March 2, 2007 That Was The Week That Was

And what a week it was......

Joseph Lee, head of Memphis Light, Gas & Water, admits to a grand jury that MLG&W kept a "privileged customer" list (privileged customer=politician).

City Councilman Edmund Ford, who has already been indicted for bribery, was one of many on that list. Ford was protected from utility cut-off even when his delinquent bills totalled $16,000.

Joseph Lee recently offered to resign, but Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton, who appointed Lee, wouldn't hear of it. Herenton says it's a "witch hunt." Herenton blames everyone, except Lee, for the favored treatment of high and mighty Memphis politicians.

GOOD NEWS IN MEMPHIS. John Ford and Edmund Ford have just come into a sizable inheritance. Edmund Ford will probably rush down to MLG&W to pay his utility bill and then on over to the Cadillac dealership to pay his Escalade lease. Maybe his brother (former State Sen. John Ford) will take his share and pay for his own defense attorney.
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Jerry Cooper. Due to a wreck in February that was accompanied by DUI and speeding charges, Sen. Jerry Cooper got a delay in his wire and bank fraud trial. Previously, the judge had denied Cooper's efforts to delay the trial.
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Newly-appointed Knox Register of Deeds (ROD) Sherry Witt can't handle her job without the help of her former boss Steve Hall. Hall was term-limited as ROD, and Witt was appointed to replace him on Jan. 31. Now Witt has turned around and hired her ex-boss as an administrative assistant earning $69,000.

Term-limits or no term-limits, one way or another politicians are going to keep their government jobs! The Jan. 31 appointments were a farce--just musical chairs to shift the term-limited officials and their families to new and different positions.
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Speaking of the musical chairs appointments, the N-S filed suit against the Knox Commission alleging violations of the Sunshine Law when commissioners "recessed" the Jan. 31 meeting several times, During the recesses, commissioners met outside the public view to discuss and deliberate toward the 12 appointments for the term-limited Knox County officials.

Knox Commissioners recently rejected the News-Sentinel's offer to drop the lawsuit if commissioners would admit to violations of the Sunshine Law and then re-do the appointments with public deliberation in a public meeting.

Now, the Commissioners have asked the News-Sentinel to hold off on the suit until the legislature considers changes to the Sunshine Law! Since it took the legislature months to even appoint a Sunshine-in-Government committee, the Knox Commissioners know that there won't be action any time soon from Nashville.

Just a cheap delaying tactic by another set of ethically-challenged officials.
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Phil Williams is a great investigative reporter. He has an interesting report on who gets TDOT (Tennessee Dept. of Transportation) consulting jobs and how they get these jobs.

Gerald Nicely is head of TDOT and he alone gets to pick who gets TDOT consulting contracts. His former chief of staff resigned and went to work for CTE, a consulting firm doing business with the TDOT.

Nicely gave $2.7 million in state contracts to CTE in the first three years of the Bredesen administration. Then after CTE hired Nicely's chief of staff, the commissioner gave CTE more than $4.1 million in contracts in 9-months.

Nicely admits that there is the "potential" for abuse, but denies [of course] that there has been any abuse or favoritism.
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Speaking of no-bid deals, a former Sumner County Sheriff was convicted of wire fraud in a scheme to give his brother a no-bid contract to build a maintenance garage. Just like in Knox, nobody can resist helping themselves---and their family and close friends---to tax dollars.
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