An Ordinance Requiring the Administration to Give Commissioners Financial Reports Passed 10 to Nothing. Its Own Committee Would Not Recommend It, and Nobody Debated It.

MEMPHIS, August 24, 2026 - An ordinance adding a new Section 2-191 on financial reports to the Shelby County Code of Ordinances passed its third reading, 10 votes to nothing, with no discussion at either of the two meetings that handled it.

The ordinance amends Chapter 2, Article IV, Division 2 of the county code. It is sponsored by Commissioner Erika Sugarmon.

Why it carried no recommendation

At the August 19 committee meeting, Commissioner Henri E. Brooks, who chaired the General Government Committee, noted that Commissioner Sugarmon was not present. She moved the item herself, and Commissioner Britney Thornton seconded.

She then asked whether anyone in the audience was prepared to speak on it. Nobody was. She moved to send the item down without a recommendation, and the committee did so without objection.

No one described what the ordinance requires. The caption was the only description read into the record.

The interruption

On the floor five days later, the parliamentarian read the caption and the committee report of no recommendation. Commissioners Thornton and Sugarmon moved and seconded.

Then the process stopped. The chairwoman said the body needed the summary sheet and that she was moving the item to the heel, a parliamentary hold that sets an item aside so the meeting can continue. She made the motion herself and it carried without objection.

The Commission moved on to the next ordinance, disposed of it, and returned roughly four minutes later. The parliamentarian brought the body back up to speed, reread the caption and the committee status, and read the summary.

The summary added nothing the caption had not already said. It restated the ordinance as amending Chapter 2, Article IV, Division 2 to add a new section on financial reports, and stated that the item requires a majority vote for adoption, a minimum of seven votes.

The vote

Aye votes came from Commissioner Michael Whaley, Commissioner Miska Clay Bibbs, Commissioner Charlie A. Caswell, Jr., Commissioner Amber Mills, Commissioner Matthew T. Szalaj, Commissioner Mick Wright, Commissioner Thornton, Commissioner Brandon G. Morrison, Commissioner Brooks and Chairwoman Shante K. Avant. Ten aye votes and no opposition.

No commissioner was in the queue. Nothing was said about the ordinance before or after the vote.

What the record contains, and what it does not

An ordinance about the administration providing financial reports to the Commission is, on its face, an internal transparency measure. It passed unopposed on a night when the same body spent two hours arguing about whether it could see an accounting of its own litigation spending.

The record does not describe what the ordinance actually requires: what reports, on what schedule, from whom, in what format, or what happens if they are not produced. Neither meeting read those provisions aloud, no staff member presented it, and the sponsor was not present at the committee meeting where it was considered.

That absence is a fact about the record, not a claim about the ordinance. The provisions exist in the filed document. They were simply never stated in public at either meeting where the Commission acted on them.

What happens next

The record shows the ordinance was adopted on third reading and is now part of the Shelby County Code of Ordinances. The Commission adjourned its 2022 through 2026 term later the same evening, so implementation falls to the incoming Commission and the administration.

Your city. Your money. Your receipts.