proximity to the President.

Assuming that congressional protocol allows Strickland, at least at some point, to join Cohen on the floor of the House of Representatives, where members of both congressional chambers convene to hear the address, the Memphis mayor is fairly sure to get his share of the limelight.

While in Washington, Strickland has also scheduled visits to the offices of Cohen and U.S. Representative Stephen Fincher (R-8th), as well as to those of Tennessee’s two Republican Senators, Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker.
Cohen’s invitation to Strickland, while a thoughtful gesture under the circumstances, also has obvious political ramifications for both men. It gives Strickland some useful exposure beyond his own bailiwick, and it provides Cohen with a practical opportunity to cement relations with the new mayor after an election in which the congressman publicly endorsed Strickland’s major opponent, then-incumbent Mayor A C Wharton.

Luttrell’s trip to Washington as the First Lady’s guest has already paid some specific dividends to him locally, earning the mayor both a respite from his ongoing power struggle with the Terry Roland-chaired Shelby County Commission and perhaps even a temporary truce.

Roland took to the well of the auditorium of the Vasco Smith County Administration Building at Monday’s regularly scheduled county commission meeting to read into the record a resolution of congratulations to the mayor from Commissioner Walter Bailey, adding some gracious words of tribute of his own and thereby making a point of associating himself with Luttrell’s enhanced persona and White House honor. 

It was one of the few moments of emotional unity in Shelby County government since sometime last year, when the commission, more or less as a whole, fell out with Luttrell over the administration’s fiscal accounting and what commissioners saw as an over-proprietary role vis-à-vis the commission. The resolution received unanimous approval.

The fact is, though, that Luttrell, who had left the county building to make his plane to Washington and could not respond directly to the commission’s resolution, is not out of the woods yet. Just before he received his invitation from the First Lady and the fact was publicized, the mayor had been involved in a developing imbroglio.

Roland and the chairman’s main commission ally, Heidi Shafer, had accused the administration of doctoring a commission resolution prepared by Roland and routing the doctored version to the state comptroller’s office in Nashville by way of embarrassing the chairman.

Roland’s resolution, clearly intended as a salvo in the running argument between an apparent commission majority and the mayor, sought to have the county’s fund surplus — the amount of which has been a matter of dispute between the commission and the mayor — routed from the administration’s financial office to the commission’s contingency fund.

Such a resolution, if passed, would not only put points on the board for the commission in its contest with the mayor, it would in theory give the commission an independent set of eyes in determining just exactly what the county’s surplus for 2014-2015 had been — whether $6 million, as the administration had first reported in advising the commission against a property tax decrease, or somewhere in the neighborhood of $21 million or even higher, as commissioners came to believe on the basis of late-breaking information.       

Before the resolution could be acted on by the full commission, however, a copy of it went to the comptroller’s office, and where there had been a blank for the amount of the imagined surplus intended for transfer, there was now entered an amount of $107,772,795.00 — which was the amount of the county’s entire fund balance!

As the comptroller’s office promptly notified all the local parties, such a transfer would be illegal and impossible, since it would deprive the county of its entire operating monies for any and all purposes. When that response went public, Roland cried foul, and he and Shafer suggested that nothing short of forgery could account for what he called a “blatantly altered” document.

A planned “discussion” of the matter was on the commission’s agenda for its committee sessions on Wednesday, but Roland said it was being withdrawn pending further “investigation” of the matter.
Asked for his response to the matter on Thursday, Luttrell recalled that, during a recent weekend budget summit between the administration and the commission, there had been a dispute over the issue of who should have supervision of the county’s surplus funds.

“That alarmed us,” said Luttrell. “And then when this draft resolution came down, we said, ‘Okay, we really need to get some clarity from the state comptroller’s office. Let’s just go to the comptroller, so we’ll know where we stand.’” That accounts for the dispatching of a copy of the resolution to Nashville.

