Commissioner Charles Busler walked out.
Commissioner David Wright delivered a long, emotional soliloquy.
Law Director Bud Armstrong presented the commissioners with a document titled “Separation of Powers Under the Knox County Charter” (which was not furnished to the media).
After about 90 minutes of discussion, drama and argument at Thursday’s emergency meeting, Knox County Commission voted to join Mayor Glenn Jacobs, Sheriff Tom Spangler and the Knox County Pension Board in asking Chancellor John Weaver to accept a compromise agreement to end Armstrong’s lawsuit against the pension board.
The 7-1 vote surprised exactly nobody, since the commissioners had already staked out their positions at an Oct. 15 workshop meeting when six of them voted to add the issue to the full commission’s Oct. 22 agenda, falling short of the required two-thirds majority. This prompted Jacobs to call for an emergency commission meeting to vote on the matter before Monday’s Chancery Court hearing.
Dozens of deputies stood against the back wall of the Large Assembly Room, some with arms folded, all listening intently. They broke into applause when the 7-1 vote was announced. The issue is whether to allow retired deputies enrolled in the Uniformed Officers Pension Plan to include unused leave time in the formula used to calculate their pensions. Jacobs, Spangler and the pension board have agreed to allow up to 43 days to be added to the calculations.
Armstrong says that the county charter requires that pensions shall be based on salary, not compensation. Pension board attorney Charles C. “Chuck” Burks disagreed. He summarized his arguments in a 35-page booklet that he provided to commissioners (and reporters).
After the meeting, one commissioner, who does not wish to be named, complained about Armstrong’s last–minute document, which commissioners were attempting to read during the meeting:
“Why didn’t he have the courtesy to give it to me a week ago so I could look at it? He said (he has) equal power? It sounds more like absolute power to me. We’ve got a new mayor and a new sheriff and we need to get this thing straightened down and move on. I don’t know what’s going to happen with this, but I’m not sure how comfortable people are going to be with Bud’s legal advice in the future.”
Commissioners Michele Carringer, Hugh Nystrom, Brad Anders, Larsen Jay, Randy Smith, Evelyn Gill and Justin Biggs voted yes. Dave Wright voted no. Charles Busler read a prepared speech and asked to be recorded “absent” before walking out. Carson Dailey (who is on record opposing the settlement) was unable to attend the emergency meeting because his wife was undergoing surgery. John Schoonmaker, who is also opposed to the settlement, was in Chattanooga for a Tennessee County Services Association meeting.
How we got here
So how did the County of Knox become the only urban county in Tennessee with an elected law director?
Here’s a brief history, based on oral accounts of a half dozen seasoned veterans of local Republican politics:
The job of Knox County Law Director was created by private act in 1968 at the behest of Republican Party chair Warren Webster, whose brother, Ron, was a state legislator. Prior to that time, the county’s executive-level legal work had been done by Democrat Earl Ailor, an attorney appointed by County Judge C. Howard Bozeman (also a Democrat).
“Now, this is lore, mind you,” cautioned former law director Dale Workman, who left that office to become a circuit court judge. “But Warren thought it ought to be a Republican, and he got a private act passed (that created the elected office of law director).”
The first beneficiary of Webster’s power move was Tony Brown, a South Knoxvillian who messed up his chance for a second term by running afoul of Knox County Schools Superintendent Mildred E. Doyle, probably the most powerful woman in the history of Knoxville politics. Workman said a contract glitch led to a massive cost overrun on the football field at the new Doyle High School.
“It added a million dollars to cost of the high school with Mildred’s name on it,” he said. “And Hello Skatoozy, Mildred was MAD.”
Hello Skatoozy, Workman explained, was one of Doyle’s made-up substitute cuss words (by all accounts the red-headed, former softball player wasn’t shy with the epithets). Richard Bean, who was friends with Doyle, says she was the only woman he ever knew who’d put her lipstick on with a knife (that’s not quite as badass as it sounds – he says she’d hold her table knife up after dining and use the reflection as a mirror when she refreshed her lipstick).
Anyhow, as Workman remembers it, “She was powerful enough to call Aubrey Jenkins and Warren and everybody else and told them that (Brown getting a second term) wasn’t going happen.”
Workman was the campaign manager for the GOP ticket in 1972, at the request of Warren Webster. A bow-tied attorney named Charlie Maner Jr. was nominated for law director, and Workman hired on with him after awhile. Maner suffered a massive stroke in December 1982, and Workman was appointed to the position when Maner left office the following October.
Workman was re-elected and helped write the new Knox County Charter in 1988. He served until 1990, when he was elected to a judgeship, and he was succeeded by Richard Beeler, who had been an assistant law director under Workman. Beeler was succeeded by Mike Moyers (who had also been hired by Workman), and Moyers was succeeded by John Owings, another Beeler assistant law director. Owings was defeated by the ill-fated Bill Lockett, who was ousted from office amid a storm of terrible publicity over questionable financial dealings with the law firm he left when he took office. Joe Jarret, Lockett’s chief deputy assistant, was appointed to serve out Lockett’s term, and was defeated by Bud Armstrong.
More than one former law director fears that the position could be written out of the charter when it comes up for review in 2020.
