Awaiting the Supreme Test

t was the monthly meeting of the Southeast Shelby County Republican Club, and, after the group's usual pot luck supper at Germantown's Pickering Community Center, Memphis city councilman John Bobango addressed the score or so people present on the subject of the current annexation-incorporation controversy.

As one would have expected of the quietly conscientious Bobango, he spoke succinctly, moderately, and with all due detail -- more or less in defense of Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton's "Formula for Fairness" proposal for grappling with the new stresses in city/county relations caused by Chapter 98, the 1997 General Assembly measure which has caused a proliferation of suburban incorporation attempts in Shelby County.

What was unexpected about last Tuesday night's affair at the Pickering was some of the reaction from the audience -- which, like any group of outer-Shelby Republicans selected at random, might be expected to have a decided pro-incorporation cast. And for the most part it did.

But club member Randy Hendon, a CPA and erstwhile anti-tax activist who can be depended on to hold the point for most conservative issues and causes, rose to express his indignation about the way Chapter 98 got passed. "Folks, this is the most important change in our lifetime, and nobody here knew anything about it until after the fact. There were no advance hearings. This was a violation of our right to self-determination," said Hendon.

As it happens, Hendon's remarks were an appropriate preamble to a judgment which came Thursday from Special Fayette County Chancellor F. Lloyd Tatum, who pronounced Chapter 98 invalid because its legislative caption -- the summary of its contents given to legislators -- was so misleading as to have explicitly violated a provision of the state constitution. (Tatum added another objection: that the law did not have the three public readings required by the constitution.)

That made the battle over Chapter 98 a tie game, since Nashville Chancellor Irwin Kilcrease had declined to find the law unconstitutional in September. (Kilcrease appended no opinion to his ruling, however.) Ironically enough, the mixed rulings mean just now that Chapter 98 does not apply in Fayette County -- site of Hickory Wythe, the community Lt. Gov. John Wilder was trying to protect when he steered the bill's passage in April -- but still has currency elsewhere, notably in Shelby County, where 11 suburban communities have announced plans to incorporate through the relaxed provisions of Chapter 98, and six have referenda scheduled for December 9th.

Memphis Mayor W.W. Herenton was predictably elated at Tatum's ruling, but Shelby County Election Commission chairman O.C. Pleasant issued a pointed reminder that, unless a judicial injunction should intervene, next month's incorporation referenda will go on as scheduled.

Pleasant, a Democrat, and ranking Republican member David Lillard said it was unlikely any new referenda could be scheduled before the General Assembly reconvenes in January. A special legislative committee began hearings on annexation-incorporation this week in Nashville, and some action -- either to rescind Chapter 98 or to elaborate on it -- will no doubt be proposed during the first week of the new legislative session.

All principals were suddenly looking for a resolution of the impasse by the state Supreme Court, which can, if it wishes, "reach down" and take the several pending Chapter 98 cases for definitive adjudication. Justice Janice Holder, though noting that she spoke unofficially, said Saturday that she and her colleagues will no doubt be discussing their options "within the month."

* The Shelby County Board of Equalization: That sounds like some obscure agency charged with maintaining standards of weights and measures, and it's certainly one reason why public attention to the board's doings is, at best, on again-off again.

If the agency went by some such name as "The Property Tax Appeal Board" -- a title that adequately describes the functions of a board which, after all, has the power to vote tax reductions for property-owning appellants -- its Byzantine intrigues might attract more attention.

The latest complication concerns another battle in the unending struggle between the board majority and, it would seem, much of the rest of Shelby County government -- including the assessor's office and the county commission. Last spring the commission voted a time limit on what it saw as the board's procrastination on hearing property evaluation appeals, and Mayor Rout's administration maneuvered board director Pamela Rains (technically a Mississippi resident) out of office, replaced her with longtime county administrator Tom Stone, and added two new appointees to the board. (Suffice it to say that the whole dust-up was -- like everything else connected with the Board of Equalization -- a bit more involved.)

Part of the shakeup involved the commission's asking the state Board of Equalization to take over unheard appeals and to review the local board's activities. Among other things, that meant an audit by the local accounting firm of Watkins, Watkins, and Keenan -- one which included a request for the resumes of the eight-member local equalization board.

In a letter to board member Sam Pearson, who raised objections, Stone said, "I know things are mighty uncomfortable now, but I would like to correct something that a certain person [apparently tax appeals representative David Scruggs, who, like fellow tax rep Jerry Caruthers, has tangible influence with the board] is spreading around: never in a number of meetings with the mayor . . . have I heard him once say that he or anyone else should have any say in the board's decision-making authority. . . ."

