Office salaries: Burchett v Ragsdale

Some folks have asked me lately about the salaries and staffing levels in the mayor’s office, since the whole fee issue mess really got going.

How many employees does he have? What are the salaries? How many pals did he hire.

Etc.

I actually pulled this list back toward the end of February. Just haven’t done anything with it.

Yet.

Anyhoo, county Mayor Tim Burchett has nine (including himself) folks working directly in his department. They make about $580,652 in combined pay.

Here’s the record I got from the human resources department.

Toward the end of his tenure as mayor, Mike Ragsdale had (including himself and four part-time interns – or that’s how they’re listed anyway) 12 folks in his office between Jan. 1, 2010 and Sept. 1, 2010 - his last day in office. They made around a combined $648,933.

Here’s his file.

Burchett moved some people around and combined a few positions. The most obvious change was sending Dwight Van de Vate to the engineering department where he took a slight pay cut and replaced Bruce Wuethrich.

Despite talks about not creating any new spots, technically Burchett did when he hired Communications Manager Michael “Spin Doc” Grider.

That job, though, essentially replaced Susanne Dupes, who served as director of communications and media relations, but it’s a new classified position.

The pay isn't the same. But, Grider does get to hang out on Facebook during the day because he has one of the few county computers that doesn't block the website.

Dupes also served, in part, as a spokesperson for the mayor. Burchett and his chief of staff, Dean Rice, take their own phone calls, so they don’t need someone to speak for them.

Unless of course it involves a meeting for a board on which the mayor serves.

He tends not to make those.

Hold off on the Hillside statement

A couple days back R. Neal posted this on his blog (which kicks ass by the way) about the county commissioner’s workshop where members will discuss the Ridgetop Hillside Protection Plan. Click here.

Apparently, some folks from the Realtors world (I think the Knoxville Realtors and Builders) want to read a statement during Wednesday’s meeting, which starts at 8 a.m.

Now, I don’t have a dog in this fight, but I have to say this is the wrong time to read the statement. That’s not taking a shot at anyone, but it’s a meeting for the commissioners. Yes, it’s open to the public, but they’re not taking public comments.

They've taken public comment a number of times. They've received all the emails and phone calls from folks. They know how you feel.

My thoughts?

Wait.

Sure, come to the meeting, but don’t try to speak on this one. It’s just going to upset the commissioners who want the chance to talk (publicly) amongst themselves and get the facts from the folks who put together the plan.

There will be a commissioner work session the following Monday. And then a regular meeting a week later. That’s the time to make a statement.

Plus, no one is going to go to the Wednesday workshop anyway. (or rather, there won't be a big crowd. Not like what you'll get at the work session and the regular meeting.)

Wait until you have a crowd to read the statement.

That’s just my advice. And, hey, I don’t always give out the best advice, so maybe you should ignore it.

Or maybe not.

Heh.

Also, keep in mind that the issue is probably going to be tabled again.

Why vote now, when you can deliberate later.

Right?

OK, seriously, it’s probably getting tabled so the commission can hold another meeting to talk about the proposal, this time with the Knoxville City Council.

And, hey, maybe that’s a good time to read the statement, too. If they have a public comments section.

Either way, I'll be at the meeting. So if it's read, we'll cover it.

Just some thoughts.

Thoughts on the pay raise story

I was thinking today’s story that Tom Humphrey (the best state government reporter in Tennessee) and I teamed up on about state-mandated pay raises for some county elected officials.

The political enemies of those who get them are going to have a field day.
And really, they shouldn’t.

The issue is that these salary hikes exist.

Perhaps that should be changed. I don’t know. (Rep. Mike Sparks, R-Smyna, tried but then all his buds shut him down.)

But, you can’t fault them for taking the money. As county Register of Deeds Sherry Witt told me: “It’s probably illegal if we don’t.”

I think she’s right, certainly for county Mayor Tim Burchett.

