- (female announcer) Production funding for Behind the Headlines is made possible in part by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund, and by viewers like you, thank you.

- City Elections, the legislature, and much more, tonight, on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian.

Thanks for joining us.

We are joined tonight by a roundtable of journalists, including Toby Sells, news editor at The Memphis Flyer.

Thanks for being here.

- Thank you, sir.

- Julia Baker, who covers public safety for us at The Daily Memphian.

Thank you for being here again.

- Thank you.

- Along with Bill Dries, reporter with The Daily Memphian.

We'll start with, there's so much news going on, and we haven't done a roundtable in a bit anyway, but Bill, let's start with an update on the city elections, and the mayor's race, and the City Council races.

We have done now, what, six interviews with the major candidates for mayor.

Next week will be former Mayor Herenton.

The week after that will be Floyd Bonner.

Prior to that, we've done, and I'm gonna screw it up, Karen Camper, Frank Colvett, who has since dropped out.

JW Gibson, Michelle McKissick, Van Turner, and Paul Young.

All those are available on wkno.org, and the Daily Memphian site.

We've got extensive coverage and profiles and candidate questionnaires, of those same seven, eight candidates that I just mentioned.

We are what?

See, early voting begins September 15th.

The election day is October 5th.

Your take on where we are.

- I think we're in the most critical part of the campaign, and make no mistake about it, this ballot has been dominated by the race for mayor, to such an extent that the 13 City Council races have really kind of lived in the shadow of the mayor's race.

Some of that is as expected.

We have not had a mayor's race, without an incumbent seeking re-election, with the exception of the special election in 2009, since 1982.

So it's been a while since we've been at this stage.

I think that what you're gonna see in this two-week period leading up to early voting and during that two weeks, are some major shifts by some of the candidates trying to make something happen for them, in what's actually a pretty close race, I think, among the seven major contenders.

- And I should note we haven't been able to do City Council coverage here, just 'cause there's so many races, there's so many districts and so on.

But, Bill, I believe Sam Hardiman and others at Daily Memphian have done profiles of all those races.

Those are also available on dailymemphian.com.

Are there any other, I do this every year, well, sometimes three times a year, with every cycle.

Are there any other city elections on this ballot or those- - No.

- Just those two?

- It is-- - There's no surprises on the ballot that- - Right.

- For me or others.

- This is the mayor's race, and all 13 of the seats on the City Council.

We don't have a city court clerk's race because that is no longer an elected position, by City Council action.

We do not have races for city court judges until four years from now.

- All right, well again, all that coverage you can get past, you know, interviews with all these candidates.

The debate we did, all that's on KNO, as well as Daily Memphian, and a lot of writing from Bill and Sam and others.

I wanna, we just recently, I'll go to you Toby.

We had a special session at the legislature on a topic that is very, very front and center in the mayor's race, which is, it was, the session was specific to guns, but you know, it came out of the shooting at the school in Nashville.

Give us your take on how that session went.

- Well, first, this thing has already been postmortem by others.

Well, you know, better than I could hear.

It wrapped up last week.

It was a short session, really super-focused on public safety, gun safety, whatever you wanna call it, different groups call it different things.

From what you heard from so many people was that very little got done up there.

The governor called this thing many months ago and then, you know, set it for August.

And by the time we got there, there were, you know, hundreds of bills filed from the House and Senate members.

And then what we were left with, after a tumultuous special session up there, were four bills that were only allowed through by the Tennessee State Senate.

You saw even House and Senate Republicans, really, infighting there about, you know, how many ideas, how many bills that we could see get through the legislature.

Ended up with four, we had three bills of substance that made it through and one bill, basically, to pay for the entire thing that we got there.

And I think what we ended up with were a bill that gave some sales tax reprieve to gun locks and gun safety devices and things like that.

We are gonna get a special or a new annual report from the TBI on human trafficking, and then the other one just kind of codified Governor Lee's already existing executive order on background checks.

And so, that's really all the legislation that we got from this thing that was super-hyped on public safety.

What I wrote about a couple of weeks ago for The Flyer was really what showed as the Republican super-majority.

They just really showed their dominance up there in so many ways as how many bills can get through the legislature, what are we even gonna talk about while we're up here?

And then they did it in other ways.

You know, they silenced even a House member Justin Jones, who they had done that before, they were silencing members of the crowd, they had state troopers come in and carry away folks that were holding signs.

