Tag: Terry Roland

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Politics Politics Feature

The Heat’s Still On in Shelby County Politics

As August turned to September, the political junkies among us found that very little had changed in their world. 

The heat of campaigning was over, to be succeeded by a late summer heat wave. Political advertising was conspicuously less frequent on radio and TV (which didn’t mean, of course, that deceit and misrepresentation were absent from the usual programming and commercials still available on the airwaves). In any case, more politics was just ahead.

Among the decisions still to be made were the four constitutional amendments that will appear on the November 4th statewide ballot. And the adherents and opponents of those amendments were already getting busy. More of that anon.

Meanwhile, the winners of the Shelby County general election were sworn in and girding for contests of other kinds. One of the most obvious of those was the matter of who would be chairman of the new Shelby County Commission. In particular, two of the five holdovers on a commission freshly elected from 13 single-member districts were girding for a fresh battle.

The two are Terry Roland, the Millington firebrand who, toward the end of his just-concluded first term, began trying to reinvent himself as an elder statesman of sorts; and Steve Basar, another second-termer whose constituency is based in East Memphis and the Poplar corridor. 

Both are Republicans and are counting on the resumption of the gentlemen’s agreement that has, more often than not since the advent of political primary elections in the early 1990s, called for the rotating of the commission chairmanship between Republicans and Democrats. 

The formula has been flouted in recent times — notably in 2011, when most of the commission’s Republicans joined with the political opposition to give Democrat Sidney Chism a second term, more or less to spite then-vice chair Mike Carpenter, a fellow Republican whose bipartisan ways had caused them to regard him as a “RINO” (Republican in name only).    

And there has been some isolated muttering among the Democratic newbies on the commission about banding together to elect one of their own as chairman for the 2014-15 term, but such an action would surely roil the waters, and there is no consensus among them for a candidate, in any case.

As vice chair, Basar would seem to have the advantage, especially since, unlike Carpenter, he has managed, despite a moderate, open-minded demeanor, to stay reasonably close to the GOP party line on major issues. Roland, however, is openly campaigning for the chairmanship, and it remains to be seen if he can put aside the politically divisive aspects of a persona which saw him, for most of the previous four years, functioning as the Democratic majority’s chief adversary.

For what it’s worth, during the commission’s swearing-in ceremony at the Cannon Center last Thursday, Roland sat on one end of the stage, next to four other Republican members, while Basar sat on the opposite end, next to several Democrats.

The new version of the commission will meet for the first time next Monday to resolve the chairmanship issue, among other matters, and what they decide will go far toward setting a tone for the new term.

• Meanwhile, there are already some political stirrings city-side, where the Memphis municipal election of 2015 is just a hop, skip, and jump away.

A year or so ago, before the vexing benefits issue and other budgetary conundra hit the fan so spectacularly, incumbent Mayor A C Wharton let it be known, at first through surrogates and finally via his own statement, that he would indeed be a candidate for reelection. Whether that remains the case, however, may depend on how easily and quickly the thorny issues that currently dominate the city-government agenda can be resolved, if at all.

The current Memphis City Council includes at least two mayoral wannabes — Jim Strickland, whose ambitions are long standing, and Harold Collins. There may, indeed, be others. It would be strange if council veteran Myron Lowery, who served  a brief but credible term as interim mayor in 2009 and who was defeated by Wharton in the special election held later that year, isn’t thinking of running.

In any case, Strickland can be counted on as a sure thing if Wharton ceases to be a candidate. Ditto with Collins, the subject of a persistent rumor that he already has been assured that the seat is likely to be open.

If Strickland should vacate his seat to run for mayor, a would-be successor is former Shelby County Commissioner Mike Ritz, who espoused the cause of the newly Memphis-based Shelby County Schools system during his term as commission chair in 2012-13 and who has moved his residence from Germantown into the city proper.

• Definitive word finally came down last week as to how the party nominations for state Senate District 30, to succeed Chancellor-elect Jim Kyle, must be conducted. Tennessee Attorney General Robert Cooper delivered an opinion that would:

1) Require nominations to be made by the two major parties’ local governing bodies — the Shelby County Democratic Executive Committee and the Shelby County Republican Steering Committee;

2) Limit the number of eligible voters to those committee members who represent precincts that lie within Senate District 30.

