Tag: Worth Morgan

Categories
News News Blog

City Council Considers Plastic Bag Tax

A seven-cent plastic bag tax could soon be implemented in Memphis retail stores.

A Memphis City Council committee began the discussion Tuesday of a city ordinance that would put the tax in place, and will vote on the first of three readings Tuesday evening at its full meeting.

Chairman Berlin Boyd, who introduced the ordinance, said the purpose of tax is not purely to create revenue, but “is all about sustainability, “being good environmental stewards,” and protecting the city’s waterways. Single-use plastic bags are never truly biodegrade and often end up in the water supply, Boyd said.

“We need to make sure future generations have an earth that is sustainable because we were mindful stewards,” Boyd said. “No matter where we drive throughout the city, you see plastic bags flying in trees, under cars, waterways, and drains.”

Of the seven cents that stores would charge for non-recyclable plastic bags, two cents would go to the store, and the remaining five cents would go to the city. The amount of extra revenue to the city would “largely depend on consumer behavior” and whether or not shoppers are willing to pay the tax or opt to use an alternative bag option, Boyd said.

Other cities including Chicago, Washington D.C., and Seattle have implemented the tax, and have generated revenue ranging from $5 million in one year to $10 million over 10 years.

Although Boyd said the goal of the tax is not solely to produce revenue, with additional funds the city could offer environmental awareness campaigns, improve riverfront conservation, and help mitigate blight around waterways, which Boyd said are usually full of plastic bags and bottles. Currently, each year, the city has to spend between $3 and $4 million dollars removing plastic bags.

Customers over 65, as well as those who receive government benefits would be exempt from the tax. Initially, the tax would be applied only in larger retailers, and then later the ordinance would be amended to include smaller mom and pop stores, Boyd said.

Councilman Worth Morgan, unsure about the proposal, said he is “genuinely torn,” calling the tax a “complex issue.”

“Something is going to replace the plastic bags,” Morgan said. “Whether it’s paper or it’s cotton, we have to think about where that’s being sourced from, how it’s transported, and how its produced. But if it’s just about litter, I’m almost all on board.”

However, Morgan said anytime the city introduces a new fee or tax, he has a lot of hesitation. Morgan said the council needs to have a “thoughtful conversation,” as “there’s a pretty high burden of proof before we can put a new tax to the citizens.”

Categories
Cover Feature News

Behind Closed Doors

Introducing the Justice Project:

Injustice is a problem in Memphis — in its housing, its wealth-gap, its food deserts, its justice system, its education system. In 2018, the Flyer is going to take a hard look at these issues in a series of cover stories we’re calling The Justice Project. The stories will focus on reviewing injustice in its many forms here and exploring what, if anything, is being done — or can be done — to remedy the problems. 

– – – – –

Sometimes the Memphis City Council works behind the public’s back. 

For example, the maneuvering behind its most controversial decision last year — removing Confederate statues from public parks — was kept secret from Memphis citizens until after the decision was made. The council created a new rule, written vaguely and broadly, and ushered it through a months-long legislative process, with plenty of debate and public input. Then, at the last second, they erased the whole thing and filled it in with details they did not think the public needed to know until after the fact of its passage. 

Council members say the move was legal and that they’ve used the same ploy in the past. Council member Worth Morgan, for one, said he “certainly won’t apologize” for using the maneuver on the statues vote. What we’re left with — the council and the public — is a legislative sleight of hand that allows local government to make decisions without public knowledge or input. 

Council member Worth Morgan, for one, said he “certainly won’t apologize” for using the maneuver on the statues vote.

Another example of a council end-around occurred when the public was not informed about a firm the council hired to lobby in Nashville. They spent $120,000 of taxpayer money to urge Tennessee state lawmakers to kill Instant Runoff Voting, a measure approved by Memphis voters in a referendum 10 years ago. When asked about that decision, council attorney Allen Wade was quoted in The Commercial Appeal as saying that the council uses taxpayer dollars “to do a lot of things” people don’t like.

In a third example, council members sometimes introduce last-minute resolutions and ordinances that hinder public involvement.

All of this may be perfectly legal. But is it right? Do Memphis taxpayers and voters deserve more transparency? 

At least one council member said that some council processes may need review. But most members defended the moves, citing complicated legislative procedures, overall council prerogatives, and other rationale.

Taken separately, each legislative maneuver seems like an arcane machination of the democracy machine, movements that take access to local government out of the hands of the people who pay the taxes that run local government. Taken together, they seem like parts of a playbook that’s used to cloud the legislative process and keep citizens out of certain conversations at Memphis City Hall.

The Secret Statues Vote

On Wednesday, December 20th, council members settled in behind their microphones to resume a meeting that it had adjourned from its regular Tuesday session the day before. One major question loomed: What would the council do about the Confederate statues in two city parks?

A final vote on the matter was on the council agenda. That item read, simply, “ordinance relative to the immediate removal of the Forrest Equestrian Statue and the Jefferson Davis Statue and other similar property from city owned property.” 

Intensity built as the council first worked through some routine business. Tension rose further as three members of the public gave the council their parting thoughts on the statues. Then, when the item came up for that final vote, something confusing happened. At least, it was confusing to the anyone outside city government’s inner circle. 

Council member Edmund Ford brought a new rule — a substitute ordinance — to the table that would change everything. The document was not handed out to the public. It was not in the council’s agenda packet, which is public record. The council voted unanimously to accept the new rule. Then, they voted to unanimously approve it, and it was done.

But, as is customary with big votes in the council chamber, not a single member of the audience whooped, cheered, jeered, booed, or hissed. They sat, stunned.

