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Last night, the Metro Charter Commission met for the fourth time. From looking at the agenda one might conclude that it was going to be a barn burner with topics such as the fate of the two school districts, annexation, and Constitutional officers on the agenda. While the meeting was interesting, a barn burner it wasn’t. In fact, many of the “big fights” surrounding these issues are kind of moot based on opinions from the State Attorney General and County Attorney. Of course, these are just opinions. There’s still a possibility of litigation to actually “settle” these issues, but that seems unlikely at this point. So without further ado, here’s what happened.

The first item on the agenda, after the normal opening business, was a presentation by Brian Stephens and Darrell Cobbins of Rebuild Government. This consisted, primarily, of informing the Commission about the mission of the group and a rundown of the activities that the group has planned going forward. I wrote about the organization, which launched Monday here.

There were some questions for the group, one of which is a question I’ve been asked about 20 times since Monday. Commissioner and Millington Mayor Richard Hodges asked where the funding for this organization came from. Stephens replied that the early fundraising efforts had come from the business community, but that as the organization continues on it’s mission it will be soliciting donations from philanthropic organizations and individuals.

The second question/comment came from Commissioner and former Collierville Mayor Linda Kerley. Kerley was concerned that the information given out to the public by the group be as accurate as possible and reflect the intent of the Commission. Stephens replied that Rebuild Government would accept any and all information from the Commission and work to ensure that the both the information distributed and the intent was as comprehensive as possible.

This presentation was followed by a statement by Memphis Mayor AC Wharton on the issues of the Metro Charter and schools.

The crux of his message was that because of the way that both the Shelby Co. Schools and the Memphis City Schools are established, that neither “body politic” could be forced to come together by any other entity. “…not gonna have a shotgun wedding.”, was the quote that perhaps most captured the sentiment of his message.

The Mayor’s comments were followed by some quick business about the Commissions task forces. I hope to have a list of all the task forces, their Chairmen, and members soon.

From there, things got a little interesting…but just for a second. Commissioner and City Councilman Jim Strickland put forth a motion to exclude the topic of schools from the entire purview of Metro Charter Commission discussions. Waiting in the wings was County Attorney Brian Kuhn, with testimony, an opinion and State Attorney General opinion on the state’s school provisions in regard to the formation of a Metro style government. This motion was tabled until after Kuhn’s testimony.

County Attorney Brian Kuhn then started laying out his opinion, backed up by a State Attorney General’s opinion on what powers and responsibilities the Metro Charter Commission had in regard to the schools. As Mayor Wharton noted, because of the way the Shelby Co. and Memphis City schools are organized, two separately chartered organizations with separate legislative bodies, the Charter Commission has no right or duty to try and merge the two districts. According to his testimony, the only thing that the Charter Commission must do, is set forth the manner in which the two school districts are to be funded.

But even the funding issue has a twist. According to Kuhn, a measure that may come up this spring in the State Legislature would allow taxing authority to school boards. Such a move would allow the Charter Commission to establish a process by which the two individual entities could tax constituents according to the needs of each district. This would eliminate one area of disagreement and fade some of the heat off of the resulting Metro Council or Commission, but would also increase the profile and importance of the boards for both Memphis and Shelby Co. schools.

At this point, Commissioner and City Councilman Strickland amended his motion to only deal with the issue of funding. The motion was approved unanimously.

Next, County Attorney Brian Kuhn talked to the Commission about Constitutional Officers, or officials that the state mandates every County have. In the opinion he provided to the Commission, Kuhn lays out in great detail the officers that must remain and what options the Commission have in front of them. According to the opinion, Sherriff, Trustee, Register, County Clerk and Assessor of Property are all mandated by the state. However, the duties of these offices are not. The Charter Commission can decide to define the duties for each of these offices as they see fit.

Kuhn noted that in Davidson Co., for instance, the Sherriff was only responsible for the jails and courts. Also in Davidson, the Trustee only collects the taxes, an appointed official deals with investments and warrants (checks).

This will likely be one of the more lively and possibly contentious discussions in upcoming Commission meetings.

A discussion about the County and City government functions was largely tabled until a later meeting. As I noted in my post about last meeting, both function very differently, and with new administrations in both the City and the County, it is possible that some areas will be a moving target for the Commission, and the staff that seeks to help provide them the details of both.