A letter last week from Kim Hackney, deputy CAO, to Roland supplies further explanation of the incident from the administration’s point of view. The letter suggests that the alteration of the amount sought for transfer occurred inadvertently as copies of the resolution were passed back and forth between deputy County Attorney Marcy Ingram, commission administration assistant Quoran Folsom, and county financial officer Mike Swift.

The details, as set forth in the letter, seemed plausible enough as a defense of the altered number as an unfortunate accident, but even this de facto apology, forthrightly stated for the most part, contained a hint of reproach: “[W]e regret that our office and your office were not working directly with each other on this matter. Perhaps some confusion would have been eliminated.” 

For all the public kumbaya of this week, the power struggle seems likely to continue.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Altered Resolution an Accident, Says County Administration

More on the case of the Altered Resolution— famous or infamous now in the annals of county government.

Mayor Luttrell

In the previous episode, Shelby County Commission chairman Terry Roland and his Commission ally Heidi Shafer were suggesting that someone in the administration of Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell had changed numbers in a resolution prepared by Roland and sent the resolution, altered also in the text, to the state Comptroller’s office in Nashville.

Roland’s resolution, clearly intended as a salvo in the running power struggle between an apparent Commission majority and the Mayor, sought to have the county’s fund surplus — the amount of which has been a matter of dispute between the Commission and the Mayor — routed from the administration’s financial office to the Commission’s contingency fund.

Such a resolution, if passed, would not only put points on the board for the Commission in its contest with the Mayor, it would in theory give the Commission an independent set of eyes in determining just exactly what the county’s surplus for 2014-2015 had been — whether $6 million, as the Administration had first reported in advising the Commission against a property tax decrease, or somewhere in the neighborhood of $21 million or even higher as Commissioners came to believe on the basis of late-breaking information.

Before the resolution could be acted on by the full Commission, however, a copy of it went to the Comptroller’s office, and where there had been a blank for the amount of the imagined surplus intended for transfer, there was now entered an amount of $107,772,795.00 — which was the amount of the county’s entire fund balance!

As the Comptroller’s office promptly notified all the local parties, such a transfer would be illegal and impossible, since it would deprive the county of its entire operating monies for any and all purposes. When that response went public, Roland cried foul, and he and Shafer suggested that nothing short of forgery could account for what he called a “blatantly altered” document.

A planned “discussion” of the matter was on the Commission’s agenda for its committee sessions on Wednesday, but Roland said it was being withdrawn pending further “investigation” of the matter.
Asked for his response to the matter on Thursday, Mayor Luttrell recalled that, during a recent weekend budget summit between the administration and the Commission, there had been a dispute over the issue of who should have supervision of the county’s surplus funds.

“That alarmed us,” said Luttrell, “and then when this draft resolution came down, we said, “OK, we really need to get some clarity from the state comptroller’s office. Let’s just go to the comptroller, so we’ll know where we stand.” That accounts for the dispatching of a copy of the resolution to Nashville.

A letter this week from Kim Hackney, deputy CAO, to Roland supplies further explanation of the incident from the Administration’s point of view. The letter suggests that the alteration of the amount sought for transfer occurred inadvertently as copies of the resolution were passed back and forth between deputy County Attorney Marcy Ingram, Commission administration assistant Quoran Folsom, and County Financial Officer Mike Swift.

The letter, the link to which is below, should perhaps be allowed to speak for itself:

[pdf-1]

Or here is the letter, with exhibits, reproduced in sequential pages:

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Politics Politics Feature

Pending Matters in Shelby County

Newly inaugurated Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland kept himself on solid ground with the electorate, and may have expanded his beachhead somewhat, with a post-swearing-in address on New Year’s Day that added significant new terms to the lexicon of his political rhetoric.

More so than in his campaign speeches, which hewed to his themes of public safety, action on blight, and employee accountability, Strickland made a conspicuous effort to broaden his constituency. His key passage: “Here on this day of renewal, this time of celebration, we must recognize that we are a city rife with inequality; it is our moral obligation, as children of God, to lift up the poorest among us.”  