The sign thing is a whole other thing that went through up there.

At one point, House Speaker Cameron Sexton, he cleared the galleries, you know, of people protesting or yelling down and trying to clap or do whatever.

So, the story that I wrote really was about the GOP flex up on Capitol Hill up there.

Looking forward, I can only imagine that we are gonna have a lot of those bills that didn't get taken up.

There was a lot of bills that were reviewed in committee, but then by the time they ended up, you know, Senate and House, you know, talking about those, which ones are we gonna do on those four were there.

Lots of great ideas I think left on the table.

Hopefully, those will come back in January and we'll have to, kind of, see how it goes from there.

- It's interesting, I was looking back, we did a poll at The Daily Memphian back, I think it was in May, maybe it was April, about crime and attitudes around crime and what people want.

And I know there are people watching the show saying, "Well, I'm glad there were not a lot of changes to guns."

You know, that's their point of view.

But it was really striking when we did that poll, that in the City of Memphis, 86% of the respondents... And this is a third party scientific poll, eighty-six percent wanted at least modest gun control, and of them, about half wanted dramatic controls on guns.

But even when you go to the county, which is, you know, people think of as being, you know, maybe much more conservative, it was still 73% of the people in the county outside of Memphis who wanted at least modest gun control, and about half of that, a little over half of that wanting dramatic controls.

And so Brent Taylor, Senator Brent Taylor, has been on the show I think with us, Bill, talking about, you know, the challenge of being... And he's a Republican from the parts of Memphis in Germantown and so on, being a Republican up there who would like some quote-unquote "common sense gun controls, some permitting," but he just doesn't find any really affinity among many of his other senators to get that kind of, even what I think most people would say would be modest controls in place.

- Well, he and John Gillespie each proposed bills that did not make the cut during the special session that would've dealt in some way with gun control.

So, yeah, this was very...

This was not simply Democrats versus Republicans, this was Republicans versus Republicans- - Right, yeah.

- To a major degree.

- We'll bring you, Julia.

I couldn't actually believe this, but it makes sense that we're coming up on the third anniversary of Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy, having been elected.

We also just went through the tragic, you know, one year anniversary of Eliza Fletcher's kidnapping and the whole, the kind of mass travelling shooting that was Ezekiel Kelly.

It was quite a year, is we mark those events and as we go into a second year of Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy, what are you looking at?

What are you covering?

- You know, DA Mulroy, he's launched a few changes into the DA's office.

One that's probably most current is his office is expediting the release of officer involved fatal shootings.

There was a 19-year-old who was shot in June or he was killed during a traffic stop in June with the Shelby County Sheriff Officer, and that was released just a couple weeks ago.

So, that's something that, you know, we're seeing an expedite, you know, we're not used to seeing two months.

And then, the TBI has recently concluded an investigation in Jaylin McKenzie, who was killed before Tyre Nichols in December.

So, that's probably more about normal.

It takes probably between a few months into a year, but I think we're hopefully going to see more expedited, you know, videos.

- Right, the other one that... And we've had DA Mulroy on at least twice since he's been elected, which we appreciate immensely because he is been under fire or criticism or just questions about issues around bail reform, bail setting.

We did a really good interview with him some months ago, not for anything I did, but just where he walked through, he is a former law professor, how bail is set, how it isn't, and then we have, sort of, the informal editorial board of The Daily Memphian sat down with the head of the judicial commissioners probably a month ago now.

And we have a big Q&A coming out, I think in the next week or so, and then we have information about all the judicial commissioners, which are not picked by the DA but are very much a part of this criticism or these questions people have around the DA's office.

Why is bail not set higher?

Why are people released when they're released?

So one, I would just point people to Daily Memphian.

In the next week or so, you'll have this big look in Q&A at the work of the judicial commissioners, how it works, who these people are.

But also DA Mulroy has been, sort of, under fire and I don't know, do you see him changing as he goes into a second year in terms of the questions and concerns people have, rightly or wrongly, about some people being released for very little bail or released with very long records of prior offenses.

- Right.

I think there have been a lot of misconceptions about that.

Plenty of people are under the misconception that, you know, the DA's office is who sets the bail, but what they do is they recommend bail and so does the defense attorney, and then the judge or the judicial commissioner, ultimately sets the bail depending on what process we're in.

