Tag: Walter Bailey

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News News Feature

The Roots of Protest

Poverty is a form of violence.

It holds millions in bondage, locked into neighborhoods stripped of public or private investment, trapped in low-wage jobs. Often, this violence is state-sponsored via policies that benefit the wealthy at the expense of the poor, who are often brown and black. So it is a short walk from national protests against police brutality to calls for economic justice.

Rookie activist Tami Sawyer wants to help people in Memphis — the poorest large metro area in the nation — make that journey. In the past two weeks, the 32-year-old St. Mary’s alumna organized two die-ins — one outside the National Civil Rights Museum and another on Beale Street. These and dozens of similar protests nationwide were sparked by deaths of two unarmed black men — Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in Staten Island. In both cases, a grand jury failed to indict the white officers who killed them.

But the fury on display at protests and on social media is not directed solely at a warped criminal justice system. It is the entire game that is rigged.

“We can scream, we can yell, we can cry on TV,” Sawyer said, “but it will fall on deaf ears. We don’t have economic power.”

For proof, look at last week’s report from the Pew Research Center. Although the economy is recovering, the black-white wealth gap is now at its highest since 1989. In 2013, the median household wealth of white families ($141,900) was 13 times greater than that of black families ($11,000).

African Americans make up 14 percent of the country’s population, but black-owned businesses bring in just 0.5 percent of the nation’s receipts.

It is difficult to amass wealth when just two generations ago, black people were shut out of some trades, red-lined out of more desirable neighborhoods by racist lending policies, and banned from state-run colleges funded by their tax dollars.

With little inter-generational wealth, black people are more likely to be unemployed and, regardless of household income, live in neighborhoods where property values are falling. These poor neighborhoods are more likely to be hyper-policed, which puts black people at greater risk of encounters that could be defused by smart policing or that could end in death.

That’s an oversimplified version of how the criminal justice system functions in a larger machine that devalues black lives. (For the complete account, read Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow.) But in this context, it makes sense that the Ferguson grand jury decision, announced the Monday before Thanksgiving, spawned the #BlackOutBlackFriday shopping boycott. (Black Friday sales were down 11 percent, but pundits were loathe to credit hashtag activism.)

Sawyer supported the boycott but wondered about the long game. “You’re going to boycott on Friday, but when Cyber Monday comes up, you’re going to go spend money with Best Buy,” she griped.

Her Instagram page became a photo gallery to encourage people to shop with black-owned businesses on #buyblackfriday and beyond. “At the end of day, we don’t make it anywhere, if our own people don’t support it,” said Sawyer, who does employee development for government agencies.

Her vision of economic empowerment grew last week after a chance encounter with D’Army Bailey, a retired judge, attorney, and activist. At a black-owned coffee shop/office space in Uptown, Sawyer talked strategy with a man she’d met through the die-ins.

Bailey sat at a nearby table, eavesdropping. Then he interrupted. “He said, ‘Besides lying in the street, what else do you have planned?'” Sawyer recalled.

He was brusque, but she listened. “He said go to the county commission meeting and see what they’re debating today.”

She did. On the agenda was the economic impact plan for Graceland, which calls for $125 million in public investments to build a private hotel on the property and create 282 jobs.

“The jobs aren’t spelled out,” Sawyer said. “Are they going to be low-wage? Are they going to be middle-income?”

Those questions weren’t asked at the meeting. The lone vote against the plan came from Bailey’s brother, Walter.

“Being aware of how the money in this city is spent is important,” she said. “Our freedom as a culture ties into our economic freedom.”

Her next protest is planned for Christmas Eve, outside Graceland.

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Politics Politics Feature

A Truce Prevails on the Shelby County Commission

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

With the apparent reaching of a compromise on Monday between feuding factions of the Shelby County Commission, a lawsuit may have been resolved and a modus vivendi of sorts achieved, but the ideologically polarized body still has issues.

It took a while, both in the long run (two and a half months since the standoff began, in the immediate wake of the August 7th election) and in the short term (two hours of mind-bending intricacy at Monday’s climactic public meeting), but the commission’s simmering power struggle finally ended — or seemed to — with a win-win solution.

Both of the warring party-line-plus-one factions were claiming victory, in any case — the one composed of six Democrats and one Republican (Steve Basar), and the one containing five Republicans and one Democrat (Justin Ford).

The solution involved a willingness by the D-Plus-Ones to give up their ongoing Chancery Court lawsuit against Chairman Ford (for his seemingly high-handed control of what could be placed on the commission agenda) in return for the R-Plus-Ones’ agreement to drop their appeal of an adverse decision by Chancellor Jim Kyle, coupled with Ford’s acceptance of majority rule in determining agenda items.

