Special Report: Not All Tennessee Leaders Following State Law

As taxpayers, we like our politicians to be up front and honest, but that is not always the case. A recent 11 Connects and Bristol Herald Courier joint investigation uncovered many politicians right here in our region guilty of breaking the law.

In both Tennessee and Virginia, elected officials are required to disclose all potential conflicts of interest with their respective states. After all, you wouldn't want your county commissioner, who also works as an insurance agent, to vote for a county insurance policy that would benefit his company.

Filling out this disclosure paperwork is a simple process that helps protect your best interests by keeping government open and transparent. However, after months of investigation, we learned not everyone is playing by the rules.

We don't know if leaders are purposely withholding the important information. Many insist their lack of cooperation was the result of an honest mistake. In Tennessee, each elected official is required to fill out a disclosure of interest form. On that form they must reveal how they and their spouse make a living and invest their money and who they owe money to.

Back in April, we began reviewing the forms of 238 leaders from Washington, Greene, Hawkins, and Unicoi Counties. Of those forms, 41 people filed after the January 31st deadline and another 25 listed no income on their forms.

Self-employed insurance agent David Hartness, who is also a Rogersville City Councilman, said it was an accident on his part.

“I thought it was just in relation to my election fundraising," Hartness said.

Debra Knight, a Greene County School Board Member who works for the First Tennessee Human Resource Agency said, "I'm new at this. It's very confusing. I didn't mean to do anything wrong."

After we contacted them, both Hartness and Knight corrected their forms.

Two others also said they filed their forms incorrectly by accident. However at last check, those forms were still blank.

"I guess it's stupidity on my part,” Bulls Gap Alderman and Hickory Springs Plant (Morristown) employee Jimmy Sexton said. “I was under the assumption I only had to put down what I contributed to the campaign.”

Greeneville School Board member and Greene County YMCA Executive Director Mike Hollowell said, "I'm glad you called me and made me aware of that."

Several other politicians never even returned our phone calls, including Jonesborough Alderman Jerome Fitzgerald, who left his form blank.

On the 18th floor of a Nashville skyscraper, Dave Harrell checks disclosure of interest forms for red flags. The Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance Compliance Officer knows several elected officials across the state are not following the rules.

"Sometimes you can tell that somebody is saying, ‘yeah, this is just paperwork,’ and they put none, none, none, none,” Harrell said.

Still, it appears, people who improperly fill out that paperwork have nothing to fear.

“We're not here to try to get someone,” Harrell said. “At this point, we're not going back and contacting them and trying to clear that up."

With nearly 8,000 forms to review, Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance Executive Director Drew Rawlins says his department just doesn't have the staff to properly enforce the law.

"There's just no way we have the manpower to review every single statement and ensure that everything is disclosed on those statements,” Rawlins said.

He admits lack of staff is not the only problem with enforcing this law. Since the agency's handful of employees work in Nashville, they simply don't know local elected officials like the voters do.

"Even when you do a review in-house, currently, you can't verify everything that's on every form without doing, say a complete background check on every candidate, every official, and their spouse," Rawlins said.

For now, the state hopes you help police this law. Your complaints could spur an investigation by the Tennessee Attorney General's Office. Without those complaints, politicians may never be held accountable.

"Right now, the focus has been on just gathering all of the information we can, educating the officials as to what their requirements are and how to best go about doing it,” Harrell said. “I think the teeth of the law, if necessary, will come later."

The law is only three years-old, but it does have some teeth for those who do not file at all. Last year, the state fined Greene County Commissioner Sam Riley $10,000 for completely ignoring the law. Riley disputes the fine saying although he filed his form late, it was turned in to the state in July. The state says that is not the case. Instead, the state says Riley did not file his form until March 2009; a full 14 months late. According to the Attorney General’s Office he has yet to pay his fine.

For now, it seems as long as a politician files in what the state deems a timely manner, even if he or she leaves the form completely blank, the state will be satisfied.

Over the next three weeks, the Bristol Herald Courier will feature several other stories about this investigation. Be sure to check out Sunday's edition of the Bristol Herald Courier for the first in a series of in-depth reports titled "Degrees of Disclosure."