And if it's, you know, a suspect getting into jail, the DA's office and the defense attorney are not part of that process of recommending bail.

So, ultimately, that is up to whoever the judicial officer is.

You know, we've seen DA Mulroy, you know, even attempt to revoke bail.

Chase Harris, who was accused in the Huey's shooting back in, I think it was April.

DA Mulroy, you know, he filed a motion to revoke that bail so I think we might see some more things like that in the near future.

- Any other thoughts on DA Mulroy's first year, Bill or Toby?

- Yeah, I mean, what this revolves around is the basic presumption that someone who is arrested by the police, someone who is charged, is innocent until proven guilty.

In the past, that hasn't always been reflected in the decisions that were made.

So now, the system is changing under the threat of a lawsuit by different groups.

And it's proving to be a difficult concept to enforce when it comes to the machinations on this.

Basically, the judges make the decision, the judicial commissioners make a part of the decision, and that is what is at play here.

For all of the talk about judicial reform, criminal justice reform, this is probably the most profound and yet the simplest part of that whole equation, I think.

- And what Bill says is absolutely right.

I just want special note to anybody on Nextdoor or on these Facebook groups out there.

DA Mulroy didn't make this up himself.

He didn't bring it into office with him.

He is just the person that was there at the same time this lawsuit was going through.

The lawsuit, the crux of it was, basically, we don't want people sitting in jail because you can't afford to pay bail.

And they wanted a another level of a context to be thrown in there when they're looking at setting your bail and you see so many people, you know, and they're seeing these folks get out of 201 almost the same day.

I understand the frustration, but folks, it's not just him.

It's a lot of people that were pushing this thing and we've not yet settled into the system to really understand it and make it work just right.

- Yeah, former DA Amy Weirich, who is a Republican, she was also in support of that bail reform.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

Don't you think, I mean, I'm putting you in place of speculation, but we were just talking about the legislative session.

You know, in the last legislative session there were some proposals again, in many cases, from folks like Brent Taylor and John Gillespie.

There was one around blended sentencing for juveniles that gave a little more tools about who can get out, who can be treated as an adult, who can be monitored longer.

I'm doing a bad job explaining that.

But don't you think this bail, I mean, if we bet $3 that bail reform and bail setting is gonna get, if not some kind of change passed at the legislature, there's gonna be proposals around that and probably tougher on crime-type proposals, right?

- If I had a crystal ball, I would say all signs point to yes, I guess that's an eight ball, but I think, so what we saw from the legislature were mostly tough on crime bills, nothing that went for guns.

I mean, they kind of took that out at the very beginning, said "We're not gonna focus on that.

We're gonna focus on what we think we can control."

Tough on crime was top of the list.

- I know that, you know, Senator Taylor, he's wanting to bring in a bill on blended sentencing again, which did not pass during the special session or the one before that.

And Representative John Gillespie, he's working on a bill that would differentiate between an aggravated assault with a gun and without a gun.

It would change the sentence on that.

- Yeah.

We'll shift gears from crime and public safety, we might come back to a few things on that, but to Tom Lee Park officially opened, the new Tom Lee Park officially opened.

I know you were down, I think you were there.

I was there at one point.

You were writing about it.

We all wrote about it.

You wanna start, Toby?

It's been not without controversy to get here.

- That's right.

I can't remember exactly how many years this thing has been in the works, but as soon as Memphis River Park's Partnership, kind of, took over from the Riverfront Development Corporation, Tom Lee Park was one of the first things they wanted to get done.

They did some smaller projects that were amazing, and this one was kind of this huge effort they wanted to undertake, ended up being $63 million.

I remember a long time ago going down to Tom Lee Park and inside they had a model from the architects, the landscape architects, that showed what a new Tom Lee Park could look like.

And I remember at the time, my editor at the time Bruce Van Winegar, and said, "I was in there at the same time, "the Memphis in May guys were in there looking at it "and they were just raising eyebrows, scratching heads, "and, you know, and thought, 'Oh, this might not work out.'"

And early on, the, the folks at the Park's Partnership, they weren't worried about Memphis in May, they thought, you know, we can figure out a way to make this work together and didn't think it was gonna be much of a controversy.

As we went on, we figured out, that has been the central controversy of the entire thing, how to make it work.

Since then, we've had Memphis in May in the new park, you know, the Music Fest went one way, Barbecue Fest went the other way, and it's left now people wondering what are the future of those festivals in the park.