Ford and his Republican allies claimed victory because they had fended off what Republicans Heidi Shafer and Terry Roland saw as an effort by the D-Plus-Ones to “overthrow” Ford’s chairmanship. The Democratic coalition — whose ad hoc leaders were newbie Van Turner and the veteran Walter Bailey — claimed victory because they had forced Ford to yield on his arbitrary control of the agenda.

Virtually lost sight of in the two-sided celebration (which followed an exhausting and repetitious squabble settled evidently in an off-to-the-side chat by competing lawyers Turner and Ron Krelstein) was the origin of the dispute, in the chairmanship election held on September 8th by a freshly elected commission with six new members.

Basar, who had been vice chair in 2013-14, had expected to be elected chairman and was shocked when the majority of Republicans opted instead for the candidacy of Roland, then switched to Democrat Ford when the Millington Republican seemed obviously about to fall short.

Ford was ultimately elected on the basis of his own vote and that of the commission’s six Republicans (including the stunned Basar, who would shortly have a change of mind). Bailey, the commission’s senior Democrat, was meanwhile outraged by his second-place finish to Ford, whose long-term chumminess with Republicans and openness to their agenda were no secret.

At the commission’s next meeting, on September 22nd, Bailey and five other Democrats, along with Basar, voted together to block the committee appointments made by Ford. Weeks later, Ford would get his way on the committee matter, but in the meantime, the battle had shifted to the matter of an agenda item that Basar kept proposing and Ford kept rejecting.

That agenda item, which proposed a rules change allowing agenda items to be added on the basis of simple majority votes and not by a two-thirds super-majority, became the basis of a Democratic coalition lawsuit against Ford’s alleged violations of commission rules via his persistent rejections.

Two weeks ago Chancellor Kyle declined to rule outright on the suit, finding instead that the commission had no rules because it had adopted none for the new body and directing commissioners to adopt new rules or to readopt the body’s former rules.

Hence a motion for an amended rules package presented as an add-on by Basar on Monday, igniting another round of the ongoing factional dispute — partly tedious, partly fascinating — and going over all of the same old issues dividing the body.

The amended rules package contained new clauses calling for the majority-rule principle and essentially removing the chairman from any control over agenda items. Deleted from the package, on a finding by County Attorney Marcy Ingram that it conflicted with the county charter, was a clause declaring that the chairman served “at the will and pleasure of the commission.”

When the deal finally came sometime after 6 p.m. on Monday, the two sides had agreed (on a motion by Ford!) to defer the rules matter to the next meeting of the general government committee, to drop their respective legal actions, and to do the trade-off indicated above: Ford can feel secure in his chairmanship, though he has had to sacrifice the power over the agenda that he had previously claimed and employed.

Either both sides won or both sides lost. The question now becomes: Do the two party-line-plus-one coalitions continue to cohere, or do they break apart, a major part of their raison-d’être having dissolved.

• An indicator of whether the coalitions might hold was implicit in another vote taken by the commission on Monday. Two votes, actually, on related ordinances proposed by Roland — to strike language in existing ordinances requiring that contractors with the county observe living wage and prevailing wage standards, respectively.

Roland’s premise is that the existing ordinances are inconsistent with legislation passed by the Republican dominated General Assembly establishing state standards in such matters and prohibiting local requirements that might clash with them. The issue, both in Shelby County and in Nashville, has been a clear divider between Democrats and Republicans.

Since this was the second reading for both Roland ordinances, and since the commission was girding for the later clash on the rules matter, it was tacitly agreed that there would be no extended debate and that any knock-down, drag-out clash between factions would be postponed until the crucial third reading of the ordinances, at the commission’s next full public session.

Both the Roland ordinances got a tentative okay by the margin of 7-6, with Basar voting along with other Republicans and Democrat Ford voting with them as well.

On that evidence of Ford’s continued solidarity with his Republican supporters, coupled with Basar’s reversion to ideological form on a power-neutral issue, it would seem that the GOP may have come out ahead in the power struggle. It remains to be seen how long that state of affairs exists.

• One other matter of both short- and long-term significance was taken by the commission on Monday. This concerned a resolution from GOP member David Reaves putting the commission on record as wanting to see the matter of a court-ordered payment to Shelby County Schools (SCS) resolved as a precondition for any vote to approve a city-sponsored Fairgrounds Tourist Development Zone (TDZ) proposal by city housing and community development director Robert Lipscomb.

