Some applicants question ethics panel

The county's ethics committee met this morning to go ahead and rubber stamp the reappointment of two sitting members.

And this hasn't gone over too well with a couple of folks.

You see, 25 people applied for the two open spots (five didn't bother showing up to today's meeting) and, quite frankly, it appeared that no one – other than the committee members – really had a shot.

I'm not saying that's the case, but, you know . . . appearances and all that.

One person called it “a farce” and another person said “the whole thing was disgusting.” A third walked out of the room, mumbling that “it was a monumental waste of time.”

And several have now dubbed it the “unethical committee.” (Yes, I know. Not real original.)

Soooooo . . . . what happened?

Glad you asked.

The committee has three open spots – two that it gets to fill and one that the Knox County Commission has to fill in the upcoming weeks.

The 20 people – including board chairwoman Elaine Davis and board member Mae Killebrew-Mosley – each were given two minutes to state why they should get the pick. (Board members said they reviewed the applications/resumes before the meeting.)

During the first round of nominations, the board picked Davis and Killebrew-Mosley. Now keep in mind that only the board – no one from the public – can make nominations.

Davis in a 5-1 vote was picked. And yes, she voted for herself. (Killebrew-Mosley also voted for herself.)

In the second round only Killebrew-Mosely received a nomination.

As one person told me: “They didn't even make it look good.” Heh.

Just before the meeting closed, Davis said: “I'm incredibly amazed and appreciative of the number of people and the quality of people who have shown up today.” She suggested that the committee increase its size. (They've been talking about making like this for almost two years.)

In the meantime, officials said they'd turn the remaining applications (and there are some good ones in the batch by the way) over to the county commission to look through. The person who had the post that's set to expire is not applying for it.

HR's Fogerson reflects on past decade

L to R: Debbie Dew, Lisa Jarrell, Frances Fogerson, Pat Carson, Glenda Irwin, Diana Sweet, and Anthony Smith. Back: Brian Barnard

Here's an interview I conducted with Knox County Human Resources Director Frances Fogerson, who retires on Friday. She's worked for the county 12 years, spending almost a decade as a department head.

Deputy Veteran Services Officer Colonel Richard Julian will take over.

In the following interview, Fogerson looks back on her time with the county, touching on her best hire, worst hire and the nickname she doesn’t recall getting.

(On a side note, I wish her well.)

What was the most difficult firing you had to be a part of?
Firings that involve a threat of violence always got my attention. You just have to be really cautious in those cases. Several times I was definitely glad we had law enforcement close at hand.

The really difficult task is to tell someone about a layoff. In that case, the employee is usually a skilled person doing the job we hired them to do. I go into that meeting with three goals – brevity, respect and information. I speak softly and really try to emphasize that it was the circumstance and not their performance. Then, I make sure they know about their options in terms of insurance, retirement, unemployment claims, etc. And, of course, I always offer to serve as a reference when they’re looking for a new job.

What was the most unusual firing?
I once fired an intern who just couldn’t seem to be successful at several placements we tried. When I asked him what he had expected when he took a job with the county, he said he thought it would be champagne receptions and brunch with the mayor. Clearly, we were a disappointment for him.

Did you ever face political pressure?
I’m about the most non-political person you could meet. I don’t participate in any political activities and I cross party lines constantly when voting. Really, no mayor ever put any political pressure on me. I tried to keep my advice absolutely professional and I just didn’t participate in the political component.

How has the office changed over the years?
Every mayor has been different and had different styles. You just have to understand that when the administration changes, everything else will, too.

Thoughts on a civil service system.
There was an effort in 2008 to consider civil service for the county, but it didn’t succeed. Civil service is an employment system that predates professional human resources.

I like the merit-based hiring aspect of it, but I don’t like the slowness of filling vacancies or the almost ‘ownership’ status that employees have with their jobs. I definitely prefer a professional HR system. I’m not even sure if there’s a county in Tennessee that uses a civil service, especially one that doesn’t include law enforcement or fire services.