In the case of Democrats, who elect most of their executive committee members by House District, this effectively franchises all members representing House Districts that contain such precincts. 

Republicans also elect many of their steering committee members from House Districts, but a majority of their committee members are at-large and will also be enabled to vote.

3) Require House members seeking the Senate nomination to withdraw from the November ballot before attempting to win their party’s nomination for the Senate.

This requirement placed a clear burden upon rumored candidates like Democratic state Representatives Antonio Parkinson and G.A. Hardaway, inasmuch as the withdrawal of either from the November ballot would necessitate a write-in campaign to fill the ballot void for their party’s House race.

All candidacies, whether by party nomination or by independents, must be certified by a date 45 days from the date of the November 4th election. That would seem to make September 20th the effective deadline for application to the Election Commission.

Shelby County Democratic Party Chairman Bryan Carson promptly set up a meeting of the party executive committee for 7 p.m. next Monday night at the IBEW meeting hall on Madison. Inasmuch as District 30 is heavily Democratic, this meeting is likely to resolve not only who the party nominee is but who the next senator will be.

Among the known candidates are former state Senator Beverly Marrero, former Tennessee Regulatory Authority member Sara Kyle (wife of the outgoing senator), and Parkinson, who confirmed his continuing interest this week. Hardaway would seem to have decided against seeking the seat, and among other Democrats whose names have figured in speculation is that of Carol Chumney, a former state representative, city councilmember, and mayoral candidate.

At least one prominent Republican has expressed interest in the Senate seat. That would be physician/businessman George Flinn, a former county commissioner and frequent candidate for other offices — most recently the U.S. Senate, which he unsuccessfully sought in the recent Republican senatorial primary, losing out to incumbent Lamar Alexander and the primary runner-up, state Representative Joe Carr of Lascassas.

Flinn informed attendees of last week’s meeting of the East Shelby Republican Club of his interest. The Shelby County Republican Steering Committee is likely to consider the matter Thursday.

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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.

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Politics Politics Feature

With Election Less Than a Month Away, Patterns Are Taking Shape

CREDIT: Jackson baker

We are now less than a month away from August 7th, when the final votes in the Shelby County general election and state and federal primaries will be counted, and distinct patterns are taking shape.

Those races that were expected to be the most closely watched ones at the beginning of the election season — for the 9th District congressional seat, for Shelby County Mayor, for District Attorney General, for the District 29 state Senate seat, and for Juvenile Court Judge and Juvenile Court Clerk, among others — continue to command attention.

Although several circumstances — including charges and counter-charges, endorsements, demographics, and the like — are potentially influencing voter reactions, one factor that cannot be overlooked is the perennial one of money. Some candidates have it in spades, while others are struggling.

A word of caution: Lest it be forgotten, two candidates in the May 6th primaries for county offices — Kenneth Whalum, running for the Democratic nomination for County Mayor, and Martavius Jones, a candidate in the Democratic primary for the District 10 County Commission seat — nearly won races against highly favored opponents with more visible campaigns and vastly more funding.

Credit those outcomes to the power of name recognition, which remains a major factor in the current scene.

For what it’s worth, however, here are three examples:

• City Councilman Lee Harris, who is campaigning aggressively in his Democratic primary effort to unseat District 29 state Senator Ophelia Ford, garnering endorsements by the bushel and across the political board, is also raising disproportionate amounts of money — he boasts a 10-to-1 ratio over Ford’s in the reporting quarter ending June 30th. (His edge in money on hand is somewhat lesser — $28,646.29 to $11,549.66, a shade less than 3-to-1).

• Incumbent Republican County Mayor Mark Luttrell, whose ads have been omnipresent on TV of late, has a marked financial advantage over Democratic nominee Deidre Malone, with a reported $132,417 on hand as of the June 30th report, against $38,915.

