Council overrides veto, keeps police residency off ballot
Less than an hour after Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland vetoed a bill that took a public safety referendum off the November ballot, the Memphis City Council overrode that veto.
There will be no referendum regarding police residency on the ballot this year.
On Tuesday evening, Strickland vetoed the ordinance the city council passed two weeks ago, striking a potential November referendum on whether public safety employees could live outside Shelby County limits.
“The ordinance strips the right of the Citizens of Memphis to decide on the issues of public safety and crime prevention ... Let the public vote,” Strickland wrote in his notice to council announcing the veto. It was his first veto since taking office in 2016.
Shortly after the veto became public, the council began discussing it and readied itself to vote on whether to override it, which required a seven-vote majority.
That seven-vote majority came quickly and along the exact same lines that the vote to take the measure off the ballot followed two weeks ago. The vote to override the veto showed the rift among city leadership about how to combat violent crime, not just about whether public safety employees should live in Shelby County.
Those voting to override the veto were: Michalyn Easter-thomas; JB, Smiley Jr.; Rhonda Logan; Jamita Swearengen; Patrice Robinson; Martavius Jones; and Cheyenne Johnson. The voting against: J. Ford Canale; Chase Carlisle; Frank Colvett; Edmund Ford Sr.; Worth Morgan; and Jeff Warren.
Two visions of Memphis policing face-off
The tight 7-6 vote to override the veto reflected the deep divide between a slight majority on council versus the remaining council members and Strickland. The former has expressed skepticism about further investment in policing while the latter maintains that that is the only way to get violent crime under control and help Memphis grow.
For the second time in two weeks, Strickland, and the six members of council allied with him on this issue, were dealt a narrow defeat.
After the veto, Strickland said, in a statement, “A council majority stripped the public of its right to vote.”
Carlisle, a vote against overriding the veto, said in a text message, “It’s a shame the voice of the people continues to be silenced by the very same individuals who ran on platforms of ensuring the voices of the people would be heard. There is no greater survey of the citizens than a vote.”
The argument of letting the public decide came before the veto override vote, too, when Morgan also described the decision to take the residency referendum off the ballot as voter suppression and denying the public the right to vote.
Smiley countered that, saying, “Voter suppression is what Harold Ford, Sr. went through,” a reference to former Memphis Congressman Harold Ford, Sr. — the first Black congressman from Tennessee.
He said those voting to take the residency referendum off the ballot were “voting the will of their constituency.”
In an interview after the meeting, Smiley said, “It just says that the council decided to stand by its decision. We’ve heard from numerous people within our districts requesting that this item be removed from the ballot .... ”
Smile noted that other council members, who support having a public referendum, were listening to their constituents as well and the vote reflects a civic divide.
“Councilman Morgan and Councilman Colvett, they’re listening to their constituents saying ‘they want it on the ballot’ Ultimately, when you have a city like ours, broken up like ours, you’re going to have council members disagree. I think this is just an issue that reasonable minds can disagree on,” Smiley said.
When the residency referendum came off the ballot on Aug. 4, Robinson, the council chairwoman, was a key swing vote. She had voted to put the measure on the ballot in December 2019.
She said unrest in Memphis and nationwide does not make it the right time for residency to be on the ballot. She also said it’s unrealistic that the city administration could hire 700 to 800 more police officers by the end of Strickland’s term in 2023 — studies touted by the administration suggest Memphis could need up to 2,800 officers.
And, she said, it’s time to find efficiencies at the Memphis Police Department and examine what duties officers have that could be handled by public safety technicians.
“Have we actually done anything? It’s not my responsibility, it’s theirs...[the administration] to look at process improvement within the police department. All they do is ask the citizens for more money and the city for more money,” Robinson said. “What process have you initiated to save us some money and get us the biggest bang for our buck?”
Robinson, who represents much of Whitehaven in District 3, acknowledged violent crime and the cost of it.
“They are killing these babies. That’s got to stop,” Robinson said of the violence in a city where 20-plus children have been the victims of homicide this year. “But we can’t make that happen because we don’t know when they are going to do it? Some things you can’t prevent.”
She said more city programming and better prospects for young people could help prevent it.
“If those young men, or whoever does that crazy stuff, had a job and they were busy, they wouldn’t have time to do it. They wouldn’t think about doing it...,” Robinson said. “We’ve got to have that conversation in our community and we gotta be more data-driven and we got to have greater expectations.”
Samuel Hardiman covers Memphis city government and politics for The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached by email at samuel.hardiman@commercialappeal.com or followed on Twitter at @samhardiman.