Smiley: Gun-control referendum will be on November ballot
“They’ve always been giving us the bare minimum. I don’t anticipate them doing anything more,” Memphis City Council Chairman JB Smiley Jr. said of the Tennessee Legislature. “They never have. They have consistently treated Shelby County like a stepchild.” (Patrick Lantrip/The Daily Memphian file)
Memphis City Council Chairman JB Smiley Jr. says the gun-control referendum is going to voters in November.
Smiley said there has been a lot of discussion between the council, leaders of the Tennessee Legislature and local business leaders on the way to the ballot’s finalization.
“Robust, often, every day,” is how Smiley described the discussions during an interview on the WKNO-TV program “Behind The Headlines,” which airs Friday at 7 p.m.
Memphis gun-control questions can go on the ballot. For now.
The private discussions in the week since the Chancery Court ruling, which ordered the three-part gun-control question be put on the ballot, have come after public threats by state Republican legislative leaders to withhold sales-tax revenue from Memphis if the referendum moves ahead.
“I think there are folks who are trying to find a middle ground. Kudos to them,” he said. “Those elected leaders and those business leaders have quickly come to the same conclusion that I have. They (legislative leaders) don’t care about Shelby County. It’s less to do about the people and more to do about the politics.”
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gun control referendum JB Smiley Memphis City Council Behind The Headlines Subscriber OnlyAre you enjoying your subscription?
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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.
Samuel Hardiman
Samuel Hardiman is an enterprise and investigative reporter who focuses on local government and politics. He began his journalism career at the Tulsa World in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he covered business and, later, K-12 education. Hardiman came to Memphis in 2018 to join the Memphis Business Journal, covering government and economic development. He then served as the Memphis Commercial Appeal’s city hall reporter and later joined The Daily Memphian in 2023. His current work focuses on Elon Musk’s xAI, regional energy needs and how Memphis and Shelby County government spend taxpayer dollars.
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