Shelby County commissioners will weigh a set of recommendations for possible changes to their community-grant program. But they clashed Wednesday, April 16, on whether they should be motivated by federal bribery and tax-evasion charges against a fellow commissioner.

A subcommittee ended its work Wednesday with the recommendations still needing to be written for a committee and then the full Shelby County Board of Commissioners to consider.

The $2.6 million grant fund, which is part of the county budget, is allocated with $200,000 for each commissioner to propose grants to nonprofits and/or government entities. The full commission then votes on the proposed grants.

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Here are the recommendations, including some that conflict with others:

1. Have grant recipients sign a waiver that says they will not do business with any county commissioner during the year they have received a grant. “Then they know that no one on this body should come and talk to you about doing business,” said Commissioner Charlie Caswell who proposed the waiver. “You don’t do business with a commissioner.”
2. Require a receipt or invoice for how an organization has spent grant money. There currently is no required documentation. But most organizations getting grants provide paperwork anyway, according to the commission’s grant coordinator.
3. An annual report to the commission of all the grants made during the past fiscal year, including analysis of how effective the groups getting grants were in using the money. Currently there is no report that lists all the grants made.
4. Limit the time for commissioners to propose grants to once a year, mirroring the timeline for the Memphis City Council. Currently commissioners can and do propose grants at any point in the fiscal year. The exception is in election years when an outgoing commissioner is expected to only use half of that year’s allotment and leave the rest for whoever their successor is. Grant proposals are currently part of every meeting of the County Commission.
5. Limiting the time for commissioners to propose grants to once a quarter.
6. Hiring a consulting firm through a request for proposals to evaluate the commission’s grant program.
7. Hiring the nonprofit firm Slingshot to conduct the same review.
8. Use the County Commission’s grant coordinator and, if necessary, additional commission staff to do the review.
9. Include grants made by the county administration in any kind of review whether internal or by hiring a firm.
10. In the annual report, break down the grants by the County Commission district where the recipients are based.
11. Require an end-of-year report from those getting grants. Currently an end-of-year report is only required if the organization reapplies for a grant in the next fiscal year.

The review of the process followed the indictment in February of County Commissioner Edmund Ford Jr. on federal charges of bribery and tax evasion. Ford has denied any wrongdoing in the ongoing case.

He is charged specifically with proposing grants to various nonprofits and then getting kickbacks from the grant recipients for directing funds to them. The charges include allegations Ford did the same scheme as a member of the City Council, which has a similar program.

Commissioner Britney Thornton said Wednesday the allegations against Ford shouldn’t be considered in deciding what, if any, changes should be made to the grant program.

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“I just don’t want us to lock in the whole connection to us being here because of allegations against our colleague,” she said. “To date, that colleague in question has yet to have an ethics complaint filed against him. However, our mayor has had two. So let’s just level the playing field.”

The ethics complaints made against Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris in 2021 were dismissed by county ethics counsel who found no grounds for either complaint.

The case against Ford began as an ethics complaint that found likely violations of the county ethics policy around his grant proposals for Junior Achievement. The grant was through county government, not the County Commission’s community-grants program. After the commission approved the grant, the complaint alleged JA bought computer equipment from a company Ford owned.

The complaint was then referred to a special outside prosecutor for investigation. That developed into a federal investigation of Ford’s use of the community-grants program, which led to the grand jury indictment earlier this year. None of the federal charges involve the Junior Achievement grant.

Thornton’s point is the county administration makes grants as well as part of the county budget and those grants should be summarized in an annual report, too.

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She said the federal charges should be ignored because they are allegations that are being made “on the other side of the street,” a reference to the Odell Horton Federal Building’s location across the Main Street Pedestrian Mall from the Vasco Smith County Administration Building.

Commissioner Charlie Caswell agrees any regular review of grants should include those made by the administration.

But he pushed back on Thornton’s call to ignore the allegations made against Ford, who has not attended the subcommittee meetings.

Caswell cited the commission’s vote of no confidence in most of the members of the Memphis-Shelby County Schools board earlier this year as well as calling for forensic audit of school-system finances.

“It was on the other side of the street, but it came to this side,” he said about the school's controversy. “And this came in our house where … people are reaching out to me to say, ‘What are we doing to address this if it’s a problem?’”

“I believe we do have an obligation to the community to do something and to say something,” Caswell said. 

Thornton said the process is getting “political.”

“We know that the mayor has wanted to have our grant process. I’ve heard him say that, and I’ve heard it mentioned,” she said. “Politics is starting to creep into this conversation. And I just want to weed it out and focus on what we really need to focus on, which is the fact that we are serving about 500 of 11,000 nonprofits currently. That’s a drop in the bucket.”

While an ethics counsel was reviewing Ford’s grant to Junior Achievement, Harris warned the commission it had approved another Ford-proposed grant for computer equipment and the administration was withholding the money.

After Ford’s indictment, Harris renewed his call for the commission chairman to suspend Ford’s ability to propose grants of any kind.

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Instead, commission chairman Michael Whaley proposed a 30-day moratorium on the entire commission approving any community grants pending a review of the process. It was voted down by the commission.

The commission is still considering two ordinances on changes to the county charter’s ethics language as well as the structure of the county ethics commission. Both proposals by Whaley are awaiting final commission votes.