The TDZ proposal, outlined by Lipscomb to the commission during its committee sessions last week, had been favorably received in general. The commission’s approval of the proposal is not required but would clearly assist the TDZ’s chances in being okayed by the Tennessee Building Commission, where the submitted proposal has lingered for at least a year.

The matter of the city’s debt to SCS — inherited from a 2008 default of $57 million owed to the former Memphis City Schools system — has periodically accounted for controversy between the city of Memphis and Shelby County governments, inasmuch as the county is now responsible for all public-school funding including the delinquent maintenance-of-effort amount incurred by the city.

Reaves’ resolution passed 8-4, with four Democrats — Bailey, Turner, Reginald Milton, and Eddie Jones — dissenting and another Democrat, Willie Brooks, abstaining.

• A former Memphis media personality had a role in a controversy that flared up last week regarding the possibility that Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges may have flashed a gang sign while posing for a news photo with a volunteer in a get-out-the-vote campaign during the week before the November 4th election.

The picture shows Hodges and the volunteer, who has something of a criminal record, pointing at each other, as a sign of solidarity on the GOTV effort. An official of the Minneapolis police union, noting that both Hodges and the volunteer had raised thumbs while pointing, charged that they had thereby exchanged a known gang greeting.

The charge has been the source of much derision in the national media, a good deal of which was directed at KSTP-TV, an ABC affiliate that first aired it. Bill Lunn, a former longtime anchor with Memphis’ Channel 24, was a co-anchor of the KSTP broadcast.

In an exchange of texts, Lunn told the Flyer that Hodges may have “unknowingly” flashed the gang sign while reciprocating the volunteer’s gesture but, without elaborating further, said the station had done a good deal of “vetting” before airing the original segment.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

County Commission, Chairman Ford Cut a Deal on Power-Sharing (Finally)

CREDIT: JB

JB

Attorney Krelstein and Justin Ford confer just prior to chairman Ford’s agreeing to deal with plaintiffs

It took a while, both in the long run (two and a half months since the standoff began, in the immediate wake of the August 7 election) and in the short term (two hours of mind-bending intricacy at Monday’s climactic public meeting), but the Shelby County Commission’s power struggle finally ended — or seemed to — with a win-win solution.

Both of the warring party-line-plus-one factions were claiming victory, in any case — the one composed of six Democrats and one Republican (Steve Basar), and the one containing five Republicans and one Democrat (Justin Ford).

The solution involved a willingness by the D-Plus-Ones to give up their ongoing Chancery Court lawsuit against chairman Ford (for his seemingly high-handed control of what could be placed on the Commission agenda) in return for the R-Plus-Ones’ agreement to drop their appeal of an adverse decision by Chancellor Jim Kyle, coupled with Ford’s acceptance of majority rule in determining agenda items.

Ford and his Republican allies claimed victory because they had fended off what Republicans Heidi Shafer and Terry Roland saw as an effort by the D-Plus-Ones to “overthrow” Ford’s chairmanship. The Democratic coalition — whose ad hoc leaders were newbie Van Turner and the veteran Walter Bailey — claimed victory because they had forced Ford to yield on his arbitrary control of the agenda.

Virtually lost sight of in the two-sided celebration (which followed an exhausting and repetitious squabble settled evidently in an off-to-the-side chat by competing lawyers Turner and Ron Krelstein) was the origin of the dispute, in the chairmanship election held on September 8 by a freshly elected Commission with six new members.

The GOP’s Basar, who had been vice-chair in 2013-14, had expected to be elected chairman and was shocked when the majority of Republicans opted instead for the candidacy of Roland, switching to Democrat Ford when the Millington Republican seemed obviously about to fall short.

Ford was ultimately elected on the basis of his own vote and that of the Commission’s six Republicans (including the stunned Basar, who would shortly have a change of mind). Bailey, the Commission’s senior Democrat, was meanwhile outraged by his second-place finish to Ford, whose long-term chumminess with Republicans and openness to their agenda were no secret.

At the Commission’s next meeting, on September 22, Bailey and five other Democrats, along with Basar, voted together to block the committee appointments made by Ford. Eventually, weeks later, Ford would get his way on the committee matter, but in the meantime the battle had shifted to the matter of an agenda item which Basar kept proposing and Ford kept rejecting.

That agenda item, which proposed a rules change allowing agenda items to be added on the basis of simple majority votes and not by a 2/3 super-majority, became the basis of a Democratic coalition lawsuit against Ford’s alleged violations of Commission rules via his persistent rejections.