Council chairman Berlin Boyd then said, “for clarity purposes, let me read the substitute ordinance into the record.” Finally, clarity. Nope. Boyd simply read the same old blanket ordinance heading, the one about “the immediate removal of” statues from city-owned property.

Council chairman Berlin Boyd then said, “for clarity purposes, let me read the substitute ordinance into the record.”

During the crucial vote no council member said the word “statue.” No one said “parks.” Certainly no one said “Greenspace Inc.,” a nonprofit that no one but those in the inner circle had ever heard of. No one said anything at all, really. The council moved on to other business. 

But as we now know, that vote sent players in motion all over the city. That vote cemented an agreement Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland had already signed with Greenspace. That vote sent dozens of police and other public safety officials to cordon off the parks, a seamless orchestration that must have taken months to plan. The police moved in to protect crane operators hired by Greenspace to remove statues of Nathan Bedford Forrest, Jefferson Davis, and James Harvey Mathes. 

The Flyer‘s editorial stance on the removal of the Confederate statues was clear for months. The paper favored their removal, the sooner the better. But concerns remain about the process — a legislative maneuver that shielded the public from a critical government decision, a maneuver that seemingly allows city government to pass legislation without public review or comment.  

Ford said in an interview months after the vote, that the play was used to ensure public safety. He said other votes, such as one regarding residency requirements for city employees, have gone down the same way. The statues vote was scrutinized, he said, because of the public intrigue.

“There’s nothing that we have tried to do in the dark that we wouldn’t do in the light, as far as legislation is concerned,” Ford said, noting that if anyone had questions they could have asked him. “I don’t want people to think that this is something that is sort of a witch hunt or something, done behind the scenes.”

The Atlantic‘s U.S. politics and global news reporter David Graham, called the council play a “novel trick,” a “surprise move,” and a “novel strategy.” But he worried about the precedent.

“The distance between righteous civil disobedience and risky breakdown of rule of law is not as wide as it might seem, however, and it’s easy to imagine ways in which such a procedure could be abused,” Graham wrote. “What if local authorities defied state or federal authorities to erect a pro-Confederate statue?”

Graham also warned the trick play could bring legal challenges. He was right. The Sons of Confederate Veterans sued the city, a case still in mediation. Also, state leaders — Lieutenant Governor Randy McNally and Speaker of the House Beth Harwell — called for a review of the city’s entire statue episode from the State Comptroller’s Office of Open Records Counsel. 

That report cleared the council, saying it “provided sufficient notice of its meetings and agendas to allow interested citizens the opportunity to attend.”

The council met the Tennessee Open Records Act, the report said, because it posted its meeting dates on its website, along with agendas, documents, and more. Though, it should be noted here, again, that the final statues ordinance was never posted online before the final vote meeting and wasn’t in agenda packets the day of the vote.

Tami Sawyer, who led the #TakeEmDown901 movement, said she was told the morning of the vote “what was supposed to happen.”

“When the ordinance wasn’t read, all I could think was … get to the park,” Sawyer said. “I was more focused on, ‘Was it going happen for real’ than anything else.”  

Council member Morgan said the vote was “done in public” and that “you can’t do a complete substitute ordinance that wouldn’t fit into the subject of the heading.” That is, the ordinance you approve has to, at least, in some way, relate to the one it’s replacing.

In this case, doing something “relative to the removal” of the statues was close enough to “the sale and/or conveyance, at reduced or no cost, of such portions of the city’s easement in” Memphis Park, Health Sciences Park, and the Forrest Monument to Greenspace.

Morgan said the media was mad at the council’s handling of the vote “because they missed the story,” adding, “the reason you don’t announce that the statues are coming down … is because of the violence that we’ve seen,” citing protests and counter protests. It was done legally, he said, and pointed to the comptroller’s report as proof. 

“So, I don’t regret how it was done,” Morgan said. “I do regret a lot of the discussion that happened beforehand and after. The protests have suffered from a lack of leadership and a lack of direction, but I can only control and participate in things that are inside [the council’s purview].

“We did it legally and safely so there’s not much more to say, and I certainly won’t apologize for it.”

Council member Patrice Robinson said she was “almost positive” that the council shared documents about the sale to Greenspace with the public. But she deferred to city council attorney Wade “because he was guiding us in the process of making sure that we handled everything in a proper and legal manner.”

Council member Patrice Robinson said she was “almost positive” that the council shared documents about the sale to Greenspace with the public.

When told the information was not shared, Robinson said, “I can only think we maybe need to look at our rules and how we handle that because it’s not just that particular situation. That’s the way it’s been handled in the whole two years I have been on the city council.”    

Before responding to questions, Wade noted in a letter that this reporter “likes” the Facebook pages of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and Confederate 901. Wade said those likes “revealed an affinity for the views” of the groups and that “we will assume that your apparent bias will color your opinions” in this story, the purpose of which, he alleged, is “to denigrate the removal of the statues.”

[Note: I “like” those pages in the same way I “like” and follow a variety of groups that make news in Memphis. For example, I “like” the Memphis Zoo and Citizens to Protect Overton Park. — Toby Sells]

Wade noted that while the Tennessee Open Meetings Act requires some meetings to be public, “it does not guarantee all citizens the right to participate in the meetings.” The city charter, he said, allows the council to “amend any ordinance ‘at any time’ before final passage” and does it routinely. For evidence, he pointed to the annual budget ordinance, which the council “routinely amends” from the floor before a final vote.

As for directing the council through the statues vote, Wade said, “I do not direct anyone to do anything. I give advice, which the client is free to accept or reject.”

Council member Martavius Jones pointed also to the vote on residency requirements as an example of the council using the substitute-ordinance play. It’s legal, he said. But he was then asked if the method is good for open government.

Council member Martavius Jones pointed also to the vote on residency requirements as an example of the council using the substitute-ordinance play. It’s legal, he said.