I think there's a way to work it out.

But again, I'm, you know, I'm not the guy to ask about them.

- We had Carol Coletta on the show in the last month, the head of Memphis River Parks Partnership, and she said, you know, her take was that... Bill, I think you and I did that interview, that the Music Fest went really well and you could see how that could work and maybe even work better.

Barbecue Fest had not gone as well, but she was not saying it couldn't happen.

The Memphis in May folks, I mean, there's a big bill that's gotta be covered for damages to the park.

I know the city's covering part of that, but they have not been, we've asked to have folks from Memphis in May on the show numerous times and they generally haven't wanted to.

Jim Holt was on the show many, many years ago now.

It's kind of, we're at a weird point, I think.

And just in the last, what, a week ago, two weeks ago, the Chamber of Commerce took over the international portion of Memphis in May and is now gonna run that whole program, make it more celebrating our country, but also an economic development kind of endeavor.

What's next, do you think for Music Fest and Barbecue Fest?

- I think what's next in that specific relationship is that Memphis in May makes this decision that they have said they have started down the road on, and that is possibly a new location, almost certainly for the barbecue contest, but possibly for the music festival as well.

Memphis in May usually has an annual meeting every August.

That is where they talk about, first of all, the financials of the festival, whether they lost money or made money on the festival.

And then they talk about future steps for the festival, which, the festival has not been the same over the years.

It started in 1977, if you could go back in time and go to the Memphis in May festival, the month of events in 1977, you would be amazed because the Sunset Symphony, which is no longer there, would be the main event and the Beale Street Music Festival would be on a much smaller scale and it wouldn't all be in Tom Lee Park.

So, all that to say, that the August annual meeting of Memphis in May didn't happen.

And whenever it happens, it will be watched pretty closely to see what the next moves are there.

- Yeah, Toby.

- Just to tie the knot on this, I also wanna give, tell those folks on Nextdoor and Facebook groups that the brand new- - That's what they do.

- I know.

- I know you're sweating.

- You know where I spend my time.

- Under your skin, you know.

- My secrets have been revealed, but the specs for the park were given by Memphis in May.

They said, "This is what we need to make successful festivals in the park," and the Park's Partnership built around that.

- And that was part of the mediation.

- That's exactly right.

- And the mayor has said that, I think on this show, he said it elsewhere, Carol Coletta said, "I mean it was a mediation.

These were the specs, how many booths?"

And, but, so it's a little unclear what has happened, or what happens next.

We'll switch to the zoo and in some, many people have likened, you know, the controversy over Tom Lee Park to the old controversy over the zoo, and parking on the Greensward and Overton Park.

Full disclosure, I was a board member and at one time a board chair during a lot of that fight for the Overton Park Conservancy, I'm no longer part of the board.

The zoo, it's not a happy thing.

It's not a good thing.

They announced layoffs this week.

I think we all covered it, but Toby, you wanted to talk about that.

They laid off some 25 part-time people?

Something about that.

- That's right.

I think a lot of education people, they let go over there for different reasons, you read different things.

But I think the most troubling thing about that was that these layoffs were due to, you know, some financial troubles and they didn't outline what those financial troubles were for the zoo.

But anytime you see an institution like that having troubles, it's worrisome.

I got there 990s, went back over, you know, three or four years worth of their finances over there and just profit and loss.

That's not how they call it in nonprofit world, but their finances are erratic over there.

They'll have years of, you know, well they'll make some money.

They'll have years where they lose $3 million.

They'll have years where they, you know, put up a big substantial revenue number and it's been all over the place.

I have no idea how zoo revenues work and I'm sure that that might be, you know, true to form.

But it's different than a lot of other nonprofits, I'll say.

So it'll be interesting to watch what happens with them next.

- Yeah, and we should note, too, I mean COVID, for any kind of attraction- - That's right.

- Like that was just terrible.

- Yes.

- I mean they really... And that was, you know, no one's fault, obviously.

I mean, restaurants, all kinds of entertainment venues really suffered during COVID.

- And the zoo was at a pretty critical point during the pandemic.

There was a point during the pandemic, at the high point of the pandemic, when the zoo was actually considering dispersing its animals to other places that could care for them.

That's how bad it was.

And so it's not hard to believe that there could have been some financial shockwaves still reverberating from that.