Two weeks ago Chancellor Kyle declined to rule outright on the suit, finding instead that the Commission had no rules because it had adopted none for the new body and directing Commissioners to adopt new rules or to re-adopt the body’s former rules.

Hence a motion for an amended rules package presented as an add-on by Basar on Monday, igniting another round of the ongoing factional dispute — partly tedious, partly fascinating — and going over all of the same old issues dividing the body.

As indicated in a prior post on this site, the amended rules package contained new clauses calling for the majority-rule principle and essentially removing the chairman from any control over agenda items. Deleted from the package, on a finding by County Attorney Marcy Ingram that it conflicted with the county charter, was a clause declaring that the chairman served “at the will and pleasure of the Commission.”

[pdf-1]

When the deal finally came sometime after 6:00 p.m. on Monday, the two sides had agreed (on a motion by Ford!) to refer the rules matter to the next meeting of the general government committee, resolved to drop their respective legal actions, and to do the trade-off indicated in Paragraph Three above: Ford can feel secure in his chairmanship, though he has had to sacrifice the power over the agenda which he had previously claimed and employed.

Either both sides won, or both sides lost. The question now becomes: Do the two party-line-plus-one coalitions continue to cohere, or do they break apart, a major part of their raison-d’etre having dissolved?

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said (October 15, 2014) …

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About Bruce VanWyngarden’s Letter from the Editor on Amendment 1 …

When I see the “Yes on 1” signs in yards all over town, I just want to go up to those people and say “Do you really know what that means?”

It means we voluntarily give up our rights to privacy. And we invite our elected state representatives and senators, whoever they may be, now and in the future, to make whatever kind of laws they want to make about a woman and her family’s personal business. I am especially bothered by churches that are promoting this idea that we should defer to politicians about our private medical decisions.

It is gullible to condone government overreach on a promise from elected officials who may not even be in office two years from now. If the “Yes” people want to say their religious dogma compels them to believe this or that about abortion, that’s fine. We all have a right to believe what we want to believe. But, when those same people want laws passed that force me to abide by their beliefs, that’s a violation of my rights under the Constitution.

It really does not matter which political party we align with or whether we are black or white, rich or poor. Women of all stripes and persuasions have problem pregnancies and are vulnerable to incest and rape. What a travesty it would be to pass an amendment to the constitution that affords no protection to us in those cases. Vote “No” on Amendment 1.

Tonya Wall

My husband is an Episcopal minister. We are both Christians and adamantly opposed to Amendment 1. Although some people view this amendment as a religious litmus test, we must really look at the bigger picture. Amendment 1, if passed, would threaten our cherished system of government. The proponents of the amendment in the legislative branch are basically saying to the judicial branch of our government, “Since you struck down the laws we passed in 2000, we found a way to get around it. We will just change the very document we’ve sworn to uphold.” The sad thing is that they have hooked people of faith onto the idea that they can legislate morality and undermine our system of checks and balances.

The passage of Amendment 1 would set a dangerous precedent and could become a slippery slope for many issues, not just abortion. The Constitution ought to be about protecting people’s rights, not taking them away. If you read the proposed amendment, you can see how vaguely it was written: “Nothing in this Constitution secures or protects a right to abortion … not even in circumstances of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest or when necessary to save the life of the mother.”

While none of us likes abortion, if we or someone we loved was in one of these extenuating circumstances, we would want these personal and very private medical decisions to be made in the doctor’s office and not in Nashville. Please respect the dignity and worth of each woman in our society by voting “No” on Amendment 1. And remember to cast a vote for the governor of your choice.

Janice Richie

Greg Cravens

About Jackson Baker’s post, “Bailey Hits ‘Deal … Political Machinations'” …

I hear there’s a special costume for Halloween this year, with a fuzzy grey-haired cowboy in a black mask and big 10-gallon hat, sitting astride a white stallion. They call him The Lone Dissenter.

OakTree

About Wendi C. Thomas’ column, “Husband Wanted. Unemployed Need Not Apply” …

I have an idea: How about the men not make the choices that will put them in prison and give them a record?

Breckrider

There are a lot of issues Wendi is pointing out here, and I can see why her critics like to give simple rebuttals like “don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.” They like these simple talking points, because it hurts to actually wrap their heads around the complexity of the issues.

Charlie Eppes

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Ford’s Appointments Approved, as the Rebellion Against Him Finally Evaporates

CREDIT: JB

JB

Commission chairman Justin Ford

Realistically, the battle for leadership on the Shelby County Commission is over for the time being — or at least in remission. By a vote on Monday of 11 for, 1 opposed, and 1 abstaining, the Commission formally sustained Chairman Justin Ford’s choices for committee chairs on the Commission and thereby ended any immediate prospect of a challenge to his leadership.