“One of the things that I did after [the statues vote] meeting was to go back and make copies [of the substitute ordinance] to give to the media after we voted on it,” Jones said. “Because I believe in transparency in the way we operate as a Memphis City Council.”    

It all seemed above-board to Deborah Fisher, executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government (TCOG). Notice was given. The purpose of the ordinance was clear, even if the details weren’t. Past that, it’d be up to a judge to decide if the council broke the law, she said, noting that her group has no open opinion on the statues issue.

“If nobody but the members of the governing body knew what they were voting on, it’s completely understandable why the members of the public would be upset about that,” Fisher said. “It’s really not how a governing body should work.”

Lobbying Against the Public

Hardly an eyebrow was raised last year when council chairman Berlin Boyd asked for money in the city budget to hire a lobbyist. They wanted to help set the city’s legislative agenda in Nashville.

But a fury erupted when the public found out what that agenda included. 

On December 5, 2017, all but three council members voted to send the idea of instant run-off voting (IRV) back to Memphians on a referendum. Trouble was, Memphians had already approved IRV by 71 percent in a referendum back in 2008, and it was scheduled to be first utilized in the 2018 elections.

In a co-written guest column in The Commercial Appeal, former Shelby County Commissioner Steve Mulroy and former city council chairman Myron Lowery — both IRV proponents — said “the county election commission dragged its feet on implementation, inaccurately claiming that the county’s voting equipment couldn’t handle it.”

While some were scratching their heads about the council’s move to bring it back to a vote in December, the council had been hard at work on the issue — behind closed doors — since November. That’s when the council hired the well-known, Nashville-based Ingram Group to find a sponsor to introduce an ordinance to prohibit IRV. According to a Ryan Poe story in the CA last month, the council had been working “quietly” and “behind the scenes” to find a Senate sponsor for the bill. 

While Wade told Poe the bill was moving “full steam ahead” in Nashville, the news of the council’s maneuver wasn’t playing well back home. 

Theryn C. Bond excoriated the council at the podium back in December, reading from the council rules of procedure on a ranked-choice system by which the council itself uses to fill vacancies on the council. 

“Now, what does that sound like to you?” Bond asked. “Sounds to me a lot like IRV. And what is good for the goose, should be good for the gander.”

Lemichael Wilson said of the council’s work to use taxpayer money to fight against something the public had approved, “to call this hypocritical would be a compliment.” Wilson said last autumn’s calls by council members to “give the choice back to the people,” now rang “hollow upon our ears.”  

“Many believe this council — if nothing else — didn’t want Nashville telling it what to do,” Wilson said. “They believed it with such fervor that they supported the council in this late-night sale and removal of Confederate statuary.

“How we can now believe this council is ardently striving against legislative preemption when it is funding that very practice behind the citizens’ backs?” 

Surprise!

The council’s committee agenda is usually posted on Thursday around noon. With a regularity that borders on routine, a new agenda is posted on following days with new items added in different committees. 

What’s the issue? Well, for one, it goes against the council’s own rules. 

“All proposed ordinances, resolutions, motions, and other matters submitted by council members shall be submitted in writing to the Council Office by 10 a.m. Thursday,” reads a section from the council’s rules of procedure. 

Any council member can bring a new ordinance or resolution after that, but only if they present it in writing. Even then, “only items involving extreme emergencies may be added to the agenda,” after the Thursday deadline, according to council rules.

Those rules are often stretched or ignored.

In March 2016, council member Reid Hedgepeth filed a last-minute resolution on a Tuesday morning — as council committee meetings were already underway — that proposed giving the majority of Overton Park’s Greensward to the Memphis Zoo. 

Hedgepeth’s surprise resolution said the zoo “has the greatest usage by citizens and visitors of any of the other various activities in the park.” It would have allowed the zoo to use the green space as a parking lot, add permanent buildings to it, or, really, do whatever they wanted with it.  

The resolution was brought by Hedgepeth but its sponsors included Robinson, Bill Morrison, Phillip Spinosa, Jones, Janis Fullilove, Ford, Boyd, and Joe Brown. So, it seems there had been plenty of discussion about the resolution, though none of it was public. And it caught park advocates completely off guard.

“This outrageous and undemocratic power grab is a massive insult to the thousands of citizens who’ve participated in the ongoing public planning process, to the Overton Park Conservancy, which is engaged in mediation and litigation with the zoo, and to Mayor Jim Strickland,” read a Facebook post at the time from Citizens to Protect Overton Park.

Had the resolution been posted on Thursday, per council rules, it would have given proponents and opponents plenty of time to show up at city hall and express their views. Hedgepeth’s last-minute ploy only gave interested citizens about four hours to change their daily schedules; many showed up at city hall anyway.

The Commercial Appeal once sued the city over this very issue. The 1974 Supreme Court opinion put the law on the city’s side when it came to adding agenda items at the last minute. “Adequate public notice,” to the court was based on “the totality of the circumstances as would fairly inform the public.” 

But a 2012 opinion from the Open Records Counsel to the Tennessee Municipal Technical Assistance Service (MTAS) said the office would not recommend last-minute agenda changes.

“From a best practice perspective, this office would not suggest that a governing body amend an agenda during a regularly scheduled meeting to include an issue in which the governing body knows that there is significant public interest,” read the opinion from Elisha D. Hodge, “and (the governing body) knows that if the item had been on the agenda that was originally published for the meeting, there would have been increased public interest and attendance at the meeting.” All of these issues — silent votes on important ordinances, behind-the-scenes lobbying in Nashville, and last-minute agenda items — are business as usual at city hall. Some of it has been going on for a long time. Legal experts may say (and have said) it’s all above board. But for Memphians, we ask, “Is it justice?” Let’s let Theryn Bond have the final word:

“The last time I checked, you guys work for us,” Bond said to council members last month. “So, come up from behind those closed doors, and roll up those sleeves, and dig into your districts. Because, trust me, it is nothing to get 25 signatures. Do I make myself clear?”