• Rather famously, the Democrats’ nominee for District Attorney General, Joe Brown, whose colleagues on the party ticket were counting on him for help, both from the luster of his “Judge Joe Brown” TV fame and from his bankroll, has hit snags in both respects and reports only $745 on hand as of June 30th, compared to $269,227 for his opponent, Republican incumbent D.A. Amy Weirich.

In all three of these cases, the financial underdog is seeking a tactical edge elsewhere.

Ford had her first public event last week, a fund raiser/meet-and-greet at the funeral home of brother Edmond Ford on Elvis Presley Boulevard, gathering around her not only numerous members of the still powerful Ford extended family but supporters from elsewhere on the political spectrum, notably GOP County Commissioner Terry Roland, her former opponent in a 2005 special election.

Malone continued with a series of events targeting various components of the Shelby County body politic — meeting, for example, with a group of women’s rights advocates on Saturday at Pyro’s Pizza on Union, and contrasting her strong pro-choice stance with what she described as positions on Luttrell’s part that were ambivalent at best, particularly in his having chosen to disenfranchise Planned Parenthood in 2011 as the county’s partner in employed Title X federal funding for women’s health.

Brown, meanwhile, was working the grass roots, especially in the inner city, with his “Law and Order Tour” with sidekick Bennie Cobb, the Democratic nominee for Sheriff. He presided over an event last week at the Central Train Station downtown and made appearances at forums, like one held at St. Augustine’s Catholic Church on Sunday, where he continued to levy attacks on Weirich, blaming her for negligence in the matter of the much-discussed rape-kit backlog and questioning her use of federal and state funding.

• Early voting for the August 7th elections begins this Friday, July 18th, at the Shelby County Election Commission’s downtown location, and will continue there and, from Monday, July 21st, at 21 satellite voting sites until Saturday, August 2nd. (The locations of the satellite sites will be posted at memphisflyer.com.)

• In the wake of several meetings of the Shelby County Democratic Executive Committee hashing out disputes over the party’s endorsement of judicial candidates but leaving them intact, a group of Democratic lawyers, including former party chairmen David Cocke and Van Turner, is issuing its own ballot — including judges left off the party endorsement list whom they deem deserving.

These include Probate Court Judge Kathleen Gomes, Criminal Court Judge Mark Ward, and General Sessions Judges Bill Anderson, Phyllis Gardner, and John Donald, among others.

• The first fully separate cattle call for Board candidates took place Monday night at the First Baptist Church on Broad under the joint sponsorship of several ad hoc education organizations.

Present and accounted for were Chris Caldwell and Freda Garner-Williams in District 1; Stephanie Love in District 3; David Winston in District 5; Shante K. Avant in District 6; Miska Clay Bibbs in District 7; and Roshun Austin, Mike Kernell, and Damon Curry Morris in District 9.

Absent from the event, which took place during an off-and-on thunderstorm, were Teddy King and Anthony D. Lockhart in District 3; Scott McCormick in District 5; Jimmy L. Warren in District 6; and William E. Orgel in District 8.

The format called for each candidate to make an introductory statement and field one question from the moderator, Daarel Burnette II of the education periodical Chalkbeat Tennessee subbing for Keith Norman, the church pastor, who was absent. Though Burnette’s question was the same for each candidate, having to do with the candidate’s foremost objective as a prospective board member, there was a fair amount of variety in the answers elicited, most of them sensible and well informed, concerning issues ranging from curriculum to parent-teacher relations.

A final round of questions was solicited from the audience. Fielding a question about the desirability of separating “politics” from education, Kernell, a longtime state representative from southeast Memphis, was unique in embracing that inevitable pairing, saying that his experience and entrée with the state legislature could have positive results for his district and Shelby County Schools (SCS).

The nine-member SCS board being elected in this year’s school board elections from the city of Memphis and unincorporated areas of Shelby County replaces the provisional seven-member board, which was elected from the whole of Shelby County.

One of the members of the outgoing seven-member board, David Reaves of Bartlett, was an interested spectator Monday night, chatting amiably before the event with several of his current Board colleagues who were taking part in the forum. Reaves is now a County Commissioner-elect and will be swapping chairs in September.

Monday night’s event took place under the auspices of the Black Alliance for Educational Options. Ad hoc co-sponsors included representatives of Students First, Stand for Children, and the aforesaid Chalkbeat Tennessee.