Monday’s vote was a reprise of a preliminary vote in Ford’s favor at last Wednesday’s committee meetings.

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

The lack of drama on Monday reflected the currently anti-climactic state of a controversy that had seen Ford’s appointments blocked and referred back to committee by a 7-6 vote — six Democrats and Republican Steve Basar — on a motion made by the disgruntled Bailey at the regular Commission meeting of September 22.
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And the relatively matter-of-fact denouement on Monday occurred despite some serious prodding from others, on both sides of the issue, who evidently thought the contest was still on.

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

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

Bailey had slammed what he called “political machinations” involved in both Ford’s election and his subsequent naming of committee chairs.

Lester’s weekend letter seconded Bailey’s accusations of deal-making and “getting in bed with Republicans” and made a charge of “blatant betrayal, which is what happened with young Ford and the basis for the contempt amongst fellow Democrats.”

A visibly subdued Bailey restricted his objections on Monday to asking that the two items involving appointments issue be pulled off the Commission’s consent agenda, which meant that they were potentially subject to debate.

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

That was enough, however, to galvanize a group of Tea Party audience members, who had come prepared, just in case, and, one by one, came to the dock to make statements in favor of Ford’s appointments.

Donna Bohannon made the case for Shafer’s budget-committee chairmanship and said she wanted “to see that glass ceiling lowered.” Yvonne Burton said she had never seen a chairman’s appointees resisted before and wondered, “Why are we taking so much time with this?” Brenda Taylor agreed expressing impatience with “all this to-do.” .She urged, “Let’s move on.”

Frequent Commission attendee Charles Nelson concurred. “We’re too old for this kindergarten,” he said.

Prodded to respond to the chorus, Bailey said merely, “I don’t choose to elaborate.”

The only audience response at variance with all this concord had come from Linda Nettles Harris, who made what amounted to a stand-alone accusation that GOP Commissioner Terry Roland, who had not figured in the dialogue on Monday, was a “bully” and had made improper use of the term “racist” to describe his political opponents. Roland chose not to reply.

Then came the vote, and that was that. Commissioner Mark Billingsley, a Germantown Republican, would offer kudos for the inaugural “coffee and conversation” event sponsored by Ford last Friday, which he termed the kind of “positive” news often overlooked by the media. 

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Lester, Democratic Election Commission Member, Slams Justin Ford “Betrayal”

Norma Lester

The battle over the Shelby County Commission may have come to an end with last Wednesday’s preliminary vote to accept the committee appointments of chairman Justin Ford, but with that vote, by the Commission’s general government committee, due to be ratified by the full Commission on Monday,the fallout continues in other parts of the local political universe.

Even as Republicans hashed out their internal disagreements on the appointments issue at a GOP steering committee meeting week before last, Democrats showed signs of beginning their own internal debate on the issue.

Norma Lester, a vocal Democratic representative on the Shelby County Election Commission, has issued an “open letter” to her party-mates, expressing her view that Ford, who was elected chairman on the strength of his own vote, plus those of six Republicans, had subsequently fulfilled GOP wishes in the manner of the committee appointments.

Essentially, Lester’s public missive puts her in solidarity with Democratic Commissioner Walter Bailey, who has charged that Ford’s committee assignments were made as part of a “deal” with the Commission’s Republican contingent.
The text of Lester’s letter:

My fellow Democrats, in reflecting upon recent activities, I am of the opinion it is time to WAKE UP!!

Personally, I applaud Republican Leadership in holding firm to keeping members in line, for that is as it should be. I am also a strong proponent of bipartisan decisions, HOWEVER, when Republicans court Democrats to get in bed with them but see it as taboo to get in bed with Democrats that should send a resounding wake up call!!! Carefully read the following recent statements by Republican Commissioner Steve Basar who was “bullied” for doing the exact same thing Republicans had gotten Democrat Commissioner Justin Ford to do. What a slap in the face DEMOCRATS!!!!

