Sullivan County Highway Commissioner Allan Pope arrested

 An investigation into the details behind a controversial water line project the Sullivan County Highway Department worked on this spring has yielded a series of 15 criminal charges against two top-ranking highway department officials.

A Sullivan County Grand Jury on Tuesday indicted Highway Commissioner Allan Pope, 60, of Ridgeview Street in Kingsport, with one count of theft over $10,000, four counts of theft over $1,000, one count of official misconduct, and one count of private use of county equipment.

The grand jury also charged Section Foreman David Campbell, who supervises road projects in an area that covers the Tri-Cities Regional Airport and parts of Blountville, Piney Flats and the Indian Springs community, with one count of theft over $10,000, four counts of theft over $1,000, two counts of official misconduct, and one count of private use of highway equipment.

All 15 charges stem from accusations that Pope and Campbell used county highway equipment to benefit private individuals while performing a series of road construction projects in Blountville, Bluff City and Piney Flats from November 2006 to March 2010, District Attorney General Greeley Wells said Wednesday.

“All of the charges involve work that was performed on private property and that benefited a private landowner,” Wells said in a phone interview about the grand jury’s indictments. “These cases will all be prosecuted.”

Pope and Campbell were publicly criticized after highway department crews were spotted March 3 digging a 36-inch-deep ditch along Graybeal Road, a dead end street on the outskirts of Bluff City, Tenn., that’s less than a mile long.

Pope said he ordered his crews to dig the ditch, a project that Campbell supervised, because he wanted to help Bluff City install a new water line that would connect the city’s water main with a proposed subdivision that developers Reed and Rosalyn Booher planned to put on property they owned at the end of the road.

But what Pope did not know was that Bluff City officials had rejected the Boohers’ request to have the city install the water line and instead told the developers they would have to do the job themselves or hire a private contractor.

When the private contractor they hired learned that the highway crews had started digging, he contacted members of the Sullivan County Commission’s Executive Committee and several other county officials to share his concerns about the project.

Chalking the entire situation up as a miscommunication, Pope ordered his highway crews to fill the ditch back in two days after the project started. But that wasn’t enough to satisfy the Executive Committee, which after a series of meetings on the issue referred the situation to the county’s Ethics Committee and asked Wells to investigate whether Pope’s actions violated the law.

On March 22, six of the Ethics Committee’s seven members supported the proposal to ask Wells’ office to investigate the issue. The committee’s seventh member, County Trustee Frances Harrell, abstained from voting because she is being challenged by David Campbell’s wife, highway department secretary Peggy Bridgeman Campbell, in the Aug. 5 election.

The Ethics Committee found that Pope’s actions violated the county’s ethics policy, their first such finding against an elected county official since the county adopted its ethics policy and formed the committee more than a year ago.

“That was the trigger,” Wells said Wednesday.

The district attorney general said the uproar created by the Graybeal Road situation prompted him to ask the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations to look into Pope’s actions and those of other highway officials.

Wells said he first met with one of the bureau’s agents to discuss his concerns about Graybeal Road on March 11. The bureau officially convened its investigation March 16, he said, and presented its results to a Sullivan County grand jury Tuesday.

Without going into the specifics of his case against Pope, Wells said, the bureau’s agents identified at least 15 separate instances including the Graybeal Road situation where they thought Pope’s and Campbell’s actions might have violated the law.

Wells said the charges against Pope stem from five of the incidents the bureau’s agents identified as part of their investigation; the charges against Cambpell stem from six incidents the bureau identified.

The district attorney general also said that six of the charges filed against Pope are felonies and could lead to the highway commissioner’s “immediate ouster from office” if they resulted in a conviction.

Neither Pope nor Campbell returned calls made to their homes Wednesday seeking comment for this story.

The two men were charged Wednesday morning and then released on a $10,000 bond. Their first court appearance is scheduled for Aug. 13 in the Blountville Criminal Court.

 gmclean@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2518