The charter says he has to make more than any other county elected official. If he turned down the raise, then he’d violate the charter.

Not a good thing for him.

(On a side note, the mayor actually can get up to 5 percent more than any other elected official, although Burchett and his predecessor, Mike Ragsdale, only accepted $1 more.)

Burchett did, however, years ago vote for the pay hikes. But at the time – 2002 – I really don’t think he had plans to be mayor. Governor maybe. President even. Not mayor.

Anyhoo, the deal was that county officials each year would nag the state officials for the pay increases. It got to be such a headache, that they tied the raises to the census and the consumer price index. That way they wouldn’t have to deal with the pesky county officials.

Everyone – except for five state senators (including Burchett) and two representatives – approved it.

Then they all promptly forgot about it.

Until now.

And I doubt the issue is dead.

Far from it.

Witt: You want transparency? OK

Sherry “I'm more transparent than you are” Witt just fired a shot across the bow.

Heh.

You'll know what I'm talking about if you've been following the whole fee office mess.

In a press release, the county register of deeds (pictured to the left during her September swearing-in ceremony) said she will now post all her office's monthly financial reports, operating budget and salary suits online right smack here.

I'm not going to sum up what's going on. You can click here for that. But Witt is adamant that she's not turning over her budget – the one that sets staffing levels and wages – to the commission or even county Mayor Tim Burchett.

She even hints that the whole “transparency” issue – a word that politicians just looooove to throw around – is a front for something else.

“If the recent debate about the fee offices really is about transparency, I certainly hope this will help answer some question the public might have,” she said. “If the debate is really about something else, then I'm sure there will be more to come.”

That's nice that she did this. How long has she been in office?

Anyhoo, let's see whether the other five do it. Or at least the other two – Criminal Court Clerk Joy McCroskey and Clerk and Master Howard Hogan – who are not on board with the mayor/commission plan.

Cause, you know, it's all about transparency.

And the cheapest one got the boot

When the local Legislative delegation booted their one-time pal, Paul “I ain't voting for the Republican” Crilly, off the Knox County Election Commission, they got rid of the member that cost taxpayers the least amount of money.

You see, the job doesn't pay the folks who serve on the panel (and meet only a few times a year) all that much in the grand scheme.

(The chairman – in this case, Chris Heagerty – makes $5,000 per year. The other four get $3,900.)

But, it's the benefits that cost money.

And they get some of those gooooood county benefits.

Except for Crilly. He didn't take 'em.

Here's the easy breakdown (or click right here for the detailed version courtesy of the county's human resources department) for yearly benefits costs:

• Chris Heagerty: $11,685.96
• Bob Bowman: $11,617.32
• Cassandra Stuart: $10,187.32
• Cameron Brooks: $5,637.32
• Paul Crilly: $242.32

New guy, Rob McNutt, who had some voting issues – seven times – hasn't completed the paperwork as of yet.

But, I'm betting he's going to get some of that good insurance, too.

Jarret vs. CTAS vs. Attorney Tim

I was kind of thinking about being a *#$% and taking a shot at the County Technical Assistance Service, or CTAS for short, over the whole fee office issue.

(I mean I’m still a *#$%, but anyhoo.)

However, in a rare moment of lucidity for the KNS message board, I read a post by a reader that actually made sense, wasn’t demeaning and stayed on topic.

I’ll get to that in a moment.

But first:

A lot of folks are coming down on county Law Director Joe “you ain’t from around here” Jarret. He’s taking some hits today because a legal opinion he issued – based on whether the mayor and commission can legally yank the coin from the fee offices and make the directors submit budgets to them – got reversed.

The problem here is that CTAS didn’t reverse Jarret. CTAS reversed itself.

Jarret issued his initial legal opinion only after he talked with a CTAS attorney and let them do the legwork. This was intentional. Yeah, Jarret gets paid some heavy scratch (more than $150K), but in this instance he had to step aside.