Kelly Rayne also gave a presentation on the current annexation plans and what will happen to them should the citizens of the Memphis and Shelby Co. decide to form a Metro government. On page 12 of the document is a map that describes the current annexation arrangement between the cities located in Shelby Co. If I’m understanding correctly, the resulting Metro government will either inherit Memphis’ current annexation areas, or will have to be given via the new charter, those areas. This, however, is a question that will likely be referred to the County Attorney, or the State Attorney General.

Finally, the Commission spent some time on how to best deal with media interviews and Task Force scheduling going forward. Due to the holiday, the task force issue will be primarily dealt with after the holidays. Task Force meetings will be announced at the next Charter Commission meeting on January 7th.

Back in August, before the Metro Charter Commission was formed, I wrote a post about having a “frank and actionable discussion” about government. Yesterday, at Shelby Farms, I was pleased to participate in the launch of an organization whose mission is to help foster that discussion.

Rebuild Government, organized by Brian Stephens, seeks to build community awareness and participation in shaping the Metro Charter process. I am honored to be one of the Co-Chairs of this effort.

In the five and a half years that I’ve lived in Shelby County, the biggest thing I’ve seen lacking is the opportunity for citizens to have a direct voice in how local government works, outside of the regular election calendar. While I can’t speak for everyone, I’m sure just about every citizen of Shelby County has a suggestion for making government more effective, responsive, and representative of the community.

This is our chance to not only raise our voices, but effect a change.

The truth of the matter is that while opposition to “Metro Government” has been lining up for months now, that opposition has nothing to oppose but the process. Not one single line of a new proposed Charter has been committed to paper. And while it’s certain that the Metro Charter Commission will be meeting personally with citizens all over the County to listen to their thoughts and concerns, there’s no way that 15 Commissioners can effectively engage the nearly one million people that live here by themselves.

That’s one area where this organization comes in. While Rebuild Government, makes no claims to be a surrogate for the Charter Commission, it does seek to be a conduit to help educate, engage, and empower the community on the activities of the Charter Commission and take advantage of the opportunity we have before us to build the best possible government for our community.

Shelby County needs this discussion. We may or may not end up in a Charter that both city and county residents can live with, but without the conversation, we’ll never really know.

- Steve Ross is a Co-Chair of Rebuild Government, an organization committed to build community awareness and participation in the Metro Charter process by creating and giving voice to an informed and engaged citizenry. The views expressed in this space are not necessarily those of Rebuild Government, its Co-Chairs, organizers, or affiliates.

Edited To Add: Added some links to the post and to the Resource Page

Last night the Memphis/Shelby County Metropolitan Charter Commission met for the third time.

As with any new board tasked with such a huge mandate, there are still some structural and organizational issues to be decided, as well as a lot of information gathering. Foremost among these was deciding when and how often to meet. Chairman Ellis proposed that beginning in January, the Commission would meet every other Thursday starting with January 7th. Four dates were approved in addition to that date; January 21st, February 4th and 18th. All meetings begin at 4pm. The next meeting is December 17th.

The actual location of the next meeting was also up for discussion. Several members expressed a desire to have the meetings streamed on either the City or County sites. The Large Mayor’s Conference room on the 8th floor of the County Administration building doesn’t have the equipment necessary to allow for live streaming. There was some discussion about moving the meetings to the City Executive Committee room, or the County Commission Committee room. It was decided to hold the next meeting at the Commission Committee Chamber to allow for streaming.

While this may seem like a fairly mundane conversation, I was glad to hear that several Commissioners were concerned about access to the meetings and the documents those meeting produce. This discussion also folded into a broader discussion of transparency, including the development of a web site for the public to access information. The web site is forthcoming, but until some of the technical issues are ironed out documents are available on request, you can also find many of them here. The documents on my site are hardly comprehensive, but I am working to make as many available as possible, particularly until the Commission’s site is completed.

Project Management was the next order of business on the agenda. Commission Secretary Lou Etta Burkins put together a preliminary planning document and gave a presentation to the Commission. In a previous post I discussed the timeline as mandated by the resolutions approved by the County Commission and City Council as well as Tennessee State Law in some detail. This document was more task oriented, and while it’s still a work in progress, it gave all in attendance an idea of the several issues that must be addressed as the Commission continues it’s work.

Edited to Add: At a previous meeting a Staff prepared timeline was also distributed.

