- (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.

- The legislature moves to expel three members, a special advisor for Wanda Halbert, and much more tonight on Behind the Headlines.

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

Thanks for joining us.

I am joined by a roundtable of journalists this week.

Toby Sells is with the Memphis Flyer.

Thanks for being here again.

- Thank you, sir.

- Keely Brewer covers environmental and other issues for us at the Daily Memphian.

Thanks for being here.

- Happy to be here.

And Sam Hardiman covers politics, government, and all kinds of things for us at the Daily Memphian.

- Thanks.

- Thanks all for being here.

Bill is in court today, so Bill Dries couldn't be here, but we'll do our best without him.

We'll start with the big story of the legislator's move to expel three members, including Democrat Justin Pearson from Memphis.

That vote may have taken place by the time that we are recording this Thursday morning.

We can still talk through the issues and what led to this, but we don't know what the vote will be.

Maybe I'll start with you, Toby, on framing up how we got here, and it is now really national news, - It is.

- Which is a run of national news for Memphis.

- Absolutely, and it began nearly two weeks ago with the school shooting in Nashville at the Covenant School.

The issues of gun control immediately came out right after that.

That shooting left three children and three teachers dead there and, you know, caused protests in Nashville, calls for more gun control from students and everything, and there were immediate protests at the Capitol, and the protest was Thursday.

There were students inside the Capitol, outside the Capitol, and the ones inside were yelling things at the Republican lawmakers to hopefully get some movement on gun control happening there.

Three members of the House, Justin Pearson, Gloria Johnson from Knoxville, and Justin Jones from Nashville, they started to lead these protests from the floor using a megaphone and signs, you know, kind of egging them on, egging the protestors on.

They walked up to the speaker's well and started to lead the protest from there.

The speaker called it out of session, and they kind of held court up there for a few minutes.

This was enough for the House leader, Cameron Sexton, to say, "Y'all were out of order, "this goes against our rules, and we are going to move to expel you."

So these resolutions to expel all three of them came really quickly.

I think it was a surprise to many, though, how quickly, and, you know, to what level they took it.

There wasn't like a, you know, a sanction here or a slap on the wrist there.

Immediately stripped 'em of their committee assignments, took away all their access to the building, the garages, everything else, and so as we're talking today, we're still waiting to see how they're gonna vote on these expulsions up there and see what comes of this.

But yes, as you said, it's put us in the national spotlight for, you know, how we moved, what happened here, and then how quickly the retribution was.

- Yeah, Cameron Sexton, I think the day after, some days after, went on Fox News and said that the actions of the three were amounted to an insurrection, you know, referencing January 6th.

Others have said, "Look, there were no official reported violence.

"There was no arrests, no injuries, no property damage, no threats to overthrow the government," but, you know, state troopers were in there.

It was quite a scene, and, again, we don't know exactly how the legislature may vote right now.

Last year, was it that Katrina Robinson - That was right.

- In the state Senate was removed.

That was after she was indicted or- - She was convicted - She was convicted.

- Of a felony.

- So very, very, I think kind of not parallel situation.

Your take on the legislature on Justin Pearson, on any of it?

- Well, it's very clear.

I mean now, you know, speaking of national news, they're now being called to Tennessee Three, right?

And so what we're going to see whether or not they're expelled is a continued sort of, this is now rallying cry for, you know, discussions about gerrymandering because the Republican majority, super majority in the House does not need any Democratic votes here.

It's a 2/3 majority to expel someone from the House.

That's right, yeah.

- And so that- - Essentially for any reason.

- And, well, not any reason.

The state constitution outlines some rules along this, but it'll empowers the House to set its own rules, and so you can't be expelled twice for the same offense.

So Justin Pearson, if he were to somehow return to the legislature, the general assembly, could not be expelled a second time for what transpired.

And it's interesting to point out that Pearson wrote a letter to his colleagues on Monday that said, "I apologize for breaking the rules of the quorum," and he's referencing the megaphone, et cetera, but essentially makes his case as to why he should not be expelled and also makes the case, and he's made this case in interviews, really, across the media landscape, but for the gun control.