Categories
News News Blog

State Lawmakers Review Memphis Hiring Policies

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Jackson Baker

State lawmakers pondered residency requirements for Memphis Police Department (MPD) officers Monday leaving one Senator to ask if a new, pre-emptive state law could help the city hire more cops.

The Senate Judiciary Summer Study committee reviewed residency requirements for hiring policies in Tennessee cities in general. But the review was initiated with Memphis’ shortfall of police officers, lawmakers said. However, there is no pending bill on the matter.

“The city of Memphis now has a 600-officer shortfall and we wanted to meet to see how that can be addressed and is there anything the state can do to address that,” said Sen. Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown), the committee’s chairman.

MPD has a bit more than 1,900 officers and wants a complement of about 2,400. Memphis City Council member Worth Morgan and MPD Deputy Chief Terry Landrum described to lawmakers a police department that is struggling to recruit and retain law enforcement talent.
For example, the latest MPD recruitment class garnered 2,000 applicants but graduated only 85. Also, Landrum said MPD is a target for recruiters from police departments in Dallas, San Antonio, Nashville, Bartlett, and Germantown.

Morgan described city policy on residency requirements, a policy that has changed with several voter referenda going back to 2009. The policy now requires city of Memphis employees to live within Shelby County. However, employees hired before the rule was approved by voters can live as far as two hours away from Memphis.

MPD Deputy Chief Terry Landrum told lawmakers that the patchwork of rules that apply to different MPD employees makes for “difficult” administration issues. But the current residency requirement, he said, “kills us” on recruiting new officers.

Loosening those requirements would help “cast as wide of a net as possible,” Morgan said. The topic is a point of “constant conversation in the hallways and chambers” of Memphis City Hall. However, while he said he was for looser residency requirements, the political climate may not be right in Memphis right now.

“It would be a big fight if we were to try to open it up back to that two-hour window,” Morgan said. “I’d be willing to have it but I’d have to count to seven [get seven votes from other council members]. I’m not sure I could get to that number.”

But he also urged caution from state lawmakers to leave the issue a local matter. Though many Senators seemed to agree, at least one seemed willing to step in.

Sen. Janice Boling (R-Tullahoma) said state lawmakers are sworn to focus on the education, transportation, and public safety needs of state citizens. She asked if the Senate considered legislation that would pre-empt the city charter on residency requirements “would that solve the problem?”

Morgan said state pre-emption “would not be well received” by some in Memphis but he’d “be excited to have as many good applicants as possible.”

Categories
News News Blog

UPDATE: CLERB Ordinance Passes; New Language Retains Subpoena Power

Worth Morgan

UPDATE (8/9/16, 7:33 p.m.): The Memphis City Council passed an ordinance retaining CLERB’s subpoena power, but board members must subpoena through their council liaison. And those subpoenaed will appear before the Memphis City Council.

—————————————————————————-

The issue of whether or not the Civilian Law Enforcement Review Board (CLERB) should have the power to subpoena witnesses and documents in cases of police misconduct is up for its final vote today at Memphis City Council on Tuesday afternoon

But the ordinance’s wording has changed to retain the citizen board’s subpoena power through a city council liaison. An older revised version would have stripped the board of that indirect power completely, but Memphis United and the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center has put up a strong campaign against that change. According to the new language, which was introduced today by city council sponsor Worth Morgan, anyone subpoenaed would be compelled to attend a Memphis City Council meeting, which CLERB members would then attend. 

The original CLERB ordinance passed last year gave the board indirect subpoena power, but Morgan — also the CLERB council liaison — had recently introduced new language to remove that power, saying such power would violate the city charter. But Morgan has apparently worked out a compromise that retains the board’s subpoena power but changes the meeting at which those subpoenaed would be compelled to attend.

The new language up for vote today reads: “In order to carry out its functions, the board is authorized to request through its Council liaison, a subpoena to effectuate an investigation or compel attendance by an officer or witness for a hearing before the Memphis City Council. Upon investigation and fact finding, the Council liaison shall present a resolution to the full City Council to obtain the requested subpoena. Should the Council liaison fail to support the request of the board for the subpoena within the next two council meetings following the date of the request, the board Chairperson may make a recommendation to the City Council Chair. In the event the Council fails to issue the requested subpoena, the board reserves the right to file a complaint with the local and state ethics commissions, Tennessee Human Rights Commissions, or the Department of Justice to investigate the case before the CLERB board.”

The CLERB is a volunteer board tasked with hearing cases of police misconduct that were not sustained by the Memphis Police Department’s own Internal Affairs complaint process. The board can recommend punishment for officers to the police director, but it cannot enforce penalties.

The CLERB was active from 1994 to 2011 but eventually fizzled out. The original board lacked power to subpoena witnesses and documents. However, last fall, the Memphis City Council voted to allow the board to indirectly subpoena officers and paperwork through the board’s liaison on the council.

The Mid-South Peace & Justice Center sent out an email Monday night, thanking Morgan for his compromise.

“We would like to thank Councilman Worth Morgan for working with us to ensure that CLERB has the power and authority to provide accountable and transparent oversight of police to the people of Memphis, Tennessee,” read the email.  

Categories
News The Fly-By

City Council to Vote on CLERB Subpoena Power

Marcus Walker says he was beaten by a Memphis Police officer during a routine traffic stop one night in 2011. He’d been pulled over for a revoked license, and he says he left the car to go into his nephew’s mother’s home and get her because police were beating her son, who’d been in the backseat and had cursed at an officer. But Walker says an officer grabbed him and hit him as well.

