Just tweeted this a few minutes ago. Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam has issued his first veto and it is of the bill nicknamed the “ag-gag” law, which made it a crime to record alleged animal abuse of livestock and conditions that violate animal abuse laws and not turn it over to law enforcement within 48 hours.

Here is Haslam’s veto message in its entirety.

“Agriculture is the No. 1 industry in Tennessee.  Farmers play a vital role in our state’s economy, heritage and history.  I understand their concerns about large scale attacks on their livelihoods.  I also appreciate that the types of recordings this bill targets may be obtained at times under false pretenses, which I think is wrong.

Our office has spent a great deal of time considering this legislation.  We’ve had a lot of input from people on all sides of the issue.  After careful consideration, I am going to veto the legislation.  Some vetoes are made solely on policy grounds.  Other vetoes may be the result of wanting the General Assembly to reconsider the legislation for a number of reasons.  My veto here is more along the lines of the latter.  I have a number of concerns.

First, the Attorney General says the law is constitutionally suspect.  Second, it appears to repeal parts of Tennessee’s Shield Law without saying so.  If that is the case, it should say so.  Third, there are concerns from some district attorneys that the act actually makes it more difficult to prosecute animal cruelty cases, which would be an unintended consequence.

For these reasons, I am vetoing HB1191/SB1248, and I respectfully encourage the General Assembly to reconsider this issue.”

The word came Thursday afternoon that Sid Selvidge has died.

Summing up what he meant to Memphis music is very difficult because his contribution covers so much ground as musician, as an influence, as a counselor on the intersection of music and the lifestyle of making music. And then there was the example of continuing to pursue with dignity and determination something that all too many people believe is neither art nor a pursuit for anyone but the young on their way to some other goal.

Realizing the limitations of trying to encompass all that Selvidge meant to a city with an abundant and ongoing musical firmament, I’ll go for this:

He was an artist with his music in the manner and determination of a painter or a sculptor. And that will be his enduring impact – a body of work that even now is being evaluated and posted on Facebook and YouTube.

Some of the bravest people I know are musicians who take their songs, their voices and perhaps a guitar or a piano onto stages, big and small, temporary and permanent, and connect with audiences night after night.

That is what Sid Selvidge did for a long time in our city and continued doing almost up to his death. He was our troubadour and our portal to the essence of a music that met official resistance and world-wide acceptance and questioned whether either was the point.

Some of us watched much of the journey from the pre-Beatles coffee house days of folk music at places like the Bitter Lemon on Poplar Avenue to the Beale Street Caravan-Levitt Shell residencies.

Others came across him intermittently over the years, a reference point in a city that to those of us who live here doesn’t seem to change fast enough but which has changed tremendously to those who no longer live here.

Still more encountered the old records turned CDs turned digital files in which his voice and his art at first surpassed the technology and then the technology managed to begin to capture what those who saw him live encountered.

The encounter will continue although the body of work is now complete.

While so many Memphians were up late Tuesday watching the Grizzlies beat the Clippers, a much smaller group of citizens were up late for a different reason – Tuesday’s school board meeting.

The meeting featured some important moments in the move to consolidation in what was also one of the busiest days recently in the schools reformation. There was the board meeting and a hearing that morning in the consolidation case before Memphis Federal Court Judge Hardy Mays and then some comments by Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell at the Memphis Rotary Club on the subject as well.

You can read all about all of that in the links.

The Grizzlies got started at about 9:30 p.m. and finished at around 12:30 p.m. for a game of three hours.

The board got started at around 5:30 p.m. Tuesday and finished at 11 p.m. clocking in at about five and a half hours.

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Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr. didn’t have a whole lot to say about the Los Angeles Times column by T.J. Simers that is another in a series of diatribes by the L.A. Clippers columnist about Memphis in general.

But Wharton had much more to say about the Memphis Police Association billboards that got attention from Simers in the column with a national reach.

“This city does not support public safety,” read the billboards that include a sign reading, “Danger, Enter At Your Own Risk.”

“Forget this guy in L.A,” Wharton said at a Friday afternoon press conference when asked about the column. “The issue is the billboards. … I think it is self-centered. I think it is selfish. I think it has no place in our city. It never ceases to amaze me that people who have jobs and are comfortable basically pull up ladder once they get up in the tree house. Here we are out trying to bring jobs and tourism for others so that those in the private sector can have just a little bit of what those of us in the private sector (can have.)”

Wharton is concerned about the message the billboard sends to tourists and the impact on jobs in the tourism industry.

The administration and the police union are at impasse in contract negotiations and the union along with several other municipal unions is still in federal court with the city over the 4.6 percent pay cut city employees took in 2011.

“What about the people who lost their jobs during the recession?” Wharton asked. “They (city employees) did not lose their jobs and they will not lose their jobs as long as I can control it. … Is the 4.6 percent cut something to be proud of? Absolutely not. But I don’t think it’s as bad as losing your job.”

Wharton talked with reporters Friday afternoon on several topics after returning earlier in the afternoon from a trip to New York City.

He said he is considering naming one of the city’s three Confederate-themed parks after civil rights leader Maxine Smith, who died Thursday.

Wharton also said the city will monitor weekend garbage pickups by Republic Services, a private contractor for sanitation services with the city. Republic employees represented by the Teamsters union have been on strike for three weeks. Late in the third week, Republic added more drivers and put on extra crews to collect garbage in areas of the city where it hasn’t been picked up regularly since the strike began.

“This is a strike involving a private contractor. They are going to have to sort that out,” Wharton said. “We want the garbage picked up. We are assured it is going to be picked up.”
The city has informally told Republic executives that it expects the company to perform its duties under its contract with the city. If the city doesn’t like what it sees this weekend in that regard, Wharton said the city could put the company on formal notice which could be the beginning of contract sanctions including fines or withholding payment by the city.

Much had already been written over several decades about Maxine Smith long before this morning’s announcement that she died overnight at the age of 83 here in Memphis.

And even more will be written in the years to come.

Her death came about a year after her latest heart surgery.

Smith was the personification of the civil rights movement in Memphis from the mid 1950s to the move of black leaders into the political majority and establishment.

We wrote about her just over a year ago as she donated her papers to the Memphis-Shelby County Room of the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library, a considerable trove of data essential to any understanding of our city in the mid to late 20^th century.

Smith was one of the first newsmakers I covered extensively when I started doing this for a living nearly 40 years ago. And she was certainly the most controversial in 1975 and for many years later.

She could be polarizing in a substantial and meaningful way that I have never seen anyone else duplicate. And because she could be that polarizing, she almost always in the last 40 years negotiated from a position of strength in and out of the public eye. It was polarization for a purpose. It was polarization based on the premise that no matter how reasonable her position, the fact that she took the position meant she was going to be criticized for injecting race into the public discourse of a city already consumed by all things racial.

In those years, Memphis was still struggling with the idea that it was better to get such issues out in the open instead of making like they didn’t exist or should be hidden from view.

Those who disagreed with Smith politically invoked her name and their opposition to her to build their political support. Those who wanted her support invoked her name and their allegiance with her to build their political support.

But getting her actual political support was not as easy as saying nice things about her or declaring solidarity with her.

And she rarely responded to the kind of vitriolic criticism that has long made our politics much too focused on personalities and personality clashes.

Smith’s importance in the affairs of Memphis was her focus on what to do with power and how to use it once it was obtained.

It was what made her such a pivotal figure for so long and that is her legacy.