Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris presents his proposed fiscal year 2026 budget on Wednesday, May 14, during committee sessions of the Shelby County Commission.

And the path through several commission votes to the July 1 start of that new fiscal year promises to be challenging on several fronts.

More is at stake than the dollar figures and the county property tax rate.

The Shelby County Republican Party is pursuing a larger 2026 election strategy that relies partly on creating a bipartisan voting majority on a 13-member County Commission with a super majority of nine Democrats to four Republicans.

Noisy debate doesn’t deter County Commission from ethics vote

The first test of that will be a vote, possibly as early as the Monday, May 19, meeting, to put all nine Memphis-Shelby County Schools board seats on the 2026 ballot starting with the May 2026 county primaries.

Commission chairman Michael Whaley, a Democrat, has said he will propose the move that includes shortening the four-year terms of five MSCS board members elected in 2024.

Local GOP leaders view moving the now staggered school board elections to the same ballot as what state Senator Brent Taylor (R-Eads) has called “de facto recall” elections.

Shelby County Republican Party Chairman Worth Morgan is also tying in an ethics ordinance that the commission will take final votes next week. The ordinance aims to bring a dormant county Ethics Commission back to life with fewer board members and more specific definitions of what constitutes a conflict of interest.

“There is a concern that if you are going to apply it, it needs to be applied equally to everybody, rather than a targeted attack on one individual who tends to be an enemy of Mayor Lee Harris,” Morgan said at a May 1 meeting of the party’s executive committee.

Morgan’s comment was a specific reference to Democratic County Commissioner Edmund Ford Jr., who is currently under indictment on federal bribery and tax evasion charges.

Ford is drawing vocal support from Republican party leaders lately because he is considered the key to a seven-vote bipartisan majority. (That majority assumes the four Republican commissioners vote as a block, which, given past budget season votes, is not assured.)

Democratic commissioners Erika Sugarmon and Britney Thornton have voted with Republicans less frequently than Ford but mostly on budget matters. 

Ford’s and Harris’ long-standing disputes date back at least to their time together as Memphis City Council members.

County ethics proposals could face ‘can of Raid’ and ‘house shoes’

Sugarmon and Thornton have had disagreements with Harris and his administration since the 2023 deal that approved a $25 hike in the county wheel tax. 

Harris originally proposed a $50 increase, or doubling, of the fee on privately owned vehicles. But it didn’t have the nine-vote two-thirds majority required from the Commission to be approved; the holdouts were Ford, Thornton and Sugarmon.

Republican Commissioner Brandon Morrison voted for Harris’ proposed $50 increase in both original votes. Fellow Republican David Bradford joined her in the second vote on the premise of keeping some funding measure alive as an option.

Each time, the wheel tax hike was short of the nine votes it needed.

A Sunday meeting in Harris’ conference room with Bradford, fellow Republican Commissioner Mick Wright and Democratic commissioners Miska Clay Bibbs and Mickell Lowery brought the matter back to life and deepened the differences with Sugarmon and Thornton.

A compromise $25 increase got the nine votes needed with Bradford, Wright and Morrison voting for; Ford, Sugarmon and Thornton joined Republican Commissioner Amber Mills to vote against.

Lighting the political fuse again last week was a resolution to move $665,000 from a $4 million allotment of federal American Rescue Plan Act funding for water infrastructure projects to a set of six nonprofits for the general category of “poverty, education and health care.”

The money was not needed for the county water projects, and six County Commissioners sponsored moving it to the nonprofits.

After 17 years in elected office, Edmund Ford Jr. is at a crossroads

Bradford proposed moving the funding to the under-development mental health center, where those charged with misdemeanors who have mental health issues can receive treatment while in custody.

At the May 5 commission meeting, Bradford’s amendment was approved on a 7-6 vote, and the amended main motion passed on an 8-0 vote.

But it came after a fractious discussion along the same political fault lines established over the last two budget seasons.

Thornton accused Harris last week of being “a mayor that is literally weaponizing the purse strings.”

She and Sugarmon said they should have been included in the discussion about how to use the $665,000 in unused ARPA money.

“I guess if you are not in favor of the mayor then you are just a sucker,” Sugarmon said. “I do support this. I just don’t support the process.”

Much of Thornton’s criticism was directed at the county Office of Innovation, which works with nonprofits and is part of the mayor’s administration, not a division of county government.

“We really need to disband this particular office because the last thing you do is innovate for Shelby County,” Thornton said as she hit the time limit to speak on the matter. “I’m going to get back in the queue to berate the Office of Innovation again because this is ridiculous.”

Remarks directed at county attorneys prompted the attorneys to leave the meeting as Sugarmon sought legal guidance on the county’s contract for the use of the federal funding.

“They have expressed to me that some of the comments from your colleagues have been unprofessional and they will not be subjecting themselves to in-person questioning in that manner,” said Jerri Green, Harris’ deputy chief and staff and a Memphis City Council member.

“I feel the same way about my colleague and my staff tonight being told somebody is getting back in the queue specifically to berate them,” she said. “So I understand where they are coming from.”

Meanwhile, Commissioner Henri Brooks, who was one of those sponsoring the nonprofit grants the ARPA funding originally was intended for, didn’t appreciate Bradford’s amendment.

“Are we voting on an amendment from a sponsor who represents a wealthy district with zero poverty, zero food banks, zero homeless shelters and zero free community food?” she asked just before the vote, referring to Bradford, whose district takes in Collierville. “I was just trying to make sure I put it in context.”