“Commissioner Steve Basar spoke to the “bullying” tactics of his fellow Republicans after he voted with Bailey and five other Democrats during the last commission meeting, sending the appointments back to committee, an unprecedented tactic. Basar argued that when six Republicans and one Democrat vote together, “that’s a bipartisan victory” but when a Republican sides with Democrats, the Republican should be thrown out”. (Memphis Flyer, October 8, 2014)

Getting in bed with Republicans is NOT new and not a bad thing “IF” they are willing to do likewise. I am reminded of friends who not long ago did the same thing. There is however a difference in cutting a deal and blatant betrayal, which is what happened with young Ford and the basis for the contempt amongst fellow Democrats. His behavior far exceeds that of Democratic State Senator Rosalind Kurita several years ago which resulted in her being out cast! I was in the audience the day the Ford votes were taken and it honestly looked as if the six Democrat Commissioners were in need of resuscitation! It was overwhelming being blind-sided by one someone reneging on a “gentlemen’s agreement.” Deal cutting when necessary should be for the overall benefit of those you serve NOT for personal gain. That seems to be forgotten by far too many elected officials and unfortunately without consequences. Where pray tell is the trust factor?

I refuse to accept being treated less than equal and for those in leadership positions that choose to do otherwise, the Democratic Party needs to hold them accountable and Democrats as a whole should not forget! Business as usual should no longer be acceptable. We should never settle for anything less than fair and equal treatment! To do otherwise desecrates the blood and tears of those that paved the way for us. We cannot forget!!

Democratically Yours,

Norma Lester

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Shelby County Commission’s Last Go-Round

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jackson Baker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Commission Needs to Address Issues on Equal Opportunity Mandates

A heated discussion at the Shelby County Commission’s Monday meeting this week indicated that, despite all the strides that have been made in race relations locally and in the provisions of equal rights and opportunities, there

remain obstacles — some of them based on adherence to formulas that were previously advanced as solutions to the problems of racial discord.

A case in point was a controversy in the Commission meeting about something that, once upon a time, would have been regarded as a harmless and routine matter. This was the matter of building a new roof over a facility at the county’s Mullins Station complex in East Memphis. It was the second time around for this item on the Commission agenda. When it surfaced at a committee meeting some weeks ago, it drew hostile questioning from two commissioners — Henri Brooks and Walter Bailey — who make it their business to look out for the interests of Shelby County’s African-American population.

Brooks had begun the questioning that time around, asking, as is her wont in dealing with any kind of employment situation involving public funds, how many “minority” members were employed by the company, which had gained the construction contract. She was told that 29 “minority” workers would be employed, a clear majority of the work force. So far, so good, and in compliance with Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidelines mandated for county hiring. But Brooks probed further: How many of those were blacks? None, she was told. They were all Hispanic. In the hurly-burly of discussion that followed, it was explained by Public Works administrators that Hispanics comprised the brunt of the work force for all three firms that bid for the project.

That is surely no surprise to anyone who has seen a homebuilding project in Shelby County in recent years, and especially not to anyone who remembers the boom years in new home construction leading up to the bursting of the housing bubble by the Great Crash of 2008/9. Whether directly imported or merely exploited once they got here, Mexican migrant workers were the veritable core of the home construction industry. It may or may not be true, as County Commission Chairman James Harvey maintained in the course of that first Commission debate on the matter, that both blacks and whites were less inclined to do hard labor “under the sun.” It is certainly true that homebuilders relied heavily on migrant workers for their construction projects.

They still do, though the drastic decline in home construction since the Crash, leaving a large surplus of unemployed workers, is certifiably one of the exacerbating factors in the debate over illegal immigration.

When the issue came up again on Monday, Brooks and Bailey continued to press their case that the word “minority” was being applied in so literal a context by employers — and equal-opportunity compliance monitors, as well — that blacks, legally still defined as a minority but in fact a majority of the county’s population now, are being excluded from employment opportunities.

After a lot of fuss and bother on Monday, the roofing contract got let, but the two outspoken African-American commissioners have a serious issue on their hands. There may in fact be a need to fix some leaks in the protective structure of equal-opportunity mandates.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Pointing the Finger

CREDIT: Danziger

Public confidence in local government has experienced several setbacks of late. The lengthy meeting conducted on Monday by the Shelby County Commission constituted yet another one.

It can be argued that the commission responded correctly by rejecting a series of ordinances seeking pay raises for a variety of county officials and for members of the recently established unified Shelby County Schools board. The raises proposed for the school board members were substantial — from $4,200 per annum to $25,000. Those for the Shelby County sheriff and other county officials were more in the category of cost-of-living increases.

It can also be argued that the commission’s action in denying these raises was ill-advised. However one sees the case, the larger point was that, during the almost two hours of debate consumed in considering the pay increases, an impression was left that elected public officials — without whose existence democratic government could not exist — were scarcely to be trusted, much less rewarded. Commissioner Walter Bailey called the debate “disrespectful” toward the people who serve in government, and he had a point.