“They wouldn’t let me go in and get her. They put me on the car and handcuffed me and sprayed me with Mace,” Walker said. “And then I could feel licks coming upside my head and back. I felt one guy pull my arms up, and then he kicked my feet out from under me. I fell on my face and shoulder.”

Map of people referred to CLERB while it was inactive

Walker was arrested for disorderly conduct, but his charges were later expunged. His case is one of at least 186 that were referred to the Civilian Law Enforcement Review Board (CLERB) during the time the board was inactive between 2011 and last year. The CLERB is a volunteer board tasked with hearing cases of police misconduct that were not sustained by the Memphis Police Department’s own Internal Affairs complaint process. The board can recommend punishment for officers to the police director, but it cannot enforce penalties.

The CLERB was active from 1994 to 2011 but eventually fizzled out. The original board lacked power to subpoena witnesses and documents. However, last fall, the Memphis City Council voted to allow the board to indirectly subpoena officers and paperwork through the board’s liaison on the council.

But on July 19th, the Memphis City Council will vote on possibly removing that power. Worth Morgan, the Memphis City Council public safety chair and the CLERB council liaison, is sponsoring the amendment to the CLERB ordinance because he says the council doesn’t have legal authority to subpoena witnesses and documents for other boards.

“According to the city charter, the council has authority to subpoena people and documents to the meetings of the city council, but we don’t have the authority to subpoena people to appear at a meeting that’s not of the city council,” said Morgan, citing an opinion by council attorney Allan Wade last year.

Morgan said the board could get direct subpoena power, without having to go through the council, by a voter referendum.

But Paul Garner of Memphis United, which last year led the push for CLERB to have subpoena power through the council, said the subpoena power issue was vetted last year before the original ordinance passed.

“This is a hasty attempt to remove subpoena power without taking the time to go back over the deliberations that took place over months and months last year with all parties involved and Wade giving his opinion before the council took a vote on it,” Garner said.

Morgan’s amendments also include a change to ensure all CLERB meetings are open to the public. At the first meeting of the new CLERB board in April, the public was asked to leave while the board deliberated a case during executive session.

“For CLERB to be successful, it needs to be a fair, open, and honest process. We need to make sure all meetings are in compliance with the state open meetings act,” Morgan said, noting that he thought the board was wrong to ask the public to leave at the last meeting.

Garner put in a public records request with the city to find out how many people were referred to CLERB during the time the board was inactive. Memphis United has compiled city maps of the addresses of those affected to determine the demographic hit hardest by the lack of a board from 2011 to 2015. They found that 81.5 percent of those cases involved minorities who lived in mostly low- to moderate-income areas.

“It’s not just concentrated in black and brown neighborhoods. It’s the black and brown communities that border the predominantly white parts of town, and that brings up some other questions about how policing works in certain communities,” Garner said.

Garner said his group made the maps to illustrate how real people are being affected while the council debates the language of the ordinance that was passed last year.

“What we really want to convey is that this debate about how much power this board should have has being going on for almost two years,” Garner said. “I’m tired of this being about politics and pandering. These are real people this is directly impacting.”

Categories
News News Blog

Memphis City Council Considers Revising CLERB Ordinance

Worth Morgan

At the Memphis City Council meeting in two weeks, the council will consider a revised ordinance that ensures the Civilian Law Enforcement Review Board (CLERB) would not have subpoena power.

Memphis City Council member and CLERB board member Worth Morgan proposed the ordinance before the Public Safety Committee Tuesday afternoon, and the committee voted to move the matter to a vote at their next meeting. The CLERB was revived last year (after a long period of inactivity) to investigate civilian complaints about police misconduct. The board doesn’t have the power to issue punishments to police officers found guilty of wrongdoing, but it recommend action to the police director.

Morgan wants to make clear in the language of the CLERB ordinance, which was passed by the council in November of last year, that the board cannot subpoena witnesses and documents needed to investigate matters of police misconduct. 

Morgan’s amendment would also ensure the CLERB meetings remain open to the public in accordance with the state open meetings law. At the first official CLERB meeting last month, the board went into a closed-door session to discuss the case at hand. Media and the public were asked to leave the room. 

“We may have been in violation of state law when we did that,” Morgan told the council.

Morgan would also like to see the council member assigned to CLERB (that’s him) stripped of voting power.

Categories
News News Blog

Council Axes Private Guards at City Hall, MPD

Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland wants to use armed guards from a private company to secure Memphis City Hall and the new Memphis Police Department (MPD) headquarters but Memphis City Council members axed the plan.

Strickland’s 2017 budget included $650,000 for the new guards, instead of using officers from MPD. Antonio Adams, director of the city’s general services division, said the plan would put those police officers back on the street.

He said the plan was vetted and approved by former MPD director Toney Armstrong and by current interim director Michael Rallings.

But council members beat back at the plan, noting that the mayor has police protection and that they (council members) deserved the same, not “rent-a-cops or flashlight cops,” said council member Berlin Boyd.

The armed guards would have guns, Adams said. Also, the move would not remove the mayor’s detail nor would it remove the council’s officer. It is only the officers at the entrances to the buildings.

“So, everybody’s dead,” said council member Joe Brown. “Am I correct?”

The council defeated a similar move in A C Wharton’s budget last year.

Adams said he’d at least like to keep $400,000 in the budget this year for armed guards at the new MPD headquarters at the former state building at 170 North Main. He said MPD officials have “emphatically stated that they (MPD) will not be armed security at” that building.

The MPD headquarters, Adams said, needed 24-hour security as a whole host of of different people – suspects, victims, and family members – would enter the building at all hours.