What’s the best part of the job?
Hand down, it’s doing letters and forms to help an employee with an adoption. It only happens about once a year, but I get real pleasure from playing a small role in the process. And, I always want to see the baby!

Worst part of the job.
My ‘Summer of Hell.’ That’s what I call the time in 2007 when we were trying to get a contract with a medical insurance provider. We read through boxes of notebooks to evaluate the companies that bid and then the County Commission wouldn’t approve the contract with the winner. We expanded the evaluation group and did the process three times, each with the same winner, before the commission finally accepted the results. My office was absolutely filled with notebooks and I read each one, taking them home on nights, weekends and holidays. It was the most frustrating task I’ve ever had to do.

Didn’t you get a few nicknames over the years (like ‘The Terminator’)?
You’re the only person who has ever suggested a nickname. I know the one you mean, but I never heard it personally. Really, I’m just an ordinary person who learned all I could about my job and then tried to do that job with fairness and consistency.

Was there a hire you regret making?
Yes. One official asked me to find a job for the relative of an acquaintance. I interviewed the person to determine her experience and skills, and then tried to find a position for which she was both qualified and could be successful. I wasn’t having much luck when a director jumped in and hired the woman. It was a poor fit and caused a lot of turmoil within that department. It simply didn’t last long.

What was your best hire?
I interviewed (current senior director of finance) John Troyer, although I didn’t make the hiring decision. I think that turned out pretty well.

What do potential employees see as attractive reasons to work for Knox County and what do they see as turnoffs?
I think our benefits are superb. We have a decent amount of vacation and holidays, and the insurance is excellent. Our retirement plan — not a pension plan — is very responsible and requires everyone to contribute 6 percent with a matching 6 percent added. It teaches you to save for retirement and that’s a very good thing.

On the downside, there’s variability among offices. Elected officials don’t share the same policies and employees don’t always have the same support. One thing I don’t like is the lack of an appeal system in many offices. I really wish that all Knox County offices would share the same policies, but state law permits them to each have their own.

Attendance: Not a friendly interview

Some thoughts about today’s story about the mayor dodging the scheduled meetings for the dozen boards he serves on.

This was far was the most contentious interview I’ve had with the administration. The skin wasn’t so thick Thursday afternoon.

I met with county Mayor Tim Burchett, above left, Chief of Staff Dean Rice, below and to the right, and Communications Manager Michael Grider, below and to the left.

I don’t really care comes to an interview. But I do care that the mayor answers the questions.

Not Grider. Not Rice.

The interview should have taken 30 to 40 minutes. It lasted 90.

That’s because the others tried to answer for the mayor. When that happened, I typically put my pen down and quit writing. However, there were a few things I jotted down that the others said.

I’m not going to rehash the story here. But rather include some of the stuff that was cut from the original story or that I didn’t put in because I didn’t the space for it on the printed page.

I asked a lot of questions. And I jumped around a bit. That was intentional. I felt the three had a smug attitude when I went in there that afternoon. It was like: This is a stupid story and we have all the answers.

No, they didn’t.

The mayor said he’s up-to-date about what goes on during the meetings. He said he’s informed, he said he talks to all the players, he said he knows what happened when they met.

So, I asked him an easy question.

What happened during the Development Corporation of Knox County meeting in December?

He didn’t know. (For the record, the group talked about the Midway Business Park proposal that the mayor long-champion for transparency. The commission was set to vote on the proposal a few days after the Dev. Corp. meeting the mayor skipped out on was held.)

An obviously frustrated Dean Rice asked: “Is this a pop quiz?”

No, but this stuff was making headlines. So does the mayor know the answer? If he was plugged in like he said, or had a representative there (he didn’t) like he said, or talked to the board members, then he would know.

He didn’t. He stumbled. Then finally said: “I don’t know what was talked about.”
Dean immediately replied: “Good answer, since we weren’t there.”

Dean also snapped at me: “Has anything happened that’s been critical?”

(He regretted asking that the second he did.)