The mayor’s implicit commitment to social action was reinforced by specific promises “to expand early childhood programs,” “to provide greater access to parks, libraries, and community centers,” and “to increase the number of summer youth and jobs programs.”

• The year-end resignation of long-beleaguered county Election Administrator Rich Holden creates an opening that the Shelby County Election Commission must fill. Final deadline for applications to the newly vacated position is next Wednesday, January 13th, according to Janice Holmes, deputy administrator of Shelby County government.

One of those actively campaigning for the position is Chris Thomas, an employee of the Redwing public strategies group who has served previously as Probate Court clerk and as a Shelby County commissioner.

• In the ongoing movie series based on the fictional boxer Rocky Balboa, there was a never-ending stream of new challengers to Rocky’s championship title, each one with a plausible case to make for beating the champ, each one a loser finally, though usually after a bruising and suspenseful struggle.

The difference between Balboa and 9th District congressman Steve Cohen, who, since first winning his congressional seat in 2006, has also faced a different contender for his title in each successive election season, is that Cohen has hardly ever been forced to raise a sweat in disposing of his opponents.

Nikki Tinker in 2008, Willie Herenton in 2010, Tomeka Hart in 2012, Ricky Wilkins in 2014: Each of these would-be Democratic primary claimants to the 9th District seat came into the race against Cohen with a show of credentials and a fair degree of ballyhoo. Each went down hard in the end, with Cohen’s edge against them on election day usually turning out to be somewhere between four to one and eight to one. (Wilkins fared better, losing only 2 to 1.)

Now here — as first reported in the Flyer‘s wrap-up edition of 2015 — comes another worthy looking to take the seat away from Cohen: State Senator Lee Harris, who previously served most of a term on the Memphis City Council and who had been, Cohen says, formally endorsed by the congressman both in his 2011 council race against Kemba Ford and his 2014 win over then-incumbent state Senator Ophelia Ford.

Harris has confirmed his interest in seeking the 9th District seat. If he runs, it would be his second try for the office. The University of Memphis law professor was, along with Cohen and a dozen or so others, a Democratic primary candidate for the seat in 2006, the year incumbent congressman Harold Ford Jr. vacated it to run for the U.S. Senate.

Harris didn’t fare so well in that maiden effort, finishing near the bottom among the 15 primary contenders, but his status was considerably enhanced by his council and state senate victories, the latter allowing him to become leader of the five-member Democratic Senate caucus.

If he enters the race, Harris has indicated his campaign would be of the generalized it’s-time-for-a-change variety, though he has taken issue with Cohen on the matter of the congressman’s opposition to Governor Bill Haslam’s Tennessee Promise program of subsidies for community college students, funded by using proceeds of the Hope Lottery. Cohen, who objected to the diversion of funds as favoring higher-income students over lower-income ones, was the guiding force behind the creation of the state lottery as a longtime state senator.

• The ongoing power struggle between the administration of Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell and an apparent majority faction of the county commission was apparently not subject to any time-outs during the holidays. Indeed, it seems to have intensified over the break — to the point of open warfare.

Two matters in December have pushed the combatants to the brink: 1) a December 18th hand-delivered letter from commission chairman Terry Roland to Luttrell  threatening the mayor with “removal procedures” if he persisted in resisting a commission resolution appointing former Commissioner Julian Bolton as an independent attorney responsible to the commission; and 2) a bizarre circumstance whereby a Roland resolution seeking a transfer of the county’s budget surplus — a disputed amount running somewhere from $6 million to $20-some million —from the administration to the commission’s contingency fund reached the state comptroller’s office in a form that seemed to call for the transfer of the county’s entire fund balance of some $108 million.