And so it will be interesting to see, and we'll know, and this will be obviously postdated by the time we talk about this, of does our state Republican party, you know, expel these three people and then sort of open up a wider conversation about gun control in the national spotlight in Tennessee further?

- Yeah.

And on that, in terms of the national spotlight, I mean, the White House press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that the Tennessee legislature and their actions amount to, quote, "shrugging in the face of another tragic school shooting," excuse me, "while our kids continue to pay the price."

And just on Wednesday, 200 schools around the country, including two, three high schools in Memphis, Crosstown, White Station, and Memphis Business Academy all had protests and gatherings and rallies, you know, saying, "Not one more, not another shooting," and the generation of kids who've grown up with a lot of school violence.

So I interrupted you, Toby.

- No, you didn't at all.

Just before we leave the expulsions, you know, reporters across the state have been tweeting, talking about back in 2019 when the allegations surfaced, rather, for Republican representative David Byrd, that he had had inappropriate sexual contact with some teen girls in the '80s.

Those allegations surfaced.

There were calls for him to be expelled.

At the time, the GOP did not move as quickly as they're moving now.

They said he's an elected official.

This is a really complex situation.

They paused, then they got an opinion from the Attorney General's Office, and they never moved to expel him.

So it's a different, different situation.

- Well, to your point, Toby, you know, former state senator Brian Kelsey, you know, was essentially allowed to resign a seat and not run for reelection when he, you know, was, you know, under indictment at the time, and he since changed his guilty plea for campaign finance violations and using straw donors.

And so right now, you have three representatives who broke the rules of order and used a bullhorn, and they're about to be expelled, and the, you know, state Republican party has not acted the same way when more serious allegations have been against some of their own.

- We'll move on from that specific issue, and, again, we're recording this Thursday morning, so we're maybe outta sync with the vote that happened.

We'll come back to some other State House issues a minute, but I wanna bring in Keely and talk about some of the stuff you've been working on.

One of the big stories, you and Toby as well at the Flyer, Sterilization Services, ETO, and frame that story for people who haven't been following it as much, and where are we with that debate?

- Yeah, it's a story that really started late last summer.

EPA released a list of 23 facilities, these commercial sterilizers that, as they sterilize mostly medical equipment, they release a byproduct of ethylene oxide, which is a chemical that we knew they were releasing, but EPA learned that it's about 60 times more toxic than they previously believed.

So they identified a bubble in South Memphis based on the wind patterns and the times the pollutant's emitted every day of who might be at risk of developing cancer over a lifetime of exposure.

So they held a community meeting.

EPA came to town and partnered up with the Shelby County Health Department in October and told everyone about their risk.

The goal at that point was just to educate people about what the risk means.

In the months since then, the Memphis City Council has passed resolutions requesting that Sterilization Services of Tennessee voluntarily reduces its emissions.

Just a few weeks ago, the County Commission did the same, and you have groups like Memphis Community against Pollution primarily who are advocating for them to do something before there's a new rule on the books.

So really any day now, we're expecting a rule to come down from the EPA saying what the new emissions limits are, but Sterilization Services has made it pretty clear that, until they see those rules, they won't be taking any action.

- Am I right that, and you may have said this, and I apologize if I'm repeating, but the local health department came out with a study recently, no cancer clusters, but Michelle Taylor, the head of the Shelby County Health Department, I mean, she wrote a guest column for us, clearly wants more regulation, clearly, you know, raising the issue of pollution in predominantly poor black neighborhoods.

There are many, many examples of it.

So there's a lot of local pressure, but again, what you said with the city and the county, those are resolutions.

They are essentially request, not orders - Exactly.

- In any sense, yeah.

Toby, you've been covering this as well.

Anything to add on that?

- When the EPA came into town last year for that kind of first public meeting, it was bleak.

They said, "Look, they are emitting ETO out there.

