County Commission sorts out future of county vaccination efforts
Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris (in a file photo) is expected to name an interim replacement soon for Alisa Haushalter, the health department director who announced her resignation Feb. 26. (Jim Weber/Daily Memphian)
Shelby County Commissioners meet Monday, March 8, at 3 p.m. Here is a livestream of the meeting. Here is the agenda for the meeting. Click on agenda items for the documents associated with a particular item. Follow @bdriesdm on Twitter for live updates on the meeting.
Shelby County commissioners continue to sort out where county COVID-19 efforts are Monday, March 8, with several items on their agenda that date back to the period before state health officials took vaccine distribution out of the hands of the Shelby County Health Department.
On the agenda is a final vote on changes to the county residency requirement that allows the Health Department to hire more nurses between now and September.
The additional staffing for vaccination efforts is not expected to be affected by the move of vaccine distribution to the city of Memphis.
But in committee sessions last week, county Chief Administrative Officer Dwan Gilliom said the administration of county Mayor Lee Harris does not intend to seek extra funding for the Health Department later in the fiscal year that it had planned to use.
The commission also gets its regular COVID-19 update from Health Department officials at the top of the Monday session.
Last week in committees, county health officer Dr. Bruce Randolph presented statistics on confirmed virus cases.
Harris is expected to name an interim replacement soon for Alisa Haushalter, the health department director who announced her resignation Feb. 26. Her resignation came as state health officials announced they have asked the FBI to investigate reports of vaccine stolen at a Memphis distribution site as well as 2,400 vaccine doses that were wasted in seven incidents. They will also investigate the lack of adequate documentation and paperwork on the vaccine inventory.
Haushalter’s resignation is effective the end of this month with a national search underway and the county taking applications to the end of March.
The commission meets in special session Friday, March 12 for a discussion with Tennessee Health Commissioners Dr. Lisa Piercey on the county’s vaccine distribution problems and the remediation process for the Health Department outlined by Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris.
Also on Monday’s agenda is a set of four items totaling more than $1 million related to law enforcement and criminal justice.
The commission votes on accepting $200,000 in grant money from the U.S. Justice Department. This grant is an addition to the Trump administration grants earlier for Operation Relentless Pursuit – federal assistance for violent crime reduction.
The federal presence drew objections from some commissioners and support from others.
With the addition, the federal grants for use through the end of September 2023 total $1.6 million.
The commission also votes on $50,000 in county capital funding for 20 license-plate reading cameras to be put up in District 4, represented by Commissioner Mark Billingsley.
The new cameras are in addition to 94 other cameras in an earlier contract with the same company, Flock Group Inc.
The commissioner also votes on $783,368 in federal Justice Assistance Grants for crime prevention programs that include rehabilitation programs through the Shelby County Drug Court as well as remote court proceedings to comply with pandemic measures.
And the commission considers another $50,000 in grant funds from the state of Tennessee for equipment and staff for the Shelby County Crime Victims & Rape Crisis Center.
Also on Monday’s agenda is a resolution opposing a bill in the Tennessee General Assembly that would do away with partisan primary elections of any kind in Shelby County and Davidson County exclusively.
The bill’s Senate sponsor is Republican Tom Leatherwood of Shelby County, who served two terms as county Register running as the Republican nominee. Leatherwood lost a bid for Circuit Court Clerk in the 2018 elections, also running as the Republican nominee.
Shelby County government has had partisan primaries for non-judicial offices since 1992.
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Shelby County Commission COVID-19 vaccination criminal justice reformBill Dries on demand
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Bill Dries
Bill Dries covers city and county government and politics. He is a native Memphian and has been a reporter for almost 50 years covering a wide variety of stories from the 1977 death of Elvis Presley and the 1978 police and fire strikes to numerous political campaigns, every county mayor and every Memphis Mayor starting with Wyeth Chandler.
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