For the second time in less than a month, intruders — in this
case, members of the local news media — were given free rein of
sorts in the formerly off-limits area of the 7th floor at City Hall.
For those uninitiated in the arcana of
Memphis city government, the 7th floor was, and is, the home base of
the city’s mayor. It became so early in the 17 1/2-year tenure of
Willie Herenton, who moved his offices from a lower floor. For the last
several of those years, it was strictly off-limits to anyone not
expressly invited to enter what the incumbent clearly regarded as a
sanctuary.
On Friday before last, in the course of an open house for the whole
of City Hall, newly installed mayor pro tem Myron Lowery allowed
members of the public at large to tour the mayoral office suite. On
Tuesday, selected media managers were asked up to the 7th floor, where
they were fed sandwiches, chips, and cookies and were chatted up by
Lowery and several of his ranking staff people.
What did we learn at school? Well, press secretary Donna Davis, CAO
Jack Sammons, and Lowery himself all promised not only an open-door
policy but what Sammons — a former longtime councilman hired, as
he put it, to “run the business” — likened to the
customer-friendly efforts of WalMart and FedEx. For example, requests
for information would be processed the same-day, shipped out
immediately or, if unusually complex, overnight.
Lowery repeated his well-known credo that all press questions
deserve on-the-record answers. That doesn’t guarantee perfect results,
as those with direct experience of the longtime city councilman and
recent council chairman can testify.
Asked if he had made a mistake in trying to fire city attorney
Elbert Jefferson within minutes of becoming mayor, for example, Lowery,
who had just promised to admit all mistakes, said, no, he hadn’t. “I’ve
done it, and I’m not going to look back,” he said, expressing
sentiments, if not the exact lingo, that his predecessor might have
used.
But Lowery was forthcoming in dishing out background and promising
updates on the “big three” issues he’d promised to expedite during his
two months or so in office: Fairgrounds development, Bass Pro’s intent
regarding the Pyramid, and the status of the city’s Beale Street
litigation with Performa Entertainment CEO John Elkington. On the
latter score, while Lowery repeated his desire for a “settlement” of
the complex financial issues involved, Sammons the diplomat preferred
to use the more ambiguous term “exit strategy.”
All kinds of good dish about the prior regime was doled out by the
mayoral team — accounts of paperwork left incomplete since April,
of consultants consulting on other consultants, of a “two-member law
firm” on a $50,000 monthly retainer.
Underlying the conversation was everybody’s knowledge that, in the
brief time remaining before the October 15th date for the special
mayoral election, habits of candor and dispatch will have minimal time
to implant themselves in City Hall.
But it’s interesting that Lowery and his team intend to make the
effort, and we’ll gladly join the rest of the media in holding them to
their promise.