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News The Fly-By

Fly On The Wall

Verbatim

“Everybody wants to know, ‘Well, why do you drink? Why do you do this?’ You know, I can’t say it’s because of him, but it’s because of him I have done these things.” — City Councilwoman Janis Fullilove in the midst of an apparent breakdown on her WDIA radio show. The “him” in question isn’t Mayor Wharton or Councilman Shea Flinn but her husband Vernon Chalmers, who, according to Fullilove, has threatened to kill her. Fullilove and Chalmers have a turbulent history that reached an apogee in 2012 when both were arrested during a spat that involved the throwing of dishes.

Mighty Big If

One occurrence is a typo; six is a pattern. An email from Shelby County Commissioner Terry Roland circulated among grammar nerds last week.

“Please be advised that it ‘appears’ the Shelby County Ethic’s Ordinance does not comply with State Law,” or so Roland “says.”

The easy joke would be to ask, “Who is this Ethic and why is his Ordinance so important?” But I’m more interested in the appearance of the much talked about but seldom seen “Mighty Big If.” See for yourself.

Rubber Hits Road

“A condom is not an explicit image. It’s just a piece of latex, and children see explicit images all the time on the Internet, in commercials, and in the movies,” Planned Parenthood Memphis CEO Ashley Coffield told WREG after allegedly shocked parents complained about a billboard advertising free condoms. Considering there’s “male sexual medicine” on display at an area convenience store, she’s got a point. And the high ground.  

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Politics Politics Feature

Redistricting Revisited

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

As the filing deadline of February 20th for races on this year’s May 6th county primary ballot creeps ever closer, the effects of the Shelby County Commission’s much fought-over reapportionment, post-2010 census, are worth a cursory look.

District 1: One of the nearly forgotten showdowns of the last few years was that between Millington Republican Terry Roland and the rest of the GOP membership of the commission over the issue of redistricting.

Jackson Baker

Terry Roland

Roland’s preference for a limited, preferably Millington-based district in which to seek reelection was stoutly resisted by other Republicans on the commission, who preferred continuation of a large, multi-member district in the suburbs. It culminated in a wild night at a Collierville Republicans Club meeting in January 2012.

Roland, who was being heckled mercilessly by his party colleagues as he advanced his small-district thesis, began to back up a point with an anecdote concerning his father when he thought he heard his filial sentiments being mocked by fellow commissioner, Chris Thomas. “If you say anything, I’ll knock you out of that chair,” Roland responded, as Thomas protested that he was being misconstrued.

The meeting resumed after that flurry, but then-Commissioner Wyatt Bunker reacted to Roland’s threat by calling the police, who showed up just as the meeting was breaking up. No action was taken, especially since tempers had cooled by that time, but this reporter had captured Roland’s threat on video, and, when posted online, it went viral.

That was then. This is now, when the redistricting matter, which would simmer for several months longer, has been resolved in favor of a 13-member single-member system.

Of Roland’s active GOP antagonists back then, Brent Taylor, who was serving an interim term, and Bunker, who left after election as Lakeland’s mayor, are gone. Thomas, while serving out his commission term, is concerned with new duties as Lakeland city manager. Only Heidi Shafer, running for reelection like Roland, is likely to be around for awhile.

Ironically, Roland, who had disliked the notion of having to face a threat to his reelection from any of several rumored opponents from elsewhere in suburbia, got the smaller district he wanted, but finds that he has a primary opponent, anyhow. This is Dennis Daugherty, a Memphis firefighter who resides in Arlington and picked up enough signs of support on the commission during a recent bid for the vacant commission seat later won by Mark Billingsley to suggest he could become the beneficiary of whatever anti-Roland sentiment there might be in District 1.

Meanwhile, Shafer, a dedicated sparring partner of Roland’s during the reapportionment dispute, when she vehemently opposed single districts, has, so far at least, no Republican primary opponent to worry about in her new District 5, though Tanya Bartee, a Democrat, has pulled a petition.