The latter situation is being denounced by allies of Roland as nothing short of forgery committed somewhere in the administration before being transmitted to Nashville. After Sandra Thompson of the state comptroller’s office responded to Luttrell that the resolution featuring the larger sum was illegal, Roland sent a letter to Thompson charging that alterations had been made in his resolution, not only in the amount sought in the transfer, but in the enabling language of the resolution.

Roland’s letter included copies of both his original resolution, which — given a longstanding dispute between Luttrell and the commission — omitted any sums whatever, and what Roland called a “blatantly altered” copy that was sent to the comptroller’s office, which seemed to spell out a request for the transfer of the entire fund balance, which would be an astonishing demand, and which, noted Thompson, would leave the county without cash available to support spending in its General Fund and in potential violation of state law.

According to Roland’s letter, “When the altered document was brought to my attention I immediately contacted Harvey Kennedy, CAO, to address the issue and clarify my intentions. Mayor Mark Luttrell confirmed via a conversation with me that he was aware the document was altered. … I would never place Shelby County in [a] position where insufficient resources would be available to provide the cash flow needed for operations.”

Meanwhile, conversations and correspondence have flowed back and forth between commissioners and the administration, with the latter contending that a clerical error accounted for the apparent alteration in the resolution and Commissioner Heidi Shafer, a Roland ally in the struggle, concurring with the chairman that conscious skullduggery was involved.

Shafer sees a silver lining to the imbroglio, however. She believes that publicity concerning the matter has put the administration so clearly on the defensive that Luttrell will be willing to compromise with Roland on the independent-attorney issue — despite his statement, in a November 19th letter to Roland that he would stand by “a clear, unambiguous opinion from the county attorney that Resolution #16A [calling for Bolton’s appointment] violates the county charter.”

Roland and his supporters on the commission maintain that the charter mandates that the mayor is bound to implement the requirements of the resolution, which Luttrell vetoed but which was sustained in an override vote by the commission. The case of the altered resolution has earned itself a place for “discussion” on the commission’s committee agenda for Wednesday.

And at some point, even should the independent-attorney issue be resolved in compromise, the original point of rupture between the contending branches of government remains — a suspicion on the part of the commission that the administration is playing fast and loose with the fiscal totals it issues and refusing to submit to regularly scheduled audits.

That issue was apparently at the root of Roland’s wish for the transfer of surplus monies to the commission’s contingency fund.

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Politics Politics Feature

2015: A Year of Change in Memphis Politics

Sitting uneasily at the same table for the annual Myron Lowery prayer breakfast on January 1, 2015 were future antagonists Mayor A C Wharton (left) and Jim Strickland (in center). At far right is Council candidate Mickell Lowery, who would be upset in a Council race by underdog Martavius Jones.

The year 2015 began with a bizarre New Year’s Day event in which Memphis City Councilman Jim Strickland was asked to stand up by a reigning figure in city politics, whereupon said official, council chairman Myron Lowery, basically called Strickland out for his presumption in considering a race against incumbent Mayor A C Wharton.

The year will end with the selfsame Strickland preparing to stand on a stage on New Year’s Day 2016 and take the oath as mayor, while both Wharton and Lowery exit city government, and Mickell Lowery, the latter’s son, wonders what went wrong with his own failed bid to succeed his father on the council.

On the national stage, similar head-scratching must be going on at the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport and in other establishmentarian councils where the old reliable form sheets seem to have gone suddenly and sadly out of date.

Everywhere, it would seem, the representatives and figureheads of things-as-usual are hearing variations on “You’re fired,” which is how it might be put by Donald Trump, the real estate billionaire and political eccentric whose out-of-nowhere surge to the top of the pack among Republican presidential contenders is one of the obvious indicators of the new mood.

One of the most trusted end-of-year polls of the GOP race had Trump at 42 percent and Jeb Bush at 3 percent. Less extremely, back in our own bailiwick, the formerly invincible Wharton, whose two earlier mayoral races netted him victory totals of 70 percent and 60 percent, finished his 2015 reelection effort with a woeful 22 percent of the vote, a full 20 points behind the victorious Strickland, in what was essentially a four-person race.

