Reporter
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.
There are 3806 articles by Bill Dries :
Shelby County Election Commissioner Bennie Smith says hand-marked paper ballots are a better alternative than the paper audit trail systems the commission explored a year ago. He also talked about low voter turnout on The Daily Memphian Politics Podcast.
Suffragettes, Larry Finch, the Memphis Underworld of a century ago, an Orange Mound teenager named Elton Hayes, Georgia Tann's child trafficking organization and Jimmy Lunceford's syncopation are featured in the second installment of the Memphis 200.
Bigger crowds on Mud Island's south end during a hot summer made keeping people out of the Gulf of Mexico replica hard work. The Memphis River Parks Partnership will use the fall and winter to rethink how the Gulf should be used.
The 60-year-old Allen Fossil plant is scheduled for demolition in 2022, Tennessee Valley Authority President and CEO Jeff Lyash said Tuesday as leaders got a look at possible future uses for the 500-acre site.
Shelby County Commissioner Edmund Ford Jr. says, according to one legal opinion, a referendum for county government to claim half the city revenue from the half-cent sales tax increase would be a vote among citizens in unincorporated Shelby County.
Carlos Ochoa of Ranked Choice Tennessee says the group expects the state coordinator of elections to again rule the voting system can’t be used in Tennessee.
Council members discuss the "two-hour drive" proposal during Tuesday committee sessions. Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland says he backs the measure.
In the last week of September, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland spent $156,770 in his re-election campaign account, bringing his end-of-September balance to $175,722. That’s according to new campaign finance reports candidates are filing that cover the last full week of the race to the Oct. 3 ballot.
At their first session since the Oct. 3 city election day, city council members take up a familiar issue -- residency requirements. A new proposal would allow police and fire brass to hire outside Shelby County if voters approve it in a November 2020 referendum. It would be the third residency referendum in 16 years.
The city council delayed final votes Tuesday on two measures.
Memphis City Council members appear divided on the idea of hiring police officers and firefighters from outside Shelby County.
Without comment in a one-sentence court order, the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that it will not hear an appeal of the removal of Confederate monuments from two city parks in 2017. The city says the decision sets the stage for the sale of the monuments. The leader of Memphis Greenspace says permanent changes to Memphis Park are poised to begin.
There is no dispute about the results of who won and who lost in the Oct. 3 city elections. The direction the city takes from the election and what voters were saying about stark differences on issues between some of the contenders are still being sorted out. Meanwhile, four new council members are getting their first up-close look at how City Hall does business.
The third quarter campaign finance reports show the campaign for a city sales tax hike raised more money than any candidate on the Oct. 3 ballot. The campaign was second only to Mayor Jim Strickland in spending. The reports cover the critical run-up to the city elections, including the first part of the early voting period.
Memphis City Council chairman Kemp Conrad says the Memphis in May International Festival should focus on honoring a rotating set of countries instead of the broad range of countries the festival has honored over more than 40 years.
Trump supporters who oppose the House impeachment inquiry gathered in the Civic Center Plaza Thursday in what organizer Charlotte Bergmann said is the first of several rallies attempting to change the county’s identity as a Democratic stronghold.
Blake Owens, the son of one-time topless nightclub kingpin Danny Owens and owner of O's Realty Inc., has been indicted by a federal grand jury on drug conspiracy charges along with four others.
None of the new vote totals in the certified and audited count changed the outcome of any races for 18 offices and a sales tax hike referendum. Most of the additional votes appeared to be the result of provisional ballots counted after the Oct. 3 election night.
Former Congressman Harold Ford Jr. returned to his hometown and the city he represented for a decade in Washington to talk about national politics, President Trump and the city’s edge.
The Shelby County Election Commission is working to add voters to the rolls in time for the Nov. 14 runoff elections as the result of a last-minute bump in online registration thanks to a national Facebook effort.
The new scooters that debuted Wednesday in Crosstown with seats and bigger tires use a network of Bike Share stations around the city and are part of the move to keep more scooters in bike lanes and off sidewalks.
Two Memphis city council members say they have doubts about restoring city pension and health benefits to police officers and firefighters with a half-cent sales tax hike approved by city voters earlier this month.
Ibram X. Kendi, the author of "How to be an Antiracist," says it's harder to prove intent and consciousness in racism and that's why politicians have defined racism that way for generations. The concept came into play in the recent race for Memphis mayor. Kendi didn't comment on that controversy but says the idea has become part of the nation's political discourse.
Sijuwola Crawford and Earle Fisher of Up The Vote 901 and the People's Convention talk about what voters were saying in city elections, voices outside the polling places and the return of the People’s Convention.
Early voting in the two Memphis City Council runoff races opens Friday and runs through Nov. 9. Election day is Nov. 14 in the last election of 2019 in Memphis and Shelby County.