Reporter
Bill Dries covers city and county government and politics. He is a native Memphian and has been a reporter for more than 40 years.
There are 3660 articles by Bill Dries :
A city council resolution on the financing of a second convention center hotel added to Tuesday's agenda is an answer to changes in a lawsuit filed by the owners of the city's original convention center hotel recently.
A new "People's Convention" is being organized to run a slate of candidates in the 2019 Memphis elections. It shares some features of the 1991 gathering that backed Willie Herenton's historic bid for mayor, but there are some significant differences as well.
With just enough votes, the Memphis City Council approved a resolution that will post the financial disclosure reports of each council member next to his or her bio on the city's website.
Putting together the comprehensive 20-year Memphis 3.0 development plan required trying to change some ideas about what it means to encourage development in very different parts of a diverse city.
Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland says a month ago, Electrolux executives assured him their Memphis plant would stay open and even expand to include new product lines. With word of the plant closing in 2021, he told The Daily Memphian Politics Podcast the city, county and state "overpaid" in terms of incentives.
More than 50,000 used tires were recycled over two days last month in a $100,000 city-county tire drive.
Memphis City Council members are reviewing changes to their rules after the two-month stalemate in filling three open council seats. And some of the proposed changes are prompting renewed debate.
The only contender so far for the leadership of the Shelby County Republican Party said the local party needs candidates who are more representative and the party needs to seek out African-American and Hispanic voters.
Gov. Bill Lee is scheduled to be in Memphis Tuesday, Feb. 12, for what's expected to be his first economic development announcement in the city.
City Hall says a redeveloped Tom Lee Park can be done in coexistence with the Memphis In May International Festival and that the festival will likely have to move out of the park temporarily in 2020.
The first of what is expected to be a multifaceted incentive package for FedEx Logistics' planned Downtown Memphis headquarters is a $2 million reimbursable grant.
A collection of essays on the African-American struggle in Memphis by 17 historians is seen by its editors as a “powerful counter-narrative” to a more compressed history of the city.
The federal Housing and Urban Development wants Memphis to pay back millions spent in one of the biggest take-backs ever proposed by HUD.
Tennessee education commissioner Penny Schwinn makes stops at two Shelby County High Schools just days after taking the state's top education post.
The late Carroll T. Dozier, the first bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Memphis, is among 42 priests named this week by the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, Virginia, as having a "credible and substantiated" allegation of child sexual abuse against him.
A study commissioned by the environmental group Friends of the Earth charts a course for MLGW to sever its historic ties with TVA in five years without the cost of building new transmission lines for electric power from new sources.
The last in a set of five de-annexations, South Cordova, goes to the Memphis City Council Tuesday for a final vote and probably more debate than the council had with the four other de-annexations.
Memphis City Council members will try again Tuesday to make a final decision on Memphis Light, Gas and Water Division's rate hikes in an atmosphere that has come to also include questions about the future of the utility’s 80-year relationship with the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Russell Sugarmon, civil rights icon, political strategist and retired judge who fought racial injustice in his hometown of Memphis, dies at 89.
The Memphis City Council gave final approval to the de-annexation of South Cordova Tuesday.
The plan for multiyear MLGW gas, electric and water rate hikes was rejected Tuesday by the Memphis City Council. It's the second year the council has gone instead for smaller one-year rate hikes – this time a 3 percent hike in water rates starting next month.
The Shelby County Election Commission will not appeal a state order barring the use of instant-runoff voting in the 2019 city elections. It is the last major decision of an election commission that is getting three new members.
Early voting is underway in the special general election for state Senate District 32. The district covers eastern Shelby County and all of Tipton County.