From there, County Policy Advisor Kelly Rayne gave a brief presentation on the structures of the City and County Governments. While both have areas of overlapping functions, their structures are quite different. The County Government only has 6 divisions, though those divisions are quite deep in the services they provide. By contrast, the City Government is wide, with 14 divisions, even though only 5 are mandated by the City Charter (Article 8, starting on page 26). There was a great deal of discussion on how to best address areas of overlap in working to unite the two governments, and a detailed analysis of the subtasks of each division on the City and County side is forthcoming to help inform the Commissioners going forward. Other areas covered are the Courts and Constitutional officers, which are mandated or defined in State Law.

Defining the best method for unifying the functions of government alone is a Herculean task. In the coming weeks and months I expect that, in addition to consulting with division directors on both sides of Main St., the Commission will break down into several committees or task forces to focus on these issues and make recommendations to the full Commission.

Next on the agenda was a discussion of other consolidated cities. The four cities discussed were Nashville, Jacksonville, FL (1,2,3), Indianapolis, IN, and Lousiville, KY.

This was pretty interesting. Each Metro government, as well as the manner, timeframe, and circumstances under which they merged is unique. While all of them share many characteristics generally, the specifics are quite different. Legislative bodies range from 19 to 40 members, and the manner in which the seats are distributed (single member districts or at large) is different for each government. All of this, of course, spurred some interesting discussion.

Of the four cities, Marion Co./Indianapolis closest in total population. Louisville/Jefferson County, on the other hand, has a population of nearly 200,000 less, but shares some of the regional issues that Memphis has being near the border of another state (Indiana). What was most interesting to me was that while Nashville chose a Metro government the earliest and is the least populous of the four, it has the highest level of direct representation with 35 districts and 5 at large positions. For people, like myself, who are concerned with the level of direct representation that the proposed charter ultimately provides, this was of great interest to me. Knowing how other areas have done things, based on attitudes of the areas and the perception of needs is really intriguing. The biggest thing I took from this discussion is that there is no one right way to do any of this, though there are likely MANY wrong ways. I look forward to more discussion on this, and will be writing something about the makeup of the legislative branch of the proposed government in an upcoming post.

The last two items on the agenda included a presentation by Scott Sigman from the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce about consolidated cities and a discussion of Committees/task forces. Scott is a native of Indianapolis and had some interesting first hand information about the manner in which the consolidation of city and county functions occurred there in 1970. I hope to have an electronic copy of his presentation up later on today.

The committee discussion revolved around setting up five areas of concentration, however, I haven’t had time to really review this yet. I’ll update this post once I have more time.

All in all, while the meeting was a bit on the dry side, it was interesting. It was encouraging to see just how engaged and committed the members of the Commission are in the process. Also the broad depth of perceptions is going to make for some lively discussions in the future.

I’ll be updating this post throughout the day as time permits. Also, don’t forget to visit my resource page which I will also be updating as documents become available.

At 4pm in Suite 850 of the Shelby County Administration building at 160 N. Main (Source), the Memphis and Shelby County Metropolitan Government Charter Commission will meet for the third time (as far as I can tell).

You probably haven’t read much about this, because there hasn’t been much to tell. The first meeting was strictly an organizational meeting to help get the ball rolling.

The second meeting established the leadership of the Commission by electing Julie Ellis Chair, Andre Fowlkes vice-Chair, and Lou Etta Burkins Secretary.

This meeting will get the ball rolling on the stuff of actually crafting a charter from scratch.

The agenda for the meeting is heavier than it looks. In reality, everything about this is heavier than it looks, and likely, not particularly interesting to the casual observer. Studying current governmental structures, and the structures of other governments is the kind of mundane task that goobs like myself revel in, but not most people. The reality is that everyone on the Commission has to have a good understanding of where we are now, in order to come up with a plan to get where we’re going. There will likely be some dissent on the way.

In any case, I intend to be there, toothpicks in eyelids after my 26-hour day that starts around 7pm tonight and doesn’t really end until I get off the plane Thursday afternoon.

I’ve started a page that will eventually have more information about the goings on of the Metro Charter Commission. I’ll add more as more information becomes available.