Boyd countered that MPD headquarters is also filled with trained, armed police officers.

“They all have guns on their hips,” Boyd said. “I don’t have a gun on my hip. They can have all the security they want.”

Adams repeated the move was approved by MPD officials but Brown said “I don’t buy that,” noting that Armstrong was likely under pressure from Wharton at the time.

In a sprawling statement to help defeat the move, Brown described a new American tension, in which people are angry at government and “are not afraid to shoot guns now” and reminded that a man broke windows at Memphis City Hall recently.

“Around the country, I’ve seen officers shot up at precincts,” Brown said. “I’ve seen elected officials shot in St. Louis. For a few pennies, we’re not going to drop our guard [at City Hall].

“We’re in trouble. The average citizen is angry at anything that happens at City Hall.”

Brown ended his statements by noting that “in reality [MPD] can’t even secure Orange Mound” and that the city council “is going to stay protected, I don’t care what you [Adams], or the mayor or what anybody says.”

While Adams pleaded his case for the funds, council members eventually removed the money from the budget. Councilman Worth Morgan voted against taking the money out of the budget.

The amendment could be changed, however. All of the budget amendments made during the council’s budget review aren’t final until the council approves a final budget, which will probably come some time later in June.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Second Efforts

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

The de-annexation bill that was temporarily stalled in the state Senate on Monday of this week was, as this week’s Flyer cover story (p. 14) documents, the subject of concerted resistance activity on the part of Memphis legislators, city council members, and representatives of the Greater Memphis Area Chamber of Commerce.

Many of the same legislators were part of another never-say-die effort, this one mounted by the House Democratic Caucus, which got behind an effort by House Democratic leader Craig Fitzhugh (D-Ripley) to enable a non-binding resolution for a statewide referendum on Governor Bill Haslam‘s moribund Insure Tennessee proposal.

That proposal, which would have allowed some $1.5 billion in federal funds annually to further Medicaid expansion in Tennesee, has been so far bottled up by the Republican super-majority in the General Assembly. And Fitzhugh’s resolution itself was routed off to the limbo of legislative “summer study” as a result of a procedural gambit employed by Representative Jeremy Durham (R-Franklin), who was formally ousted from his House leadership positions recently because of allegations involving improper activities involving interns and female staffers.

Memphis representatives Joe Towns, Larry Miller, and G.A. Hardaway were among those speaking on behalf of reactivating Insure Tennessee legislation at a press conference last week in Legislative Plaza.

 

• Ninth District Congressman Steve Cohen began the week as a part of the entourage that accompanied President Obama on his history-making trip to Cuba, where the president furthered the official Cuba-U.S.A. relations he reopened last year.

The trip was the second one to Cuba for Cohen, who also was part of a delegation accompanying Secretary of State John Kerry to the Caribbean island nation in 2014. The Memphis congressman obviously went to some considerable effort to get himself involved with both missions. Why Cohen’s more than usual interest in the matter?

Well, first of all, the congressman has long advocated a normalizing of relations with Cuba, which became estranged from the United States during the height of the Cold War when Cuban ruler Fidel Castro instituted what he termed a communist revolution and cozied up to the Soviet Union, then a superpower antagonist to the U.S.

Cohen has favored rapprochement and an end to the still-active trade embargo on political and economic grounds, pointing out that the Cold War, at least in its original form, is long gone and that American enterprises, in Memphis as well as elsewhere, stand to prosper from improved relations between the two countries.

And there is the fact that, when Cohen was growing up, his family lived in Miami, the American city closest to Cuba and one containing a huge number of exiles from that nation.

But there’s more to it than that —as those Memphians know who were privy to an old AOL email address used by Cohen, one that employed a variant on the name of former White Sox baseball star Minnie Miñoso, who happened to hail from Cuba.

The backstory involving Cohen and Miñoso was uncovered this week for readers of the Miami Herald by reporter Patricia Mazzei in a sidebar on Obama’s trip to Cuba.

Mazzei related the essentials of a tale familiar to those Memphians who were readers of a Cohen profile that appeared in the Flyer‘s sister publication, Memphis magazine, in 2001. After noting that the young Cohen, who had always aspired to an athletic career himself, had been afflicted by polio at the age of 5, Mazzei goes to observe: “His parents, lifelong baseball fans, took young Steve, hobbled with crutches, to see Mom’s hometown Chicago White Sox at a Memphis exhibition game. Steve made his way near the field to plead for autographs.

“That’s when a pitcher, Tom Poholsky, handed him a real Major League baseball. It wasn’t from him, Poholsky told him. It was from an outfielder who couldn’t give the boy the ball himself because this was Memphis, in 1955, and the outfielder was black. The first black White Sox, in fact.

“His name: Minnie Miñoso. A native of Perico, Cuba.”

The young Cohen was struck by the fact that Miñoso, who for obvious reasons became something of a personal idol for him, had been so inhibited by restrictions that were part of an outmoded way of life, and his lifelong emotional attachment to the great Miñoso, who died only last year, ensued.

“I learned from Miñoso about civil rights, and I learned from Miñoso about Cuba, and I learned from Miñoso to be nice to kids,” Cohen said to Mazzei, who disclosed also that the congressman had toted a Miñoso-embossed White Sox baseball cap to Cuba on the Kerry trip with the aim of getting it to current Cuban president Raúl Castro.

He brought several more such caps with him to hand out here and there on the current presidential trip.