Another incumbent commissioner who was also seriously disinclined to accept a single-member-district format, is Justin Ford, who during the reapportionment debate, tended to side with the commission’s Republicans in defending the principle of large, sprawling multi-member districts.

Indeed, for a while, his “Ford plan” for achieving that result had the support of the GOP majority. But his motive for keeping to the large-district format differed from theirs, which was, rightly or wrongly, attributed by Democratic Commissioner Steve Mulroy, a single-district proponent, to a desire for “incumbency protection” by discouraging newcomers’ election efforts in a sprawling land mass.

As Ford explained it recently, his case was one of wanting the largest possible scope for his local constituency. He is a Ford, after all, and, as such, has ambitions for higher office down the line. (The Ninth District congressional seat currently held by Steve Cohen is something he has his eye on.)

The larger district, the better for springboard purposes. And sharing it with other commissioners, as the large-district format required, was no problem.

But the single-district format prevailed, and, as previously noted in this space, Ford has a fight on his hands in the new Commission District 9 against three Democrats with public names of their own — former school board member Patrice Robinson, current Memphis-Shelby County Education Association President Keith Williams, and veteran educator and frequent candidate James O. Catchings.  

Several of the new single-member districts, however, not only involve new lines encompassing smaller constituencies, but new faces, at least new to the commission grid.

In District 3, for example, centered on the suburb of Bartlett, no fewer than three seemingly credentialed Republicans have pulled petitions to contest what is one of several open seats.

Kelly Price, the African-American proprietor of the Memphis Entrepreneurship Academy, is one petititon puller; two others, Shelby County Schools board member David Reaves, and Sherry Simmons, a longtime local educator and GOP activist, have already filed — a circumstance making for an interesting one-on-one even if Price ultimately stays out of it — especially as Simmons will have the assitance of her husband, Bartlett alderman Bobby Simmons.

More on these and other developing commission races anon.

• A circumstance that has much distressed local Democrats was the 2010 Shelby County election, in which party candidates — though in theory representing a larger constituency — were completely routed by the Republican slate. Many Democrats continue to suspect hanky-panky in that race, though it is more likely that the chief factor driving the GOP margin of victory was a spirited three-way race for governor in the Republican statewide primary, which coincided with the county general election.

Nothing like that will be the case this time, inasmuch as neither Democrats nor Republicans will apparently have a high-stakes primary going on leading up to the statewide primary/county general election date of August 7th.

Though it may not have a perceptible down-ballot effect on other county primary races (or on August 7th voting), the Democrats will apparently have a decent turnout on the May 6th primary date.

That is due to what is shaping up as a lively Democratic primary for county mayor. Filing on Monday was former county Commissioner Deidre Malone, whose two terms on the commission, prominence in local affairs, and previous race for county mayor in the 2010 primary definitely give her viability.

But also on Monday, county Commissioner Steve Mulroy picked up a petition, presenting Malone with the prospect of one able primary opponent, while two more, current commission Chairman James Harvey and former Shelby County Schools board member Kenneth Whalum Jr., had already drawn petitions.

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Editorial Opinion

Wonderland

CREDIT: Danziger

“I see a way to have no tax increase. I see a way to have no layoffs and no reduction in services. I don’t know how I see that, but I see that.”

That verbatim snatch was the de facto campaign speech on Monday of newly elected Shelby County Commission chairman James Harvey, who made the statement in one of the typically rambling speeches he makes on issues of the day. In this case, the question was whether or not to support the $4.38 tax rate arrived at by county mayor Mark Luttrell to balance out the dramatically enlarged needs of the newly merged city/county school system and the other basic needs of a community where declining property value assessments are about to cause a drastic drop in revenues.

As Luttrell was at pains to remind members of the commission on Monday, he is a conservative Republican who made his pre-mayoral reputation as a budget-pruning sheriff and who had been “compelled” by current realities to propose a tax rate that was just barely enough to keep county government functioning. He made a special effort to reach his fellow Republicans, who, with the exception of Mike Ritz, ended up rejecting his tax-rate proposal. It was the same proposal that the commission had initially approved weeks ago, when it approved Luttrell’s budget, the same budget for which, as of July 1st, the county has been disbursing funds on the basis of the $4.38 tax rate.