- You bet.

- With five, four or five minutes left here, I'll stick with, I don't know, controversies in public spaces?

I think you know, we can do, that's our theme.

But the Brooks Museum, which has begun construction downtown of its new location, and its 2025 or so planned to move from Overton Park into the new big facility downtown.

We had Zoe Kahr, the executive director on recently, in the last month or so, to talk about that move, talk about the park.

They had been in mediation.

It's a show of mediation about... Friends of our Riverfront and the Overton heirs.

I'm gonna let Bill talk about all that.

But there was enough of a...

There's enough going on.

A suit was filed that could have stopped construction.

It has not stopped construction.

And at that point, I'm gonna let Bill explain what's going on with this lawsuit.

- This was a- - To stop construction.

- This was about a 280-page complaint that was filed in Chancery Court.

There will be a, probably, a very well attended hearing coming up on September 20th on this.

Much of the filing deals with this 200-year history, going back to the city founders and what they wanted in terms of a public promenade that the Brooks Museum site downtown would be a part of.

There's a lot to sort out there.

There's a lot that's happened in 200 years, including the whole thing about [Eric and Toby laugh] do you use some- - Understatement of the show.

- Yeah.

[Eric laughs] Are you able to set aside some public use of land in perpetuity?

It's gonna be a pretty technical argument.

It's gonna be a really interesting lawsuit.

- The heirs have tried to stop the river walk, the bluff walk, right?

That was some decades ago, which is the walk sort of above Tom Lee Park become full circle and failed at that.

Is that right?

- Well, the heirs have talked about that in the past and in the lawsuit, they actually make a distinction between the bluff walk and the promenade, which is larger.

They're both kind of tied together on this.

I think, I'm still kinda checking 'cause you're dealing with 200 years here, but I believe this is the first time that the heirs have actually gone to court over this.

They have been a part of discussions like a second convention center hotel at the Mud Island garage.

They got involved in that, but there was no lawsuit filed.

I think this is the first time that this has actually gone to a judge.

- With just a couple of minutes, I wanna circle back to Julia.

We're talking about downtown.

There was a terrible incident downtown some weeks ago with shooting and, you know, people at 1, 2, 3:00 in the morning doing burnouts and it was very troubling.

They've since put a downtown kind of security plan in place.

Talk about how that's going.

- Yeah, it's, you know, I actually drove through downtown recently and saw it and it's quite a maze to go through but you know, it's kind of early, but it does seem like what incidents we are seeing are right outside that zone where MPD's implementing its safety plan.

So, you know, it's unclear as to whether it's pushing it out, but, you know, we'll see in the coming months how that goes 'cause it's gonna be a permanent fixture with MPD and the Sheriff's Office, you know, monitoring downtown.

- Just a minute left here.

What I'll do, I'll remind everyone that... Because the issue of the moment is election day, city elections both, all the City Council races?

Is that right, Bill?

- All 13 City Council seats.

- All 13 City Council seats, as well as the mayor's race.

We talked about the top, that election day is October 5th.

Early voting begins September 15th.

We've done extensive coverage, one-on-one interviews, with most of the mayoral candidates.

Former Mayor Herenton comes up next week.

We prerecorded that.

It was a very, very interesting interview, and then Floyd Bonner, Sheriff Floyd Bonner, another of the leading candidates, he'll be in two weeks from when this airs.

We've done Paul Young, Michelle McKissick, Karen Camper, JW Gibson, Van Turner, Frank Colvett, who's since dropped out of the race, I think I covered everyone.

We also did a debate with four or five of those candidates.

That's available at wkno.org or on the Daily Memphian site.

And although we have not done City Council shows, 'cause there's just too many races and too many candidates, we do have content on Daily Memphian about those races that Bill and I believe, Sam Hardiman and others have put out there.

And Flyer, I'm sure as well, is doing coverage.

The Commercial Appeal, I know is doing coverage of the race.

It's a big race.

It's the biggest race.

If you haven't registered to vote, it's too late, right?

September 5th, so as we record this, it will have been too late to vote.

All that stuff is available at dailymemphian.com, at wkno.org.

That is all the time we have this week.

Join us again next week for our interview with Willie Herenton.

If you missed any of the show tonight, you can get this show also at wkno.org or you can download it as a podcast from iTunes, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks very much and we'll see you next week.

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