“You tell me,” I said. Then I looked at the mayor and turned the question around. “Has there,” I asked.

Long pause. Finally, Burchett said: “A lot of day-to-day policies of government.”

Now I’m thinking, apparently that must not be important. Or at least to them.

But, to give him the benefit of the doub, no, government did not stop running because Burchett wasn’t there. So it depends on how you define “critical.”

I also pushed him about whether the meetings were important. My general take is that he doesn’t believe they are.

He continued to talk about how he is briefed on them.

I asked the mayor if that was the same as getting second-hand information, kind of like the telephone game in which one person tells a story and passes it around to another person until, eventually, the story is not the same.

He had a bizarre response. He said: “The truth is, is that in the final analysis Tim Burchett is going to have to make the final call.”

Huh?

I do agree, however, that his finance director, John Troyer, should go to the pension board meetings (and he does). That’s some hard stuff to understand sometimes. And Troyer can translate the information to Burchett, just like the mayor said.

But, I also agree with Commissioner Ed Shouse, who serves as the pension board’s vice chairman and as the chairman of the county's investment committee - both panels that hold meetings that the mayor has never attended. It wouldn’t kill Burchett to walk down the hall – it’s 80 steps from his office to the room where they hold the pension meetings (yes, I measured it as I walked Thursday to meet the administration for the interview), and sit in one for 45 minutes.

Now, I’m not letting Grider off the hook, either.

During our 90-minutes, the mayor talked about the importance of constituent service. He said that’s how he got elected over the years – first as a state representative, then a state senator and finally county mayor. He’s right. Constituent service is crucial to political survival. And Burchett does serve his voters.

He told me that people might not agree with his issues but they will never disagree that he won’t try to help. That is absolutely true. Look at the Carter Elementary issue. Burchett isn’t making a lot of friend in the school administration with his efforts to build the community a new elementary school. But, so what? He’s doing it because the community wants him to.

OK, now back to what I was getting at. Burchett talked about how he toured the schools, the libraries, the blah, blah, blah.

Yes, that’s great. He didn’t do that, however, when the meetings were held.

Grider, however, decided to announce that constituent service doesn’t happen in meetings.
Uh, yeah it does. Not always. But it can. In fact, a lot of times that’s where you find out about the problems. They’re brought to your attention, right there in a meeting.

I told him that. The room was silent. For a few moments. The mayor cleared his throat. We moved on.

Another time I asked the mayor who Jason Lay, a senior accountant in his finance office, is. (This is right after he said that his board representatives meet with him.)

He didn’t know.

Grider did know the answer, however, so at least someone was batting .500. (Not bad is you’re a baseball player.)

Another time, the group told me that the finance director was at an investment committee meeting last Wednesday.

I told them he wasn’t. I went to that meeting. They didn’t.

They didn’t believe me. Upset, Dean Rice left the room to talk to John Troyer – to see if he was there.

He wasn’t. But, they did send someone else. And yes, the person they sent was competent.


But, again, this is another case of not knowing your representative and obviously not being briefed on what happened during the meeting.

I don’t doubt that the mayor’s representatives tell him what happens in the meetings. But, they don’t do it as often as he’d like to believe or as often as he attempted to claim.

That said, I don’t think the mayor is clueless, either.

As he pointed out, people pick on him because he’s not that polished and he doesn’t have the slick lines.

But, he’s not stupid.

And I have found that for the most part his administration so far has been pretty transparent.

Update: Tim’s wife, Allison, wrote on the KNS Facebook Page. I feel it bears repeating:

"I have never been more proud than I am today of my husband. He is a man of character, and works harder than anyone I know. He has been in office 6 months, has saved taxpayers over 8 million dollars, stood up for our schools, our libraries, our land rights. As a wife, every morning the phone rings before 7am and rings after 11pm every night. We attend meetings from Corryton to Concord and everywhere in between. Most wives would be upset they have to 'share' their husband with half a million other people, but I know he truly loves what he does. And through all the long days and meetings, Tim Burchett has still been an amazing husband and foster dad. A true member of his community, not just some polished suit you only see on TV. He loves his job and is dang good at it, just ask the taxpayers. God has blessed us and I'm proud to call him my husband...and my Mayor."