The same set of Republicans voted against both budget and tax rate on first and second readings, so it was no surprise to see them vote no again on Monday, though some of their reasoning had turned Alice in Wonderland bizarre.

At one point GOP commissioners Wyatt Bunker and Heidi Shafer made a formal motion to keep the county’s property tax rate at $4.02, the same rate as last year, when property assessments were notably higher. The state of Tennessee calculates something called a “certified tax rate,” which is the bare-bones figure a given local jurisdiction must employ to continue its existing level of revenues. For Shelby County, the figure was $4.32 — a mere 6 cents lower than Luttrell’s request. So what Bunker and Shafer were proposing was, in effect, a slashing of county funding of almost $60 million, requiring something like 800 to 1,000 county jobs.

It wasn’t just the Republicans who did the damage on Monday. It was three Democratic defectors who finished things off: Justin Ford, who offered no explanation for his apostasy; Sidney Chism, who has allowed himself to be cowed by conflict-of-interest accusations from Republican Terry Roland and has recused himself on all tax-rate matters of late; and Harvey. Not even he could imagine how to deliver on the giddy promise quoted in the first paragraph above. But such rhetoric was enough finally to earn him a coalition of tax-rate opponents and to break a stalemated race for the chairmanship.

“A land full of wonder, mystery, and danger! Some say to survive it: You need to be as mad as a hatter. Which luckily I am!” Lewis Carroll’s Mad Hatter said that. Shelby County government would appear to be his kind of place.

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Politics Politics Feature

Wars and Rumors of War

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

“Just like World War Two, I’m going to Nashville to get my allies, and I’m coming back to bomb your Hiroshima!” That was how Millington’s Terry Roland, an opponent of city/county school merger and a backer of municipal school systems in the suburbs, put it last week, when he was out-voted on a school-related issue on the Shelby County Commission.

That was one Republican’s point of view as the GOP-dominated General Assembly headed into a week in which consideration of enabling legislation for municipal schools as well as school vouchers was due to be on the front burner.

Another Republican, meanwhile, was feeling some heat himself, though he professed not to mind it. This was commission chairman Mike Ritz, suddenly the subject of efforts by a group of discontented local Republicans to have him recalled as chairman and declared “persona non grata” by the state Republican executive committee.

Jackson Baker

Commissioner Mike Ritz

Ritz, up to this point a Republican in good standing, told the F lyer, “I certainly won’t volunteer to leave the party,” and basically shrugged off the threat. He thinks the whole development could be “quite frankly, helpful” to him in a plan he’s actively considering to run for county mayor in 2014 as an independent.

About the recall effort, announced at Sunday’s county Republican convention by a group associated with the Tea Party movement, Ritz contended that most of his critics live outside the area he represents, District 1, which takes in much of the city of Memphis from Midtown to its eastern periphery as well as scattered precincts in its adjoining suburbs.       

Ritz says he doubts that 21,000 signatures could be found inside his district for a recall petition. That’s the number — 15 percent of the district’s registered voters — estimated as necessary according to state law by Mick Wright, a vice chair of the county GOP organization supporting the recall effort and a parallel one to have Ritz formally excommunicated from the Republican Party.

“Now, they might have an easy time of it out in the county,” Ritz said, meaning, essentially, District 4, which takes in unincorporated areas of Shelby County, as well as six suburban municipalities, which are seeking to form independent school districts and are resisting long-term involvement in the unified city-county school district, which Ritz supports. “The mayors out there might even circulate the petition themselves,” Ritz said, only half joking.

Rather famously, Republican Ritz and seven county commission Democrats have formed a solid bloc of eight in favor of completing the unification of city and county schools and litigating against efforts by the suburban municipalities to secede from the school consolidation forced by the December 2010 surrender of the Memphis City Schools charter.  

Concerning the likelihood of legislation favorable to suburban school independence, Ritz and the commission majority have consistently expressed the view that whatever is decided by Hardy Mays, the presiding judge over school-merger litigation, will trump any actions by the General Assembly.