His office represents the entire county. That includes the mayor’s office (heh- I’ll get to that one in a minute, too), the commissioners, the school board and the purchasing department whenever a reporter tries to get ahold of public documents and they don’t want to provide them.

Oddly enough, Jarret’s department doesn’t represent the pension board. Nooooo. They pay three lawyers (including two former law directors who used to do it themselves when they were in office) hundreds of hundreds of thousands of dollars, even though Jarret’s office could represent them.

But I digress.

Anyway, back to the issue.

Jarret’s office didn’t take this on itself because of the potential conflict of interest. And it’s not unusual to farm out work. The office does have a budget for that.

So, Jarret went to CTAS, which our wise, sage-like 1973 state Legislature formed because “county officials wanted an agency to provide prompt, accurate, technical assistance on a daily basis to Tennessee’s 95 counties."

CTAS crafted a plan, then dropped the ball. Because the plan kind of sucked.

But, there is some good news.

It got caught before the commission actually voted on it. Because if it did, we’d have some lawsuits rocking.

So, I was initially going to rag CTAS for this one. (Actually, I think I just did, but whatever.)

I deal with a lot of arrogant folks, and I put that organization right smack at the top. And when that arrogance turns to humility – like it did when I talked to a number of folks over there today – you know something is up.

Now, CTAS will say: “Well, gee there, partner, we might have reversed our decision, but we haven’t had a lawsuit over what we were basing it on in over 20 years.”

Well, yeah, because no one knew you were freaking wrong. Until now.

Oops. My bad. Sorry.

You see, Knox County isn’t the only county exempt from the state statute that CTAS miraculously discovered in the eleventh hour Wednesday afternoon that led to it reversing its own decision. No, there’s more counties. So guess what could happen?

That’s right. Bye, bye perfect record.

And by the way, how many other statutes have you forgotten about?

(One more thing: A CTAS official I talked to today said to go ahead “and rely on your county attorney” for now. Ouch.)

OK, enough.

Here’s what the poster (named “pinhook”) wrote on the KNS message board about the issue:

CTAS is an arm of the University of Tennessee. It used to be housed in the Institute for Public Service. Its job is to provide technical assistance to the 95 county governments. It follows in longevity, the Municipal Technical Advisory Service that provides technical assistance to Tennessee towns and cities. It is funded by the state sales tax, city and county portions and by other sources.

Neither CTAS nor MTAS has any authority over cities or counties. Their staff members tend to be very good professionals - maybe a little academic oriented for some. Most have held high level positions in their specialties.

The CTAS lawyer probably did a quick and dirty search of recent law and said that he could find nothing to prevent the action. Later he may have felt uncomfortable with his research and looked in greater detail. He could have been encouraged to look further by someone.

The additional research may have turned up the new information and he called, emailed or whatever the county and informed them of the newly found law. Most good lawyers do not have the entire code memorized. I am saying that CTAS is not the villain or hero either in this case. They were doing what they do every day.

In other words, people f--- up sometimes.

Let’s be happy we caught it. Let’s not be too harsh and start playing the Blame Game.

On a side note: I’m pretty sure the further research done by CTAS was probably at the urging of some of the fee office holders who are opposed to the plan to give up their scratch. But it really doesn’t matter. Someone was going to discover the mistake sooner or later.

Now, with that said, the issue isn’t done.

Noooooo.

Uh, uh.

Right now, county mayor Tim Burchett and his right-hand-man, Chief of Staff Dean Rice, are up there on the sixth floor of the Knox County Deathstar figuring a way out of this mess.

I mean, they don’t have enough battles to lose – I mean, fight – right now, so they’re going to continue taking this one on in the name of transparency.

It’s also not like the administration hasn’t taken two steps back and one step forward during the time they’ve spent on this issue. (And the sarcasm drips, baby. Yeah.)

Sooooo.

They are no longer “mayor” and “chief of staff”.