Another questionable moment occurred when the commission indulged in prolonged discussion regarding the matter of whether the commission’s own term-limit strictures applied to volunteer members of advisory boards, of which Shelby County has several.

One appointee to the Public Building Authority, state representative Johnnie Turner, was kept waiting in the dock for what seemed — both to her and, finally, to most members of the commission — an interminable time while the term-limits issue was bruited about. Ultimately, she passed muster, but she had harsh words for both her initial handling by the commission and for the county administration’s indifferent advance vetting of the term-limits point.

Another appointee to the building authority, 12-year veteran Kevin Kane, the longtime head of the Convention & Visitors Bureau, was not so fortunate. Despite the generally high regard in which he is held, Kane fell one vote short, an outcome due both to the term-limits debate and to the fact that he is part owner of a Beale Street business, potentially subject to a conflict of interest, it was argued.

All of that was but a warm-up to the last issue of the day, a 9-0 commission vote of no confidence in Shelby County election administrator Rich Holden. The administrator has been under fire for some time on account of the series of electronic glitches, botched election outcomes, and personnel shortcomings that have bedeviled the commission and the local election process for the past several years. It can be argued, as the administrator’s defenders do, that Holden is being scapegoated, and there was certainly some obvious personal and political special pleading directed against him from the audience.

However, election commissioner Norma Lester, a Democrat, and retiring county commissioner Wyatt Bunker, the Republican who brought the “no confidence” motion, both spoke to the main point: that of accountability.

“It was a question of ‘principle over politics,'” Lester said, and Bunker made a point of noting his loyalty to “the public over the party.”

All in all, the integrity of public service took a drubbing on Monday, and hopefully there was a lesson there that took — for the accusers as well as the accused.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

A Worldview of Sorts

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

The suburban conservatives on the Shelby County Commission do not quite have what the German academics of the 19th century called a “Weltanschauung” (loosely translated: a “worldview”), but they are on the way to developing one.

Midway through a lengthy debate Monday on the twin issues of a budget for fiscal 2013-14 and a county tax rate for that period, Commissioner Heidi Shafer, a District 1 Republican who represents areas of both Memphis and Shelby County but who aligns most of her views with those of her GOP colleagues from the outer-county District 4, made a startling proposal.

Rather than raising the tax rate from $4.02 to $4.38 ($4.42 for the suburbs — the difference representing a rural-school-bond levy in 2003 to pay for a new Arlington High School) and adding money to the budget to pay for public-school and other expenses, as called for by county mayor Mark Luttrell, Shafer moved that the commission instead pare Luttrell’s proposed budget by a full 15 percent.

Such a plan, objected county CAO Harvey Kennedy, Luttrell’s chief aide, would require the elimination of “about 870 funded and filled positions,” including many in “public safety and criminal justice,” and would “decimate county government.”

Said Kennedy: “I don’t think you’d recognize what was left.”

Unfazed, Shafer continued. What she had not heard, she said, was any consideration given to the idea of “spending less,” which would be a routine response for a private business in a financially straitened circumstance. “Breaking down some of the bureaucracy?” she said. “Absolutely! We keep feeding the beast.”

District 4 commissioner Wyatt Bunker, who seconded Shafer’s motion, then weighed in with a protestation that indeed such cuts could be made without compromising the necessities of government. Every year, he said, the proponents of a larger budget would conjure up a situation of “bare bones” requiring “desperate measures” — merely scare tactics, according to Bunker.

This was too much for District 2 commissioner Walter Bailey, the venerable African-American Democrat who has campaigned long and hard in the course of his several terms for the uses of government in easing the burden for society’s lesser favored.

Everything he had just heard was “empty rhetoric, conservative grandstanding,” he said. And he demanded: “What school of economy do these folks come from?”

Though somewhat taken aback, Shafer quickly supplied an answer. “Von Hegel,” she said.

Von Hegel? Puzzled, a reporter queried her by text. Did she mean Hegel, the 19th-century German historian?

Ultimately, Shafer corrected herself. She had meant to say “Hayek,” she said.

This would be Friedrich Hayek, sometimes “von Hayek,” an Austrian, later British, philosopher, whose book The Road to Serfdom had been a holy book of small-government conservatives in the mid-20th century, right up there with Barry Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative.

Shafer’s proposal for a 15 percent cut was rejected, as was a fallback proposal for a scaled-back version of the Luttrell budget that would substitute for his 36-cent tax increase a 6-cent increase that would have cut the mayor’s budget by some $9.6 million.

