A Memphis City Council resolution to dedicate a stretch of Union Avenue in honor of outgoing Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris squeaked through this week with only a handful of yes votes, exposing raw political wounds over Harris's fiscal record and his long-running feud with the Ford family. The measure covers the stretch of Union Avenue between Dunlap and Manassas in the Medical District, and it passed despite pointed public criticism from several council members who said they could not support it.
Council member Jerri Green, who presented the resolution, said she had the honor of working directly for Harris and asked colleagues to support recognizing and dedicating the street in his name. Green worked for Harris for six years as a policy advisor and interim Shelby County public defender, according to Action News 5. Green, JB Smiley, Pearl Eva Walker and Philip Spinosa all voted yes, while Ford Canale abstained, and the resolution passed despite receiving only a handful of yes votes on the full 13-member council.
Council member Jeff Warren, who voted no, said he could not in good conscience vote for the resolution. Warren said he had repeatedly asked Harris to convene a group to discuss spending on the new Regional One hospital and said Harris never included council members in those funding discussions, per the same account.
A Ford Family Feud Resurfaces
Council member Edmund Ford Sr. said he would never vote to approve the resolution, telling colleagues that Harris was not worthy and had mishandled the county. Ford Sr. has previously called Harris a snake in the grass, a line rooted in a rivalry stretching back more than a decade. Harris first rose in state politics in August 2014 when he unseated incumbent Democratic State Senator Ophelia Ford, becoming the first challenger to defeat a member of the Ford political family in a local election, according to Ballotpedia.
Harris went on to defeat two members of the Ford family in that 2015 state senate election. The bitterness carried into county government years later: former Shelby County Commissioner Edmund Ford Jr. sparred publicly and bitterly with Harris on multiple occasions. Ford Jr. pleaded guilty in February 2026 to five federal counts of tax evasion tied to a scheme involving county grant funds that were directed to non-profits which purchased computer equipment from his private business, according to the Tennessee Bar Association. He agreed to resign and never run for public office again.
Budget Rejections and Emergency Borrowing
Critics also complained that the Harris administration spent taxpayer money on lawsuits, including litigation that sought to prevent the state takeover of Memphis-Shelby County Schools, stop National Guard deployment in Memphis, and oust Shelby County Clerk Wanda Halbert. A Tennessee Circuit Court judge dismissed the ouster petition against Halbert in June 2024 for lack of legal standing, halting that legal challenge, according to Commissioner Mick Wright's official blog.
The fiscal criticism carried more institutional weight. The state rejected five of Shelby County's annual budgets after the Harris administration failed to include required information in those submissions. Under a 2021 Tennessee law, the state Comptroller of the Treasury formally rejected the county's fiscal year 2026 budget in October 2025, marking the first time in state history a county was legally barred from issuing new debt for a fiscal year, according to Local Memphis.
That borrowing ban forced Shelby County government to take out two loans to pay its bills, costing taxpayers millions of dollars in interest. One of those was a $125 million short-term tax-anticipation loan the Shelby County Commission approved in July to cover daily operations and payroll amid cash flow shortfalls, the outlet reported.
Supporters Point to Regional One
Backers of the resolution pointed to Harris's role in securing the new, nearly $2 billion Regional One hospital now being built on the site of the former Commercial Appeal building on Union Avenue. The Tennessee Health Facilities Commission granted Certificate of Need approval for the roughly $900 million medical campus in March 2026, clearing the way for demolition at the site, according to Regional One Health. To help secure the county's $350 million capital commitment to that project, the Shelby County Commission approved a $25 wheel tax increase back in August 2023, generating roughly $15 million annually for hospital construction after two previous votes on the measure had failed.
Hoodline previously reported on the state's sign-off for the Regional One campus, and also covered Harris's push in November 2024 to partner with Memphis Mayor Paul Young on the Joint Office of Neighborhood Safety & Engagement, which houses city and county violence-prevention initiatives within the County Division of Community Services.
Harris Leaves Office After Two Terms
Harris is a former Memphis city councilman, elected to that body in 2011, a former Tennessee state senator elected in 2015, a two-term Shelby County mayor sworn in in 2018, and a former University of Memphis law professor. He became only the second African-American mayor of Shelby County when he took office, and he now works as a tenured law professor at the University of Mississippi.
Barred by Shelby County charter term limits from seeking a third term, Harris concluded his eight-year tenure as county mayor on September 1 following the election of Shelby County Commissioner Mickell Lowery as his successor, who won the general election last month with nearly 66% of the vote, according to Ballotpedia. Under Memphis City Council procedures, the honorary designation approves only commemorative secondary signage installed on existing light posts, meaning it will not alter official postal addresses, emergency 911 dispatch routes, or tax mapping along that stretch of Union Avenue. Committee chair Philip Spinosa had said the planning and zoning committee would hold a voice vote before the measure advanced to the full council.