Jackson Baker

Roasted, toasted, and pleased about it all at a Democratic fund-raising “roaster” last Saturday honoring: (l to r, seated) Shelby County Commissioner Walter Bailey, former state Senator Beverly Marrero, and former City Councilman Myron Lowery. Standing is longtime former public official Michael Hooks, who applied the barbs to Bailey. The affair was held at the National Civil Rights Museum.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Showdowns in Shelby County

CREDIT: JB

JB

Council runoff candidates at Hooks forum were (l to r) Jamita Swearengen (District 4); Worth Morgan and Dan Springer (District 5); and Anthony Anderson and Berlin Boyd (District 7)

As early voting ends this Friday and the final runoff election date of November 19th, next Thursday, beckons, most attention has been focused on two of the five district city council runoffs: District 5 (Midtown, East Memphis) between newcomer Worth Morgan and youthful activist Dan Springer, and the District 7 race (North Memphis, Frayser) between interim incumbent Berlin Boyd and challenger Anthony Anderson.

District 5 lies astride the Poplar corridor power nexus and is also the bailiwick of current Councilman and Mayor-elect Jim Strickland. Both Morgan and Springer are Republicans, though Springer, who has worked for both Senator Bob Corker and County Mayor Mark Luttrell, won the formal endorsement of the Shelby County Republican Party during the regular election process, in which seven candidates overall vied for the seat.

Morgan, who led by far in fund-raising, with receipts of more than $200,000 to Springer’s $60,000 or so, had the support of the city’s business elite. Now, both he and Springer have solicited support from the camps of losing candidates. 

A meet-and-greet for Morgan last week hosted by fifth-place finisher Charles “Chooch” Pickard, drew a diverse group including avowed Democrats, African Americans, and members of the city’s gay community. Springer, for his part, has actively pitched across party lines as well and has won the formal support of Democrat Mary Wilder, among others. 

Overall, Springer leads in formal endorsements of various kinds. Morgan finished ahead on October 8th, however, with 32 percent of the vote to Springer’s 23 percent.

At a forum last week at the Hooks Central Library for candidates in Districts 4, 5, and 7, Morgan and Springer differed only moderately on issues, though Morgan, who has seemed more at ease in debate formats, gave answers that were both more glib and more expansive. He spoke of having transcended several difficult illnesses as evidence of his resolve, while Springer emphasized his experience.

At the same forum, Boyd, too, stressed his existing connections and boasted of having brought $3.6 million into District 7. Anderson, a clergyman who is the entrepreneur behind the Memphis Business Academy charter-school network, countered with a figure of $8 million allegedly invested in MBA and with references to his numerous community involvements.

Both advocated revenue solutions involving assessments of nonresidents who work in Memphis, in the form of sticker fees (Boyd) or payroll taxes (Anderson). Both approaches would seem to require approval by the Tennessee General Assembly. The two differed most obviously on crime, which Boyd saw as a looming danger and Anderson saw as having diminished.

In the regular general election, Boyd had 26 percent of the total vote, and Anderson had 24 percent.

(Go to Politics Beat Blog at memphisflyer.com for more on these races and the three other Council runoffs: Frank Colvett Jr. vs. Rachel Knox in District 3; Patrice Robinson vs. Keith Williams in District 3; and Jamita Swearengen vs. Doris DeBerry-Bradshaw in District 4.)

The power struggle between the Shelby County Commission and the administration of county Mayor Mark Luttrell moved toward another showdown on Monday with the mayor’s veto of a recent commission resolution appointing former Commissioner Julian Bolton as its independent counsel.

Commission chair Terry Roland‘s public response was in a memo to his fellow commissioners, in which he wrote that he had in mind to call a special commission meeting for Thursday. “We must act as a body to protect our legislative duty to the people of Shelby County, Tennessee,” the memo concluded.

Roland had previously indicated privately that County Attorney Ross Dyer, who has resisted the independent-counsel idea on grounds that the County Charter does not allow it, might be confronted with a choice between altering his view and facing a possible ouster move from the commission. That could come with a vote to reconsider his hiring.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Memphis Council Elections: Not Over Yet

A substantial minority of the members of the Memphis City Council — five of the 13 overall — have yet to be chosen and will be determined after the runoff elections on November 19th.

The runoff races were made necessary when no candidate achieved a majority of the votes cast in the five districts in the regular general election that ended on October 8th. The five districts, and the two top vote-getters in each, along with the percentages they received as of October 8th, are:

DISTRICT 2: Frank Colvett Jr. (49.5 percent), Rachel Knox (22.5)

DISTRICT 3: Patrice Robinson (48.4), Keith Williams (20.8)

DISTRICT 4: Jamita Swearengen (33.0), Doris DeBerry-Bradshaw(24.4)

DISTRICT 5: Worth Morgan (31.9), Dan Springer (23.3)

DISTRICT 7:  Berlin Boyd (26.5), Anthony Anderson (24.0)

Going merely by the percentages, it would seem that the tightest runoff races would be in Districts 4, 5, and 7.

Dan Springer

Worth Morgan

The one in District 5, based in Midtown and East Memphis and formerly occupied by Mayor-elect Jim Strickland, had one of the largest fields in the regular general election, with seven candidates competing. Of those, three — John Marek, Mary Wilder, and Charles “Chooch” Pickard — were generally lumped together as appealing to Democrats and progressives, while two — Morgan and Springer —  were considered to be candidates whose base was Republican or conservative.

The progressive trio finished with vote percentages of 18.55 percent for Wilder, 16.90 percent for Marek, and 6.37 percent for Pickard; Morgan and Springer got into the runoff with percentages of 31.92 percent and 23.28 percent, respectively.

No sooner had the votes been counted on the evening of October 8th than the two runoff candidates promptly began competing for the support of candidates who had been eliminated. 

Here was Springer in a Facebook statement on October 9th: “I’ve made many new friends over the past several months on the campaign trail. And I know voters are grateful for the willingness of John Marek, Chooch Pickard, and Mary Wilder to not only put their names on the ballot, but also to bring to the forefront serious topics that deserve our attention. I know how hard they all worked, but I also know them well enough to know that they will remain committed to making Memphis a better place to live for all of us.