Shafer had one more card up her sleeve, however: Her proposal to cut a mere $15,000 from the budget, this being the amount spent on providing lunches for commission members, staffers, and county bailiffs on meeting days.

At the suggestion of District 5 commissioner Steve Mulroy, a Democrat, the amount was halved to $7,500, which would eliminate the lunches made available preceding and during the full commission’s biweekly Monday public meetings but leave untouched those prepared for the Wednesday committee sessions, which, as Mulroy noted, tended to stretch from early morning until mid- or late afternoon.

But the vote to cut even that amount failed to win a majority, with a 6-6 result — giving Shafer and her allies on the commission and in the auditorium a talking point for the rest of the meeting. As another District 4 commissioner, Terry Roland, would put it, those who voted for what he saw as a spendthrift budget injurious to taxpayers would “take food out of the public’s mouth, [but] not out of your own mouth.”

Finally, the Luttrell budget and tax-rate proposals were approved — minus only $300,000 which had been allocated for federal monitors of reforms mandated for Juvenile Court by the U.S. Department of Justice. Commissioner Henri Brooks, the inner-city Democrat who had called for the DOJ to investigate the court in the first place, moved to eliminate the monitors, essentially on grounds that the feds had appointed them without local input.

She had no trouble making that stick with a majority on a body which had been virtually unanimous in resenting being shut out of the negotiations on the ultimate agreement between the court and the DOJ.

Left intact, despite some recent proposals to prune them, were some $630,000 in grants to various nonprofit agencies, notably the Community Alliance for the Homeless, which had several advocates and commissioners speaking for it on Monday. Mulroy noted that the grants were instances of outsourcing, a practice generally favored by conservatives, and argued that the incidence of homelessness had been significantly diminished through efforts of the alliance.

Though on the losing side, Bunker had the last word.. With the grave air of a scientist announcing his findings — in this case regarding what he called “the vicious cycle of destruction” — Bunker said, “We have such a large population of poor people that they’ve elected people that have grown up through poverty situations and bureaucratic situations and are making decisions who have either benefited and/or never learned to manage money on their own and are now in charge of a budget of over a billion dollars.”

These are people, said the commissioner, who “have never been able to manage their personal business.”

Bunker’s view, frequently enunciated, is that social services need to be performed for those in need of help but should be done by faith-based organizations or volunteer charities or (perhaps) nonprofits.

Another version of the same philosophy was provided early in the debate Monday by Roland, who asserted that he’d be happy to pay for social-help programs himself, if he could, proclaiming, “I love people, but at the end of the day I have to do what’s best for the taxpayers.”

As for arguments by Bailey, Mulroy, and James Harvey on the need for government to see to the needs of all citizens, Roland scoffed, “Liberal, left-wing rhetoric, that’s all that is!”

Monday’s vote was the first of three required readings. The third and final will occur on July 8th.

• An article in Ohio’s Cleveland Plain Dealer this week cites new challenges to the bona fides of Memphis businessman/entrepreneur Brad Martin as leader of an investigation into alleged fraudulent dealing by the Pilot Corporation of Tennessee.

Martin is scheduled to become interim president of the University of Memphis on July 1st. Currently chairman of the RBM Venture Company, he is the former CEO of the Saks Corporation and is a board member of Pilot Flying J, an arm of Pilot Corporation. As such, he was recently named by Pilot CEO Jimmy Haslam to head an internal investigation into charges that Pilot kept millions of dollars in fuel rebates owed to trucking companies that were clients of the corporation. Haslam is the brother of Tennessee governor Bill Haslam.

The internal investigation parallels one initiated by the federal Securities and Exchange Commission.

In an article published on Monday, the Plain Dealer quotes several individuals acquainted with an earlier fraud investigation by the SEC — this one of Saks at a time when Martin was that corporation’s head.

From the Plain Dealer article: “‘At the very least there was a cloud over his tenure at Saks,’ said Christopher Ideker, a forensic accountant who has participated in many audit committee investigations for companies. ‘To me, you have a guy calling the shots on an investigation about stealing from customers who was investigated for stealing from vendors. That seems pretty straightforward.'”

Ultimately, Saks admitted no wrongdoing but settled claims resulting from the allegations for $60 million. Martin, who left his position at Saks within months of the settlement, was never charged. As the Plain Dealer noted, “His brother Brian Martin, Saks’ general counsel, as well as two other executives, were fired over the scandal, though also never charged.”

Martin was traveling abroad and could not be reached for comment at press time.