It's harmful.

We know it is.

There's nothing we can do.

They are completely within their rights and regulations right now to do what they're doing.

We're gonna ask them to voluntarily do some of this stuff, but I'm sorry if you live around this place.

Maybe move, was, you know, the biggest thing that they said that you could do as a citizen down there.

So it looked pretty bleak, and then when this new study came out, it was really hopeful.

It was great news that there were no cancer clusters there.

You know, they compared that area in South Memphis to another area, you know, far away in northeast part of the county and over two different decades and didn't find anything that really linked the ETO to heightened risk of cancer.

That was some good news down there.

I think we're looking for more good news to happen here and maybe to see, as Keely said, if there's gonna be some voluntary things that Sterilization Services can do.

And as she noted before that Dr. Taylor said that the company has been really helpful during the entire thing.

They let all the investigators in, and so, you know, there's been a lot of cooperation.

I think that's a good thing, too.

- Keely, let me ask you this.

Where does this and your coverage of environmental reporting in this town, it fit in in terms of, as you said a minute ago, it takes the EPA to lower emission standards here to really change what's happening, right?

How does this fit in with the sort of battle for local control over, in a very industrial town, these sort of byproducts of what happens in this industrial city and what local government has control to regulate?

- Yeah, I think it's important to note that the cancer cluster study that came out just a couple of weeks ago, it looks at four types of cancer, leukemia, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, stomach cancer, and breast cancer that are linked to ethylene oxide.

So it is a very narrow study looking at a few types of cancer in a very specific area, and Dr. Taylor emphasized that this does not mean that there is not a heightened risk in that area for all types of cancer or other negative health impacts from air pollution.

- You've written some about it.

I think it started before you started at Daily Memphian less than a year ago, but the trucking of the coal ash from the old TVA, the old coal plant, the old TVA, was the old Allen plant.

- Allen Fossil.

- Allen Fossil.

A lot of controversy about that, and then even go back even further, and you've done a lot on the aquifer, and there's just not a lot of regulation of these kinds of issues in Shelby County.

I mean, there just aren't.

There's more than there were on the aquifer some years ago, five, six, seven years ago, but there's even less now.

- And to your point, Eric, yeah, there's the Valero refinery, which emits, you know, all sorts of chemicals into the air every day.

And so this city, when you get out of a certain track of it, has industry everywhere, and the byproducts of that industry, as Keely reports daily, are there.

- And one other point of contention has been that Memphis Community against Pollution has urged the Shelby County Health Department to take action and step up and, even without those new federal regulations, require lower emissions from them, and Health Department declined to.

It said it wasn't within its authority.

Memphis Community against Pollution appealed that decision, and we're waiting for that ruling to come down any day.

- Yeah.

We'll move on here to another big issue in the news is the question of the Memphis mayor's residency.

That is why someone perhaps pointed out in my ear.

Bill is not in court because he did something bad.

Bill is in court right now, Thursday morning, because there's a hearing on this whole question of what it means to be qualified to run for mayor.

Where, Sam are we?

- Right, yeah.

So Bill, like Eric said, is not in trouble.

He is in JoeDae Jenkins' Courtroom right now for a scheduling hearing in Floyd Bonner's and Van Turner's combined lawsuit against the Shelby County Election Commission, which is essentially challenging a opinion that the Election Commission decided that the city of Memphis does, in fact, if you read the city charter, and it's still there today, have a five-year residency requirement for mayor.

And so what's at stake here is it's really gonna be on Chancellor Jenkins and then ensuing appeals, probably up to the Court of Appeals and maybe to the Tennessee Supreme Court, that's probably the pipeline here, to determine whether or not the city of Memphis has a residency requirement.

Do you have to have lived, before October 5th, 2023, have you had to have lived here for five years?

And Van Turner and Floyd Bonner both have not lived in the city of Memphis for five years.

Floyd Bonner just moved to the city a couple of months ago.