It takes no crystal ball or soothsaying skill to see that there was discontent against traditional management — again, what we call the establishment — in all the public places: locally, nationally, and even statewide. Governor Bill Haslam, a pleasant, well-intentioned man with a little sense and sensibility, was spurned by the leadership and rank-and-file of his own Republican Party in the General Assembly in Nashville. 

His prize proposal, a home-grown version of Medicaid (TennCare) expansion called Insure Tennessee, was just different enough from the semantically vulnerable Obamacare to pass muster with the state’s hospitals, medical professionals, and — according to polls — the Tennessee public at large. It was opposed by the GOP speakers of the two legislative chambers in both a special session in February and the regular session later on and kept thereby from ever getting a vote on the floor of either the House or the Senate.

As Haslam noted in a barnstorming expedition across the state later in the year, the state also had a serious need for upgrading of its roads, bridges, and infrastructure in general, but — once burned and twice shy from the rejection of Insure Tennessee — he dared not advocate a gasoline tax or any other specific plan to raise revenue for infrastructure purposes. He was reduced instead to voicing a hope at each of his stops that an aroused public itself would clamor for such remedies. No such luck.

Meanwhile, the once-dominant Democratic Party had become such a shell of its former self that it was powerless to suggest anything of its own legislatively or to oppose any initiative of the Republicans, who owned a super-majority — and a Tea Party-dominated one — in both houses.

What the Democrats could do, in Shelby County and statewide, was outfit themselves with new leaders. Mary Mancini, a veteran activist from Nashville, became the new state party chairman, while Randa Spears was elected in Memphis to head Shelby County Democratic Party and to impose overdue reform on what had been some serious mismanagement of the party’s finances.

The local Republican Party elected a female chair, too,  Mary Wagner, suggesting the existence of a trend and the possibility that, as confidence in the old order continued to erode, political folks were increasingly looking to the women in their ranks as a source of new leadership.

• City and county politics were crucially affected by budgetary matters during 2015. 

In the case of the city, austerity measures approved by both Mayor Wharton and a council majority — specifically pension reform and reduction of health benefits for city employees — would taint public confidence in city government and shape the resultant four-way mayoral race to the incumbent’s disadvantage.

Even such seeming talking points for the mayor as the new Electrolux and Mitsubishi plants failed to diminish local unemployment to the degree that had been expected.

Mayoral candidate Harold Collins was telling with his mockery of the $10-an-hour jobs for temps he said prevailed at both locations. Memphis Police Association president Mike Williams embodied resentment of lost benefits for first responders in his mayoral bid. 

And, most effectively, the aforementioned Strickland hammered away at a triad of issues — public safety, blight, and a need for more accountability on the part of public officials — that his polling suggested were winning themes among voters of all ethnicities and economic classes.

Some considered these mere housekeeping issues, but as poll-derived distillations of the Memphis electorate’s concerns about the here and now, they were evidently on point — enough so that Strickland, in many ways a generic white man, would eventually capture 25 percent of the city’s black vote, pulling his mathematical share against African-American candidates Wharton, Collins, and Williams.

On the council front, six new members were chosen in open races, and in each case it was the most business-friendly candidate who won. This was undeniably the case with candidates such as Philip Spinosa, a young FedEx executive who raised a prohibitive $200,000 in an at-large race, avoiding public forums with his five opponents or much public contact of any kind except for a forest of yard signs bearing his name along the major traffic arteries of central and East Memphis.

Another financially well-endowed council newcomer, Worth Morgan, advertised himself similarly, but was willing to confront the rest of his field — and in the runoff a well-regarded Republican activist — in open debate, where he held his own.

Along with Strickland’s nonstop emphasis on public safety, there was an abundance of pro-police rhetoric among the winners of city races. The question — one that achieved the level of irony — was how all this public empathy, short of restoring lost benefits, could arrest the ongoing fallout from the ranks. Some 200 to 300 cops had already responded to benefit cuts by going elsewhere.