Term-limited and unable to run again for his commission seat, Ritz foresees no negative consequences from either the recall effort or an attempt to expel him from the GOP. He doubts things will come to that, but, given his mayoral-race plans, “If they kick me out, it could be the best thing possible for my candidacy.”

Running as an independent candidate for Shelby County mayor against GOP incumbent Mark Luttrell and any of several possible Democrats, he could at the very least be something of a “spoiler,” Ritz believes. And if Luttrell should accept an appointive office from Governor Bill Haslam — something Ritz thinks is possible — “my vote potential looks better and better.”

Whatever happens, Ritz says, he’s perfectly at ease with the political positions he’s taken, attributing them all to a sense of fiscal responsibility: “I think most people see that I’m a moderate, and that’s basically what I am.”

• The city council-appointed Committee on Renaming Parks held its inaugural meeting on Friday in City Hall and made plans for a second meeting on April 1st, where the public can express its views in a town-hall format.

If that meeting should feature as many disparate points of view as the one on Friday, the public meeting could turn into a wild and woolly affair.

Such was not the case on Friday, inasmuch as the committee’s council co-chairs, Bill Boyd and Harold Collins, did their best to ensure that decorum prevailed and the committee members managed to disagree — and occasionally agree — in polite fashion.

But the variance in points of view was wide enough on what happened in the past — the Civil War portion of it, anyhow — that the chances of agreement on how to commemorate that past seemed remote.  

The Rev. Keith Norman, current president of the Memphis NAACP, made it clear early in the meeting that he regarded the idea of paying homage to Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, a “slave trader,” as unacceptable and that the Southern Confederacy, whose reason for being was to further slavery, was a case of treason against the United States and therefore deserving of no honor.

That was one flank of the debate. The other was provided fairly quickly by Becky Muska, a late appointment by council parks committee chairman Boyd, who appointed the naming committee. Muska was chosen, Boyd said, because her ancestors had settled in Memphis early in the river community’s history.

Her explanation for the Confederacy and the Civil War was as distant from that of Norman as could be imagined. The 13 Southern states that seceded had done so not because of slavery, she said, but in defense of “states’ rights,” and their grievance was against high tariffs on Southern agricultural exports imposed by Northern manufacturing interests.

As for Forrest Park, Muska said it was an outgrowth of Progressive Era politics and had the support of Robert Church, a Memphis African-American eminence, she said. For all the volatility generated by disputes over Forrest and the Confederacy and the meaning of that aspect of history, “I don’t feel ashamed, and I don’t feel embarrassed.”

The other members of the committee, also present and taking part, were: Jimmy Ogle, president of the Shelby County Historical Commission; Larry Smith, deputy director of Parks & Neighborhoods; Michael Robinson, chairman of African & African American Studies at LeMoyne-Owen College; Douglas Cupples, former instructor of history at the University of Memphis; and Beverly Bond, associate professor of history at the U of M.

Ogle and Smith attempted to route the discussion away from forming conclusions about history. Ogle noted that the saga of Memphis was abundant with examples of every kind of historical development, telling “the story of America better than any other city,” and that ample potential parkland existed to pay tribute to any and all points of view.

Smith took the point of view that the committee’s purpose was to formulate guidelines for future development of park properties. “I don’t think we’re here to name a park,” he said bluntly (and somewhat surprisingly, given the publicly stated purpose of the committee).

Councilman Collins got in the last word at Friday’s meeting, commenting that “our mission is bigger than our own opinions.” The committee’s task was to do what “benefits the city.” Whatever that is is yet to be decided, of course, and the naming committee’s role is an advisory one. The council will make any final decisions.

• A vote by the Shelby County Democratic caucus in the legislature to replace IT specialist George Monger with businessman/activist Anthony Tate on the Shelby County Election Commission has some local Democrats in an uproar.

The loss of Monger, who had impressed many as an assertive advocate for needed election reforms and as an expert in election-software issues, was lamented by several local bloggers and activists, as well as by Norma Lester, the other Democrat on the five-member SCEC board. There evidently is a move afoot to get Monger named to a pending vacancy on the five-member state election commission. Another Democrat interested in that slot is Van Turner, outgoing chairman of the Shelby County Democratic Party.