Van Turner had a commission district in Shelby County, and he now owns a house in Binghampton.

It's not clear if he's living there.

And so the real question is, in this lawsuit will be, will it be taking two candidates, maybe three, out of the race?

Because if that residency requirement is upheld, they're not gonna be in the race.

- And Willie Herenton, former mayor Willie Herenton is the other who it's unclear 'cause he has multiple residences.

- He has multiple residences, and he claimed in the 2019 election that he was living on Barton Street, which was his mother's house at the time, and that was not challenged, and it's gonna be difficult to prove.

He sold a Collierville home, which he owned in mid 2020, which is during the election.

Many were arguing that's where Willie Herenton slept.

I once tried to visit it when I was employed by another organization, and I could not get past the gate.

[everyone chuckles] - The Commercial Appeal.

I think you're allowed to say that.

And the other thing I think you wrote this past week in the past couple of days, Jennifer Sink is the city attorney.

There's been a lot of people following this closely who really wanted an opinion from the city attorney one way or the other and that that would then be, okay, this is, if not binding, that's kind of the main ruling that will drive the lawsuit.

She came out through, it was through a request, and said what?

- Yeah.

Essentially, I called the city of Memphis and their chief communications office, Allison Fouche, and said, "Is Chief Sink going to issue an opinion?"

And Allison called back a little while later, and she said, "No, that's not gonna happen."

And so JoeDae Jenkins last week, the chancellor, Shelby County chancellor in this case, asked at a hearing last week, he wants to know what the city of Memphis's opinion is.

He wants to know what the city attorney's opinion is, and the city attorney asked for the opinion that the Election Commission is citing right now.

Bob Meyers, who is a former Shelby County Election Commissioner who wrote this opinion, did so at the request of Jennifer Sink.

However, the city is making clear that Bob Meyers' opinion is not their own.

It is just a lawyer that they asked to write an opinion.

And so what Jenkins is looking for, to your point, Eric, is for the city to make take a stand, and the city is essentially sort of leaving the space and pointing to the chancellor, essentially, and it's going to be on the court system to make a final ruling here about this residency requirement.

- Well, did they give any reason why they're not?

You would think they would have an opinion.

This is just me as a kind of bystander or close-ish follower of it.

You would think that the city would wanna say, "Well, here is our opinion."

We've got all these competing opinions and throw all that at the judge and say, "Hey, sort it out."

- I mean, it would be a great question and, you know, to ask, you know, "Chief Sink, you know, why not just issue an opinion?"

But there are a lot of theories, but, you know, those aren't reportable, and so I'm just gonna leave it there.

- Yeah, I gotcha.

Chief Sink being chief - Legal officer.

- Jennifer, yeah.

She's Jennifer Sink, yes.

- City attorney.

I reference her but chief legal officer.

Are they gonna move quickly with that?

- I mean, it's- - I mean, it's not that voting starts in what, October?

- No, September 15th - September 15th.

- Would be early voting in that case, but the ballot, the qualification deadline for the ballot is July 20th, and on, I believe it's May 14th, you can actually start picking up petitions, right?

So right now, we're taping this on April the 6th, or April the- - Yeah, yeah, the 6th.

- April the 6th, so we're really still ahead of when you can pick up a petition, and so I think it would probably be in, I'm not in the schedule hearing that Bill's in right now where I think we would get a lot more clarity on the timeline, but it probably makes sense to clear this up before anyone can pick up petitions.

- Yeah, you would think because Shelby, I mean, literally one of the leading candidates by many measures, Floyd Bonner, could show up at the Election Commission and not be given, if this isn't all resolved, they're not gonna give him a petition.

He cannot file.

He can raise money, he can participate in debates and forums, but he can't, okay.

We'll move on from there.

I mentioned Wanda Halbert briefly.

We have to mention that Wanda Halbert, the county clerk who was reelected last year, has been the source of a great deal of controversy and frustration for many residents trying to get, you know, whether that's tags or marriage licenses or showing up to county clerk facilities and waiting in long lines, what facilities have opened.