The general sense of rebellion that, in one way or another, seemed to characterize the political scene in 2015 may have found its fullest fruition in Shelby County government, where, after enacting various expected rituals of partisan rivalry amongst themselves, the county comissioners began to mount a coordinated campaign as a body against the administration of county Mayor Mark Luttrell. This development was a direct outgrowth of the budget season, during which commissioners on both sides of the party line convinced themselves that they were being spoon-fed half-truths about money available for public purposes and at year’s end were attempting to assert their own authority as superceding that of the mayor.

As with so much else on the political landscape in 2015, the accustomed way was under challenge. The new year of 2016 will presumably have to come up with some answers.

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Politics Politics Feature

Election Commission Zigs; County Commission Zags

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Jackson Baker

Rich Holden

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Politics Politics Feature

Shelby County Commission Broadens Reach

Where’s Zoey? Can’t say where Waldo is, but that’s Zoey Goss sitting up there (briefly) in place of County Commissioner Heidi Shafer, who with other commissioners voted Monday to contribute $8,000 to a summer camp for Zoey and other children suffering from muscular dystrophy.

The Shelby County Commission, as currently constituted, is turning into a juggernaut of sorts. Chairman Terry Roland of Millington and Commissioner Heidi Shafer of East Memphis are but two of the determined commission members who have kept in working order a bipartisan majority that is perceptibly and consistently expanding its influence and authority vis-à-vis other power blocs.

For months now, the commission has been challenging the prerogatives of County Mayor Mark Luttrell‘s administration and asserting its own. “We are the people,” is a frequent boast by Roland, who attributes to Luttrell and others holding executive positions not much more than a responsibility to carry out commission policy dictates.

In defense of that position, he and Shafer, along with former Commissioner Julian Bolton, the independent counsel they are attempting to hire, cite various portions of the County Charter, laying special stress on its apparent conferring on the elected commission, “all lawful authority to adopt ordinances and resolutions governing the operation of government or regulating the conduct and affairs of the residents of the county.”

As for Luttrell, Shafer defined his role this way in a recent Viewpoint article for the Flyer: “The mayor is charged with seeing that all resolutions and ordinances of the board of county commissioners are faithfully executed. He or she is to present the consolidated county budget to the commission, which has full rights to modify or amend. The mayor is also compelled to ‘take such other executive and administrative actions as are required by this charter or may be prescribed by the board of county commissioners.'”

The administration has not yet loosed its own heavy artillery, fighting things out so far on the single issue of whether the commission has the right to an independent counsel — something that neither Luttrell nor his appointed county attorney, Ross Dyer, have been willing to concede. Both claim that only the elected chief executive, Luttrell, has contractual authority under the terms of the charter and that the county attorney and all of the office’s assisting personnel are contracted employees.

In the face of advice from Dyer that Bolton’s appointment would be illegal except as a possible adjunct to Dyer’s own staff and under his supervision, the commission voted late last month to hire the former commissioner. Mayor Luttrell subsequently vetoed the appointment, and the commission, in a special called meeting last week, found nine votes to override the veto — one more than the two-thirds majority required for an override.

Inasmuch as Luttrell has indicated he will refuse to sign a contract of employment for Bolton, the matter lies in limbo, awaiting either a legal determination, perhaps in Chancery Court, or some solution based on a compromise reached between the commission and the administration. A possible basis for the latter is the situation on the other side of Mid-America Plaza in City Hall.

There, Allan Wade has served since the 1990s as the Memphis City Council’s attorney, functioning both as a counterweight to the city attorney and an alternative source of legal opinion during public meetings from the desk he occupies on the floor adjacent to the council. Wade’s office is often cited by members of the county commission as a precedent for the one they intend to create. Interestingly, though, and this is where the prospect of a compromise on the county side begins to gleam, a striking analysis has been offered by Jimmie Covington, a longtime former journalist whose knowledge of city/county affairs was voluminous enough that the public officials he reported on frequently sought his opinion on matters under contention.

