A new four-year term of office for the Shelby County Commission began with a party-line vote and an attempt to change who picks the county’s chief ethics officer.

The proposed change was made by one of the six new commissioners who eight years ago left the commission during an investigation by the county attorney’s office of whether she lived in the district she represented.

The County Commission Scorecard tracks critical votes by the 13-member body whose first meeting with votes on agenda items was Sept. 12.

An ordinance changing the appointment of a chief ethics officer from the choice of the county attorney’s office to a nomination by the Shelby County Mayor with a confirmation vote by the Shelby County Commission.

The commission advanced the ordinance on a first-reading vote of 10-0-3.

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Voting yes: Shante Avant, Miska Clay-Bibbs, Henri Brooks, Charlie Caswell, Edmund Ford Jr., chairman Mickell Lowery, Erika Sugarmon, Britney Thornton, Michael Whaley, Mick Wright

Abstaining: David Bradford, Amber Mills, Brandon Morrison

Observations: Eight years ago, Henri Brooks made a stormy exit from the commission.

Before a failed bid for Juvenile Court Clerk, Brooks faced a residency challenge that the county attorney’s office found was probably valid enough for the commission to consider ouster proceedings.

With only a meeting or two left in Brooks’ term, the commission chose not to pursue its own investigation, which promised to be lengthy and contested.

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Eight years later, Brooks was reelected to the commission and her first formal action was to introduce an ordinance that would take the power to investigate ethics complaints away from the county attorney’s office.

The assistant county attorney who is the commission’s attorney, Marcy Ingram, was the attorney who investigated Brooks’ residency and announced the conclusions to the commission in 2014.

Ingram told commissioners during the Sept. 12 meeting what the effect of the ordinance would be on current county ethics rules. Otherwise no explanation would have been forthcoming.

It was an add-on item to the agenda without any advance notice to the public. The ordinance isn’t, according to Brooks, in its final form. Some changes could come before the third and final vote, which could be as early as the first commission meeting of October.

Brooks also denied there would be any conflict of interest inherent in having the county commission confirm the appointment of an ethics officer whose duties could include investigating a commissioner as Ingram did eight years ago.

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Ingram also said the commission rules for considering ordinances require a presentation and vote in committee ahead of the three votes or “readings.”

That’s not what new chairman Mickell Lowery emphasized though. He said this would all be explained in committee sessions a week after the first reading vote.

Therefore, Lowery said there was no reason to delay the first reading even though commissioners didn’t have a copy of it, the public wasn’t notified and the county attorney’s office requested a delay in the first-reading vote so it could review exactly what the ordinance would do legally.

The role of the county attorney’s office in ethics matters is not just a matter of county ordinances. It’s referred to in state statutes.

It is one of the offices that can seek the ouster of an elected official. Such a scenario recently surfaced when the former commission considered but ultimately voted down a call for an investigation of Shelby County Clerk Wanda Halbert.

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Somewhere in this discussion is the argument that technology allows elected bodies to react quickly.

But the same technology also allows proposals to be posted online for citizens as well as commissioners to see what is being proposed.

And the county commission is ahead of the city council in this regard.

The commission’s online agenda allows users to click every item for documents that offer more detail. The council documents are separate from the agenda and they do not take in most of the items on the council’s agenda.

In both cases, there is no provision for items added on at the last minute. Instead, it’s hard copies being passed out as the item is introduced from the floor — copies made from PDFs created online that can and should be shared with the public online.

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If elected officials on these two bodies want to see the details of what they are voting on beyond a resolution or ordinance, the assumption should be that the public wants to see those details as well.

When these items are added at the last minute after what appears to be at least some private discussion among commissioners that clearly violates the state’s open meetings law, the public doesn’t even get to see the ordinance or resolution.

The same body that insists on reading into the record routine resolutions and ordinances four and five times gets one reading aloud of a caption on an ordinance like this that the public cannot follow along and read for itself.

Commissioner Mickell Lowery was chosen as the commission’s chairman for the next year in a unanimous vote with no other nominees.

Resolution electing a chair pro tempore for the County Commission.

Commissioners elected Miska Clay-Bibbs over David Bradford and Erika Sugarmon on the second ballot with 9 votes for Bibbs and 4 for Bradford.

For Bradford: Bradford, Mills, Morrison, Wright

For Bibbs: Avant, Bibbs, Brooks, Caswell, Ford, chairman Lowery, Sugarmon, Thornton, Whaley

Observations: In the first round, Bradford and Bibbs each had four votes and Sugarmon had three. All three of Sugarmon’s votes, including Sugarmon, went to Bibbs in the round 2. So did Ford and Lowery, who abstained in the first round.

Two rounds to select a chairman on a body that has deadlocked on this with dozens of roll calls in the recent past is either a hopeful sign for the term that is just beginning or it is a function of a group just starting out with six new members as well as a nine-vote Democratic majority.

This is the current commission’s first party-line vote.

Bradford, a Republican, didn’t push the commission’s unwritten – and unenforceable — custom of having a Republican chairman pro tempore to go with a Democratic chairman and vice versa. Instead he said he would bolster the commission’s desire to avoid marathon meetings including committee sessions on off weeks that always go beyond the four-to-five hour time frame.

Bibbs, a two-time MSCS board chairwoman, is no stranger to the concept of efficient meetings that strive to stay on time while allowing for questions and comments among the elected officials.

Ford on abstaining: Ford is making the most of six new commissioners after becoming the odd man out among Democrats on the previous commission.

He started by pushing for a new rule that would bar commissioners who abstain on any matter from later casting their vote on that item after they see how other commissioners have voted.

It is a reaction to former commissioner Van Turner, who frequently abstained in close votes largely to vote on the prevailing side of a controversial matter in order to have the option of bringing it up for reconsideration at a later meeting.

Ford, without naming Turner, told new commissioners abstaining could “easily be looked at as unfair to the process.”

“If somebody passes, don’t use that so you can look at everybody else’s vote,” he said.

It didn’t go well with most of the new commissioners and Lowery said he wanted to see the proposed rule change in writing.

Ford dropped his bid to change the rules then and there. But the term is young.

Ford passed, along with Lowery, in the first-round vote for chairman pro tempore.