The County Commission is pretty frustrated, I think it's fair enough to say, and they appointed Janet Hooks, former City Council, former head of City Parks, to be a special advisor to Shelby County Clerk Wanda Clerk, Wanda Halbert, excuse me.

That appointment, and I don't know if anyone wants to-- Yeah, I'll just go through this, you know, based on the reporting that Bill's done.

Again, Bill's not here now.

They sort of have 90 days where they want this special advisor to hold, my words, not theirs, hold the clerk accountable and see certain offices open and certain functions happening.

It's not entirely clear if Wanda Halbert is gonna be cooperative with this, but there's a lot more to come.

It's very messy.

I'll editorialize and say it's pretty embarrassing, and I think everyone would like for just these sort of, what, bread and butter of, you know, county government, local government to just work better.

So we'll see what happens.

There's also been some talk in the legislature, I don't think there's been any movement, of some kind of bill that would allow county commissions to remove county clerks.

You're shaking your head, Toby.

I mean- - I've heard that, and I don't think there's been any serious movement on it, but I know that somebody did introduce a bill to that nature.

- Mark White.

- Mark White.

- Mark White.

- Mark White, who represents Germantown and parts of East Memphis, introduced a bill that would actually lower the threshold for a recall election.

- Thank you.

- And it would be a very low threshold for a recall election, which hasn't advanced anywhere because it would apply to countywide officials, and it would open up a whole probably bowl of wax.

If 1% of voters can recall you, it becomes very easy, and a lot of other politicians maybe wouldn't like that.

- Seven minutes left, I'll come back to you, Keely.

Obviously, weather has been very much in the news, you know, for months now off and on from the ice storm in December to the recent tornadoes and severe weather.

You cover MLGW, thoughts on that?

And you did a big interview with Doug McGowen recently, right, and any thoughts on whether MLGW and where they're going under this new leadership?

- Yeah, absolutely, and that story hasn't run yet.

It'll be coming out soon, but that was a big part of our conversation is planning for this increasingly severe weather we're seeing.

You know, MLGW announced just a few weeks ago at their meeting a long-term 20-year plan that didn't exist before, and that was part of President McGowen's push is to think long term about how we're gonna plan for stability on our infrastructure.

You know, last week heading into Friday night, we were at a level five out of five risk.

We knew it was gonna be bad.

It was really a recipe for disaster with what we were looking at on the radar, and it turned into that.

We had 9 EF3 tornadoes touch down in Covington, fifteen deaths reported statewide, including three in Shelby County, and those three in Shelby County were from straight line winds, which led to 40,000 customers without power for some extended period of time.

And although Tuesday's weather was less severe, we still saw a lot of power outages, and so yeah, that's a big part of my conversation with him is how is that going to influence the 20-year plan that MLGW is looking at right now?

- And there are still some neighborhoods without power even, you know, however long later here.

There are other things that you've reported on.

I mean, there's $100 million coming from the state for water infrastructure that's gonna go to MLGW.

Not totally clear exactly how it's gonna be used, but that's a big deal.

The MLGW is still dealing with smart meters that are failing.

There was something, what, I think you reported 34 or 35,000 delayed bills, and a citywide LED streetlight replacement program is beginning, $42 million.

Seventy-seven thousand of high pressure sodium street lights will be replaced by year end, and anything else on MLGW?

You both did a story on, it got-- I don't know that we covered it as well here on the show.

You guys covered it really well.

The kind of a lot of questions about the RFP process for potentially replacing TVA.

You want to try to summarize that?

'Cause you both reported on that.

- Sure, yeah.

To go back to what Keely was talking about a second ago about the 20-year plan, which I think is important to note, you know, what MLGW is trying to do, is we talk about the flaws that were with the power supply bidding process, which we're gonna talk about here in a second.

It's important that that power supply bidding process did not take into account the very kind of environmental risk that Keely's talking about, the environmental risk that is going to pop up more and more both with extreme storms like tornadoes, but what we saw with rolling blackouts in TVA this past winter.

