@startleseasily is a fervent observer of the Metro government's comings and goings. In this column, "On First Reading," she'll recap the bimonthly Metro Council meetings and provide her analysis. You can find her in the pew in the corner by the mic, ready to give public comment on whichever items stir her passions. Follow her on Twitter here.
This week, a noncontroversial bill proceeds without controversy, and a conservative councilmember quietly adds another feather to her cap.
Just Good Government
Councilmember Emily Benedict has been on a press tour. She’s spent the past few weeks preempting critiques on a bill to require Metro agencies to take down license plate readers and associated signage when they’re not actively in use, whether through a pilot program or as part of an active contract.
Benedict, a progressive councilmember who’s been outspoken in her opposition to license plate readers, understandably assumed her more LPR-friendly colleagues might accuse her of using this as a way to undermine the police department’s efforts to engage in mass surveillance.
Meanwhile, she put no effort into preempting my critique of the bill, which is that it doesn’t undermine the police department’s efforts to engage in mass surveillance.
Thanks in part to Benedict’s strict dedication to staying on message, her bill passed without discussion or opposition on the second of three readings Tuesday night.
Curiously, after months of letting the cameras stay up following the conclusion of the six-month LPR pilot program on July 22, the police department miraculously ensured that all of the cameras and signage were removed shortly after Benedict filed her bill.
It’s almost like they didn’t want to have to answer questions in committee about why they still had cameras mounted that, according to them, were no longer collecting data.
Benedict’s bill, if passed, will apply to all future uses of LPRs by any Metro department.
Zero Tolerance
Among the lesser-known vice mayoral powers is the ability to unilaterally appoint three councilmembers to serve on the Continuum of Care Homelessness Planning Council, the governing body that oversees the city’s response to homelessness.
Vice Mayor Angie Henderson recently made her appointments, and they’re ... interesting. She’s appointed CMs John Rutherford, Jordan Huffman and Courtney Johnston.
I’d first like to point out that all three of these people are white. More than 40 percent of people experiencing homelessness in Nashville are Black. To be fair, I don’t know who was interested in the position. It’s possible Henderson had only white councilmembers to choose from. Still, not ideal.
I understand the decision to appoint Rutherford. He’s a veteran, and veterans are overrepresented among people experiencing homelessness. Huffman makes some sense too. There’s a growing unhoused population in his district, and it’s an issue he identified as a top priority on the campaign trail. Johnston, though? That’s a head-scratcher for me.
Johnston has publicly espoused a “zero tolerance” policy for people living in public parks, in a city with high-barrier emergency shelters and a serious lack of affordable housing. Is the plan to arrest our way out of homelessness?
In the past, Johnston has taken an adversarial posture toward the Homeless Impact Division (now called the Office of Homeless Services), particularly while it was under the leadership of former director Judith Tackett.
Johnston was highly critical of the city’s rapid rehousing efforts near her district, inundating Tackett with a litany of questions about the program and posting the exchange on her Facebook page with a warning for residents in the area. Among her chief complaints regarding the program? She wasn’t consulted by the department on where they would house folks. So I guess they can’t live in the park, but they also can’t live in or even near her district. Zero tolerance indeed.
When Tackett came before the COVID-19 Financial Oversight Committee to request funding for programming and staffing in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Johnston had more questions for Tackett than she did when the administration asked for a $2.1 billion stadium.
Once Tackett left, new leadership adopted Johnston’s preferred strategy of clearing homeless encampments in public spaces over the objection of many of the nonprofit homeless service providers who work most closely with people living in encampments.
None of this screams “let’s give this person more levers of control over our city’s homelessness response” to me, so I asked Vice Mayor Henderson for her reasoning. In a statement, Henderson highlighted the time commitment of serving on the HPC and praised Johnston for working “to support and service displaced and homeless neighbors due to a major flood in her district.” She also noted that Johnston “has been through several cycles of provision of support services and cleanup efforts at an encampment in her district.”
The Case of the Missing Audit
Speaking of Courtney Johnston, she was back on her Community Foundation crusade Tuesday night. She’s been beating a drum of potential malfeasance in the foundation’s handling of disaster recovery dollars for more than a year.
Late last year, Metro’s Internal Audit Department began working with the foundation to negotiate the terms of an audit. For reasons I don’t quite understand, the audit has only recently been finalized, and it hasn’t yet been released to the public.
Johnston, who was recently elected by her peers to serve a two-year term on the Internal Audit Committee, moved for a monthslong deferral of a bill that would approve an agreement between the Community Foundation, the United Way of Middle Tennessee and Metro for handling and distributing donations for disaster recovery relief efforts. That deferral passed easily.
I sat in a different seat at this meeting. I’m preparing myself in case the powers that be decide to remove my cherished pew so they can exile the actual press to the gallery.