Recently the Rout administration, in what Stone indicates was an economy move, relocated the county Board of Equalization from quarters in the 100 North Main Building to a space in the county administration building.

Bill Watkins, CEO of the accounting firm, is a former chairman of the Shelby County Republican Party who remains active in GOP activities and has long been a political ally of Mayor Rout.

"The fact is, our firm is well versed in this area, and that's why we were chosen," said Watkins, whose company is performing the auditing work for a fee, said Pearson, in the vicinity of $49,000.

Watkins said his company would prepare recommendations for presentation to the 1998 session of the Tennessee General Assembly, which oversees the equalization boards in each of the state's 95 counties.

In fact, partisan issues or those of conventional political allegiance may not apply to the controversy surrounding the Shelby County Board of Equalization, about whose activities and composition the County Commission's black Democrats and white Republicans -- famous otherwise for polarization -- have taken a similarly jaundiced view. The commission's vote was unanimous last spring to limit the board's period of deliberations and to temporarily turn its functions over to the state board (which, however, as Pearson has noted, has yet not heard any of the several thousand pending property-evaluation appeals in Shelby County).

As indicated, the commission also saw fit earlier this year to swap out some members of the board, but Caruthers' subsequent lobbying efforts in this year's session of the General Assembly got two new positions added, one for the city of Memphis, another for Collierville. And the latter was promptly filled by Dr. John Bennett, who had previously been dropped by the commission and was recently elected chairman when the board majority successfully ousted the commission-appointed chairman, realtor Greta Thompson.

As things now stand, Shelby County is entitled to make three appointees to the board, the City of Memphis three, and Bartlett, Collierville, and Germantown one each. Current membership is eight, since one of the Memphis appointees has not yet been made.

The 1997 "Good Guys" Awards

The Memphis Women's Political Caucus, which annually takes time to celebrate those specimens amongst the opposite sex whose efforts have been deemed unusually helpful, will do it again on Tuesday at the Ridgeway Inn.

This year's Good Guys Awards are as follows:

*Family Support: retired industrialist Jim Fri, for his support of the YWCA and Planned Parenthood;

*Health Care: Drs. Frank Ling and John Gayden, for general excellence in obstetric and gynecological services;

*Community Involvement: Rick Bray, former president of the Tennessee chapter of the National Organization of Women;

*Government: State Representative Larry Turner and Memphis city councilman John Vergos for their governmental support of women's issues;

*Courage: Assistant District Attorney General Steve Parker and FBI Special Agent Bill Castleberry, for their roles in the successful prosecution of former Dyersburg Chancellor David Lanier on charges of sexual harassment;

*Lifetime Achievement: Former U.S. Representative Harold Ford, cited for "an outstanding voting record on women and family issues during his 22 years in Congress."

Tickets for the event, which begins at 7 p.m., are $50.

The Ordeal of Darrell Catron

Darrell Catron, a Republican political activist and, until lately, a Shelby County employee, might be pardoned for believing that the sky is falling on him.

Catron, who is currently one of only three African Americans on the Shelby County GOP steering committee, is under attack from his party-mates for his support of a Democratic candidate for sheriff, former police director Melvin Burgess. Perhaps more ominously, four of his traffic tickets were listed among some 154 that were discovered last week to have been improperly deleted from the records of the City Court Clerk's office.

Coincidentally or not, Catron lost his job last week as a manager in the General Sessions Court Clerk's office. "We just thought we wanted to make a change," said Clerk Chris Turner, who volunteered no additional reasons.

Catron's close friend Calvin Williams, the County Commission's administrative assistant and another black on the GOP steering committee, wondered out loud Monday how it was that the name of Catron, alone of all those whose tickets were deleted, got leaked to the press. "I would hate to see a fall from grace by Darrell," said Williams.

But he, too, put some heat on. "I'm going to demand that he resign from Burgess' campaign. He needs to support the Republican candidates like every other steering-committee member," said Williams. If not, said local GOP chairman David Kustoff, he would move for Catron's ouster from the steering committee.

These latest difficulties are on top of a situation last summer which saw Catron, returning from a vacation to Mexico with Williams, arrested at the airport because of an outstanding warrant against him in Mississippi for bad checks. (The arrest was later expunged from the record when it was established that Catron, whose checkbook had been stolen months before, was innocent of any wrongdoing.)

Catron, just now without a job and likely quite soon to be without a party, could not be reached for comment.