And so that's a big reason why MLGW is going forward here because that flawed power supply process did not sort of look forward into this volatile 21st century that has a lot more climate risk than, you know, the past 80 years have had for TVA or, you know, utilities across the country.

So yeah, the city of Memphis commissioned a study, an independent study that essentially had an energy consultant come in and evaluate how well, what is arguably a city division, Memphis Light, Gas, and Water, bid out its electricity supply.

As Keely and I reported a couple of weeks ago, she stopped short of saying it was rigged, Elaine Johns, the consultant in this case of EnerVision, but she said that it was definitely beneficial to TVA, which was the incumbent party and was trying to keep Memphis Light, Gas, and Water's business.

Keely, go ahead.

- Absolutely.

I mean, the big point of contention is the way the scoring process happened and what things it favored, and some would argue including this consultant who independently assessed it, that it favored TVA in the process.

- When Doug McGowen was on the show in early January, I think we talked, you know, "Are you gonna go back or are you gonna do a bidding process?"

He did not really commit either way.

This is me purely speculating.

You have the sense that you get through the city mayor race, City Council race.

Doug McGowen gets 9 to 12 months into the job that that could, if not happen, but get back on the table.

You know.

- We can't say for sure, but it seems like that's not the priority right now.

They really pivoted to focus on some more long-term future planning.

- And to that point, Eric, right?

You know, one of the things that really needs to be reckoned with here is, before you ask someone to bid on your electricity, you have to have a good understanding of what that electricity is gonna be, and right now, most of our cars are gasoline powered.

That tipping point may come pretty soon where we may have a lot of electric cars, and how do the lights stay on when we're, you know, tight on supply and we're also charging our cars at the house?

And I think that's what McGowen really wants to analyze.

- With just two minutes left, Toby, back to you.

The drag law that was put in place by the legislature earlier in this session, the first I think of the lawsuits has come.

You wanna talk about that?

- To what little knowledge I do, Kailynn Johnson is our reporter on this for a long time, and she's done a great job of keeping up with the story.

But a Memphis group called Friends of George's got with an attorney, filed a suit against the law, and a judge has temporarily blocked it.

Of course, I think we all saw that coming, right?

That, you know, we couldn't stand up to constitutional 1st Amendment arguments, and so that's where we are right now.

It was supposed to go into effect, what, April 1st?

- It's supposed to go back into effect April 1st.

It was stayed on the 31st, and it's still stayed until the 22nd.

- That's right, so that's where we are.

- You've also been doing some work on Tennessee's executions.

- That's right, just a a long coverage story.

Just kinda a waterfront story about these.

Of course, they're halted in Tennessee right now.

We're reviewing our lethal injection protocols.

There was an execution that was set to go forward last year.

It was canceled at the last minute when it was discovered that our chemicals weren't tested properly.

I can go into all that, but it's a lot of science-y kind of stuff.

So Governor Lee halted all executions, hired Ed Stanton outta Memphis to do a third party review of our protocols.

That report came out in December.

It was scathing, basically said that, you know, Tennessee Department of Corrections had a tunnel vision on these, didn't train their people well enough.

So while Lee and his team, they're working in the background to get those back online, the lethal injection protocols back online, but Republicans in the legislature this year, they've been working to get these back in line, too, find some other options, and one of those is a firing squad.

That bill has gone through other states.

It's moving through Tennessee here.

It sounds really harsh, but it really gained traction.

That bill is kind of parked right now.

It won't be considered until after the budget has passed.

- I think it's Utah that just passed a bill that that will be their preferred method of executions going forward, - That's right.

- Because the inability of the drugs, unavailability of the drugs that were used with lethal injection for so long.

We are out of time though.

Thanks, everybody.

Thank you all for being here, we appreciate it.

And thank you for joining us.

Please do join us again next week.

If you missed any of the show today, you can get the full video online at wkno.org or as a podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

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