Michael Grider: Hanging with Tim

As part of my blog I’m going to interview people who work behind the scenes of Knox County government, but usually don’t make the paper. Today’s interview is with Michael Grider, on left, the county’s communication manager who works directly out of Mayor Tim Burchett’s office. It was conducted by phone Friday night. I forgot to ask him about a rumor I heard that he once wanted to run for a county commission seat. Oh well. Next time, I supposed.

Me: Hey, man, what’s up?
Grider: Nothing. Just taking care of chores. And by “chores” I mean feeding the dog.
Me: You should make your wife do those chores.
Grider: (Laughing) That wouldn’t fly around here.
Me: OK, OK, let’s start. What’s your title?
Grider: Communications manager
Me: How many people do you manage?
Grider: I manage myself. I have zero staff.
Me: They why are you called a manager?
Grider: Well, actually I manage communications. I don’t manage people. I would say something but we’re on the record. I don’t want it on your blog no matter how fun it’s supposed to be. Actually, I’m a pretty boring individual. You can put that in there.
Me: Uhhh. OK. I think they put “manager” in your title to avoid paying you overtime.
Grider: No, I don’t think so. (Grider then explains that he doesn’t get overtime pay but works about 50 hours a week.)
Me: So, what do you do exactly?
Grider: For the most part I answer media calls. I go to a lot of meetings which is odd. But I’m the guy who helps communicate the message the mayor has to the media who I hope get it out.
Me: Why are you in a bunch of meetings?
Grider: Sometimes we’re talking about different that might be coming down the pike. We’re talking about budgets and things that might be part of the communications process. There’s a lot of different thing going on that are in the media. So we want to know how that might have an effect on our office or what sort of things we need to get out there. When the mayor mentioned the layoffs (last week), for example, a lot of folks in the media started calling. I had to talk to the finance director (John Troyer). I needed to know what the budget was looking like. Did we know how many people were going to be laid off? Things like that. I’m in meetings to answer the same questions reporters have.
Me: That makes sense. You’re in there kind of like a reporter. But not really. Ha ha.
Grider: Yes, the meetings aren’t about me. Sometimes it’s stuff I need to know and other times I just absorb the information but more so as a member of the public. When I was a reporter, I wanted to ask questions – I would try to think like the public. And I would try to ask the questions that the public wanted to know. We also have to anticipate the needs of the media, so we’re not spending 30 minutes on an interview that could take 15.
Me: You said you worked in the media. Can you talk about your background.
Grider: Sure. I spent three years with Channel 8. I did my time there as a news manager but spent a lot of time focusing on the website, and also did a lot of work on broadcast. I wrote a lot of broadcast stuff and helped producers write them. I also helped support a lot of reporters in the field. The day-to-day stuff often fell to me and the folks in the newsroom as opposed to the reporters. Before that, I spent a couple of years as a radio news anchor and as a reporter (with what is now) News Talk 98-7 (but was News Talk 100).
Me: So when you left, the station got weaker?
Grider: I was just a powerful force. No, really they have a lot of good people who work there. (Knox County Commission) Chairman (Mike) Hammond runs it.
Me: No I meant it dropped from 100 to 98.
Grider: The frequency has nothing to do with the radio station. (Grider then proceeds to ramble about wattage or something like that.) That doesn’t have anything to do with the frequency – that’s the location on the dial.
Me: What makes you qualified for this job?
Grider: I spent several years in this market, covering local politics and also covering the community in general, but I have a substantial amount of broadcast experience and managerial experience, and I also understand journalism and have experience in the web. It’s great to have a web presence. It all goes back to restoring the public trust.
Me: What do you like about the job and don’t like?