“Over the coming weeks, I look forward to sharing my clear vision about how we can address our community’s serious challenges in regards to job creation, education, and public safety, while promoting and building up all the good things about our city.”

Translation: Springer, who had gained the endorsement of the Shelby County Republican Party in the general election, thanks mainly to his yeoman’s service previously for GOP candidates and office-holders, notably for U.S. Senator Bob Corker and Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell, believed himself credible enough among moderates, independents, and Democrats to make an active pitch to the erstwhile supporters of Marek, Pickard, and Wilder.

Springer was rewarded with a statement from Wilder, the leading vote-getter among progressives, urging her supporters to consider Springer in the runoff. That was publicly hailed as a “classy” move on Wilder’s part by County Trustee David Lenoir, a Republican considered certain to be a candidate for county mayor in 2018.

For his part, Morgan won the public approval of former candidate Pickard, the third-place finisher among progressives and the fifth-place finisher overall.

In a statement that paid tribute to the previous field of candidates (“amazing people who felt the call to public service in a similar capacity as myself”), Pickard, referring to himself as “an architect and community leader,” said, among other things: “I want to make the public and formal endorsement of Worth Morgan. Over the 10 months we spent campaigning for the position, I was impressed with Worth’s integrity and the ethical way he ran his campaign. I believe Worth Morgan will make a great city councilman and has the ideals to best represent the diverse population of District 5 through truly listening to his constituents and making rational decisions in the best interest of our community.”

Early voting for the runoff races begins October 30th and runs throughNovember 14th, with final election-day voting taking place on November 19th.

• As a reminder, the council members elected outright on October 8th are as follows, with the winning percentages for them and their closest competitor:

DISTRICT 1: Bill Morrison (incumbent), 77 percent, over Wayne Roberts, 21.88 percent.

DISTRICT 6: Edmund H. Ford Jr. (incumbent), 72.24 percent, over Perry Bond, 18.43 percent.

SUPER DISTRICT 8, POSITION 1: Joe Brown (incumbent), 69.15 percent, over Victoria Young, 20.41 percent.

SUPER DISTRICT 8, POSITION 2: Janis Fullilove (incumbent), 76.78 percent, over Isaac Wright, 12 percent.

SUPER DISTRICT 8, POSITION 3: Martavius Jones, 44.93 percent, over Mickell Lowery, 40.97 percent.

SUPER DISTRICT 9, POSITION 1: Kemp Conrad (incumbent), 70 percent, over Robin Spielberger, 16.90 percent.

SUPER DISTRICT 9, POSITION 2: Philip C. Spinosa, 47 percent, over Kenneth Twigg Whalum, 23.61 percent.

SUPER DISTRICT 9, POSITION 3: Reid Hedgepeth (incumbent), 61.23 percent, over Stephen Christian, 19.59 percent.

MEMPHIS CITY COURT CLERK: Kay Spalding Robilio, 26.35 percent, over Wanda Halbert, 24.91 percent.

It will be noted that incumbents running for reelection had easy going, and that the closest of these decided races, Jones vs. Lowery in Super District 8, Position 3, and Robilio vs. Halbert for City Court Clerk, might well have ended with different results if subjected to runoffs.

The same 1991 decision by the late federal District Judge Jerome Turner that prohibited runoff elections for mayor that year subsequently has also prohibited runoffs for the clerk’s position and for the super district council seats, all considered “at large” positions.

Turner’s ruling permitted runoffs only in regular district races. The prohibition of runoffs for mayor is credited with the victory of Willie Herenton in 1991 (with 49 percent in a three-way race) and with that of Jim Strickland (with 42 percent) in this year’s multi-candidate race.

The Shelby County Election Commission will meet to certify the October 8th vote results at noon, Friday, at the commission’s operations center at 918 Nixon in the Shelby Farms government complex.

• Of the nine applicants to succeed former Chief Justice Gary Wade on the state Supreme Court, four claim to hail from Memphis, though only three have a current address in these parts.  

The ex-Memphian in the bunch is Ted Hayden, an attorney and compliance director in the state Department of General Services. Hayden now lives in the near-Nashville suburb of Gallatin, and his wish to be considered a Memphian boils down to his having been, as he stated on his official application, “extremely active” for 24 years at Bellevue Baptist Church.

Aside from his undoubted piety, Hayden makes the claim of a Memphis connection because two of the current state justices are from the Middle Tennessee grand division, where Gallatin is (and Memphis isn’t), a fact which means that Wade’s replacement must come from either East Tennessee or West Tennessee, where Memphis is (and Gallatin isn’t).

The three real Memphians whose hats (or robes) are in the ring are: Memphis lawyer Robert D. Meyers, chairman of the Shelby County Election Commission; former state Representative Larry Scroggs, chief counsel and administrator for Shelby County Juvenile Court; and Memphis tax lawyer Matthew Cavitch, who caught the attention of the state political newsletter “The Tennessee Journal,” with this line in his letter of application: “I work alone, so I handle everything. Unlike most tax lawyers, I actually know something about the rules of evidence and how to draft a motion in limine.”

Under the new judicial selection formula approved by the state’s voters in a 2014 referendum, the selection will be made by Governor Bill Haslam, subject to confirmation by both chambers of the General Assembly. Whoever is chosen and approved will serve for the balance of Justice Wade’s eight-year term, which concludes in 2022 and is then eligible to serve another eight-year term if approved by the voters in a retention election.

Prior to Haslam’s selection, a Council for Judicial Appointments, whose members were named previously by the governor, will interview the nine applicants next Tuesday, October 27th, in Nashville, and submit three names for Haslam to consider.