Yesterday in the Eye on City Hall blog Zack McMillan poses the question ”Has Memphis Ever Had a ‘Great’ Mayor? Can AC Become One?”. It’s an interesting read that lists many of the challenges facing our newly elected Mayor as well as the failures of past Mayors. From the post:

Generations of Memphians have taken history from University of Memphis historian Charles Crawford, and he often makes the point that the problems that plague Memphis, with roots dating back to the 19th Century, are so vast and complicated that even the best and boldest civic administration would have difficulty solving them. Each subsequent generation of Memphians — and by Memphians we include all those who live in the eight-county Memphis metroplitan area — wants to believe that problems just shot up out of the soil, but in fact things like deep-seated poverty, violent crime, lackluster universal public education and a low-wage low-skill job base have been here for a long time.

“He will run into the traditional Memphis problems that previous mayors have run into and that I won’t say are impossible but are intractable,” Crawford said in a story we have running today. “Some of these things are outside the capacity of anyone as mayor to solve.”

You know, on several levels, he’s right. First of all the …” deep-seated poverty, violent crime, lackluster universal public education and a low-wage low-skill job base”… is a problem that has faced Memphis for generations. Even our own city history page lists many of these problems. Further, Crawford’s assertion that many in the metro area want to believe that these issues “just shot up out of the soil” couldn’t be more right. Many of these issues have been going on since the inception of Memphis, which is not to say that solving them is hopeless, but that it presents challenges that are far greater than even we may recognize.

Which gets me back to the point of the post I referenced at the beginning. In order for us to determine whether a Mayor or community leader has been “great”, we have to define what “greatness” is. If greatness is fixing everything, then no, we have had no great Mayors. But as the post rightly points out:

“Some of these things are outside the capacity of anyone as mayor to solve.”

So, if these things are outside the capacity of any mayor to solve, then what really defines greatness in the position of Mayor of Memphis?

The truth of the matter is, under this standard no leader of any stripe could be considered truly great. No matter how many problems any leader might solve, there are a hundred more lurking around the corner waiting to be discovered. Taking this reality into account, how does a leader achieve “greatness” in the face of generational challenges that are, to a large degree, outside of his or her power to fully address?

Think back to the beginning of our nation. While the Declaration of Independence may spell out the foundation of American philosophy, and the Constitution may spell out the rights of citizens and the responsibility of government, the truth of the matter is that what we think of as “freedom” today, wasn’t the freedom of the late 18th Century. Just look at the right to vote. Early on many states had restrictive rules about voting. Unless you were white, male, and a land owner, you didn’t necessarily have the right to vote (Source). Over time, as the nation matured, these rules changed, and became less restrictive, removing property restrictions and other hurdles, then allowing women to vote, and eventually guaranteeing the right to “All Americans of voting age” (though for some, particularly those who have served their time in jail, having their right to vote restored is still a huge hurdle).

Of course, none of these changes came thanks to any one individual. It took the voices and actions of thousands of people working for a common goal to extend these rights to the disenfranchised. And while each of these accomplishments are “great”, with every victory came the recognition of another form of disenfranchisement. A good example of this is protecting the choices of the voters through legislation like the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act which is a long way away from early attempts to bring voting rights to the disenfranchised and is still being fought out.

That said, I don’t think anyone would say that those who fought for voting rights for the disenfranchised weren’t working toward something “great” regardless of whether it was for women, minorities, or the poor. While achieving these goals certainly is great, it isn’t the achieving that defines greatness to me, it’s the willingness to stand up and fight for the betterment of those around you. Inspiring that action in yourself and your fellow man is the definition of greatness. Recognizing that the fight is continually ongoing and continuing work on the big goal, long after the little goal is achieved is the definition of greatness.

So, under that definition what would a great Memphis Mayor be? A great Memphis Mayor would be someone who inspired the public at large into positive action…a Mayor who, through their advocacy, action, and attention worked for the betterment of the city and those who have been wanting for generations. A great Mayor would connect the sick with the healthy, the poor with the wealthy, and the undereducated with the scholarly for the benefit of both sides of the equation in every instance.

True lasting solutions cannot be dictated, they have to be discovered. Connecting people of all stripes and backgrounds is the way to discover our individual and societal solutions. Removing the barriers of class, race and God knows what else, and encouraging people to discover the humanity of their neighbors is the way to transformational change that raises tides and lifts all boats.

So I’ll ask again, what would a great Memphis Mayor be? Well, solving all our problems certainly would qualify, but we all know that’s highly unlikely. How about we start with the small goal? Using the office to bring people together, opening up the lines of communication and helping nurture a community wide conversation that lead to community wide action would start a Mayor down the path of greatness.

Will this be AC’s legacy? Only time will tell.