Grider: I love my job – everything about it. One, I’m a bit of a political junkie – that’s one of the things I liked about working in the new business. I really have always enjoyed seeing how the process of government works and I like being on this side. Let me compare the two, though. I’m the kind of guy that when it storms outside, I like to be inside, listening to the thunder. I love that. But in news, I had to be at work. If there was a car crash I had to be at work, helping to cover it. It was tough being married and trying to meet all those obligations. In this (current) job, if something comes up on the weekend, it doesn’t necessarily have to be taken care of right then. If I’m at my in-laws’ house and I don’t have high-speed Internet then I can probably deal with it when I get home. It’s a lot of work and lot more work than when I was in the news, but I enjoy it more and it doesn’t encroach on my personal time as much which is nice.
Me: Why did you apply for the job?
Grider: I saw the posting online and in the Sunday paper and I thought this would be a good thing for me. My wife and I had been talking for some time. I thought about getting out of the news business when I was in radio but then the opportunity in TV came up and I thought I would give that a shot. But I’d been talking about it for awhile. My wife and I were again talking about it when we found out about the job opening and I thought I’m going to go for it. Then one day I got a call and the mayor (Tim Burchett) and (the administration’s chief of staff) Dean Rice had an interview a week or two later, and then I got a call and they offered me the job. There were a lot of qualified people who applied that could have gotten it, so I feel really fortunate to have gotten it.
Me: I was talking to one of your former TV colleagues and he was complaining that Dean asked him about his political background. Or rather what his politics were. Were you asked? Did it offend you?
Grider: That someone else was asked?
Me: No. Were you asked?
Grider: No, but I’ve never kept it a secret. But, traditionally – honestly I have always been a Democrat and was in the Anderson County Democratic Executive Committee when I was 18 and had just gotten out of high school and going into college. But as time went by I became more of an independent. But I’m definitely conservative when it comes to fiscal (issues) and issues of the Constitution, but not definitely conservative where government encroaches on personal lives. I cannot call myself a Republican (like the mayor or Rice) and I cannot call myself a Democrat. The titles don’t fit me. But I think people say “yeah right” when I tell them that I’m an independent. But it doesn’t matter really. It’s not my job to have a direction on the administration from a political viewpoint. If the mayor has a policy or takes a stance on an issue that I don’t agree with, well, it’s not my job to make that an issue. It’s my job to make it a message. It’s not Michael’s message. But fortunately I haven’t had to do that. The mayor is a really good mayor. He’s someone I respect – even in news – because he was always open and accessible. There’s this story I always tell –
Me: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Grider: I know you’ve heard it. Can I at least include it by reference?
Me: I don’t know.
Grider: (He tells the story anyway. He had to call Burchett about a breaking news event. At the time Burchett was a senator and he took the call from the Senate floor just as he was about to cast a vote. The mayor told him to hold on a second, he cast the vote, then did the interview.) I was really impressed that he would answer. He said “hang tight” and cast his vote. Not a lot of people would do that.
Me: That is a cool story. How about telling me a good embarrassing story about the mayor?
Grider: Oh man, man. The thing about the mayor is that there’s not really anything embarrassing about him. He’s a down-to-Earth kind of guy. What you see is what you get. There’s not an air about him. There’s no pretensions. Really, there’s not anything that would be embarrassing.
Me: Then give me an embarrassing story about Dean.
Grider: I don’t think I have one. Dean is all business. It’s hard to find an embarrassing story about Dean.
Me: What’s it like hanging out in the mayor’s entourage?
Grider: We don’t have an entourage. Sometimes I go with the mayor somewhere, especially if the media is involved but I don’t know if that constitutes an entourage.
Me: Then what’s it like hanging out in Dean’s entourage?
Grider: Dean definitely doesn’t have an entourage.
Me: So you’re saying no one likes Dean?
Grider: No, no. I didn’t say that.
Me: Heh. OK, I’ll leave you alone now. You were the first person interviewed for the blog. What do you think?
Grider: It’s pretty good. I like the blog. It’s right up my alley.
Me: Good answer. Heh.