In another recent op-ed for the Flyer, Covington advanced the idea that there is no actual legal basis per se for Wade’s position of city council attorney — merely an ad hoc gentlemen’s agreement between the principals of city government that has spanned almost a quarter century. A solution of that sort on the county side is not impossible; Roland has hinted privately that it, or something like it, could be the carrot in a scenario whereby the stick might be a commission challenge to Dyer’s tenure as county attorney.

(“No comment” has been Dyer’s consistent response to all direct queries about the current imbroglio — which should not be taken to mean that he and Luttrell are not incubating an in-depth strategy of their own.)

So far the bipartisan majority for the commission’s power move has held — though there are clear indications that some commission members are not at home with the idea of prolonged conflict with the administration. David Reaves, who represents Bartlett, has been a dissenter on several recent votes regarding the attorney matter, though he was on the same page as fellow Republicans Roland and Shafer regarding some of the early challenges, which revolved around differences of opinion between the administration and the commission regarding the amount and disposition of a fiscal surplus.

Bipartisan coalitions are potentially unstable by their nature. The current one is Republican-led, from a base that has included five of the commission’s elected Republicans, plus Democrats Justin Ford and Eddie Jones, whose allegiance is provisional and dependent more on personal accommodations than on ideological grounds.

Largely as a result of internal machinations that denied him the chairmanship, the other elected Republican, Steve Basar, has been in de facto alliance with the commission’s Democrats on several specifically partisan matters, though his was a crucial swing vote for last week’s veto override.

From the standpoint of maintaining a bipartisan coalition versus Luttrell, the status of designated commission counsel Bolton as an African-American Democrat has been a crucial binder (though it is also the source of some of the misgivings harbored by Reaves and potentially other Republicans). In a commission meeting two weeks ago, Shafer bruited about the names of others who had been considered for commission attorney, including former GOP commissioners Charles Perkins and Buck Wellford, both of whom, she said, had declined the opportunity.

She also had mentioned in passing former Democratic Commissioner Steve Mulroy, who said this week that Shafer had contacted him as a reserve possibility if the current involvement with Bolton came unglued. (Mulroy said he had recommended instead that the commission consider an African American without any particular political bias.)

Meanwhile, even as there is a temporary lull in the matter of a commission attorney, the ad hoc commission coalition has opened up a new front with a different adversary — the Economic Development Growth Engine (EDGE) board.

• EDGE, the quasi-independent city/county agency charged with overseeing industrial recruitment and development, has often been the subject of public criticism for its decisions on payment-in-lieu-of-taxes (PILOT) arrangements with businesses. It has come in for criticism on the commission for that and for the fact that the representatives on the EDGE board of the commission and the city council are ex-officio non-voting members only.

Another bone of contention is an assumption that EDGE officials are on the cusp of completing a merger with the local Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA). Commissioner Basar introduced a resolution on Monday requiring EDGE to get the approval of both the commission and the city council before proceeding with a merger.

Perhaps because of its sponsorship (Basar is still persona non grata with the dominant coalition), the commission approved instead a motion to send the matter back to committee, as well as a resolution from Shafer requesting that no action be taken by EDGE and CRA until the full commission can formally review the matter at its December 7th meeting. Added Roland, ominously: “I am giving a firm warning to EDGE that if they try to sign a memorandum of understanding or go around us in any way possible, there will be a resolution from us rescinding EDGE.”

Yet a third commission foil, the Shelby County Schools board got off the hook Monday when, after serious criticism from members regarding SCS officials’ inability to be specific in their reasons for requesting commission approval of reshuffling some $10 million in previously allocated funds, the approval was granted, but with warnings from Shafer, among others, that the commission would require more details and more advance knowledge before approving any future such requests.