They are now: Attorney Tim and Big Dean, esquire.

And they aren’t buying the legal opinions they got. So, they’re going to shop around.

And the best place? Well, if you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself.

So they're hitting the books, digging through codes, statutes, whatever.

They believe that the commission can still force at least three of the non-judiciary fee offices – the trustee, the register of deeds and the county clerk – into turning over the budgets. Those offices are listed in the charter. And we operate under a very confusing charter form of government. There’s this whole “Jordan Decision” thing. But let’s skip that for today.

And, they feel that it’s even possible that the judiciary offices – clerk and master, criminal court clerk, and circuit court clerk – could fall under commission control, too.

When I asked the mayor - I mean Attorney Tim - about the next step, he said: “We’ll talk to (Jarret). The story will probably be me and him not agreeing. But it will probably be up to CTAS, and when you have a law that says you can’t be transparent, then I think you have a problem with the law.”

OK.

The next time I take a “transparent” leak in the middle of the street and Sheriff Jimmy “The Man with the Badge” Jones comes after me, I’m going to tell him I have a problem with the law. I’m sure he’ll understand.

Heh. I kill myself sometimes.

But maybe the mayor is right.

Maybe Jarret – who is now researching the details between charter and state law – will find another old statute that reverses the last old statute.

And maybe they’ll all just get along.

Or maybe . . .

Nevemind.

Whatever.

Heh.

Oddly enough, these ramblings come right after I wrote a fairly positive piece about the mayor.

Well, I told you then that I would have to kick someone in the nads sometime soon.

Hillside plan and upcoming talks

The county commission next Wednesday (that's April 13 if you're really taking notes) plans to hold a workshop to talk about the Hillside Ridgetop Protection Plan.

It's at 8 a.m.

I'll be there. (Maybe. I'm not sure I'm even human at that hour.)

Anyhoo, you might want to sit this one out. Because they're not going to let you talk.

Uh, uh. Not this time.

(Which means I'll probably be back at the office by 9 a.m. I hope.)

I'll let the commission's big dog explain:

“We've had a lot of calls from people, saying that we're holding the meeting at 8 a.m., so the public can't participate, but that's not the case,” said Chairman Mike Hammond. “It's not designed to be a public hearing. This is a workshop for the commission. If I've got a question and need to get it answered, well, that's what we're holding it for.”

In other words, this one time, they want to get the facts without the emotion and the personal attacks.

However, it is open to the public.

So come on down. Just don't say anything.

Additionally, the commissioners will talk further about the issue at the regular work session ( 2 p.m. April 18) and again on April 25 during the regular meeting.

Please note – because I understand people are spreading all kinds of rumors about this thing – that the commission will talk about it at 6 p.m. during the REGULAR meeting. No, it will NOT be moved to 2 p.m.. It is part of the zoning agenda. That means 6 p.m.

Now, with that said, expect it to get tabled. Again.

Heh.

Because a number of commissioners want to hold a joint workshop with the City Council, which also has to sign off on this mess.

And of course, these things never, ever can get done without getting tabled two, three, four, whatever, times.

Burchett at least gave it a shot

Deep down I think I wanted county Mayor Tim Burchett’s Carter proposal to work.

If only because he was the one elected official who really, really worked to rebuild - not just renovate - that busted-up, low-grade, mold-ridden, toilet-leaking, floor-creaking, ceiling-dripping (you get the point) building.

The school board sure didn’t give it a shot.

And the ra-ra-we’re-going-to-do-something-about-it commission during last year’s budget hearings, when it withheld the renovation coin and – at one point – appeared to tell school officials how to spend it (which by the law is either illegal or borderline illegal), sure didn’t give it the old college try, either.

So, yeah - despite kicking the administration in the nads on occasion – this time I applaud the guy. He tried.

And, yeah, people are going to say it was politically motivated, or that he stuck his nose in the school system’s business, or whatever.

It doesn’t matter.

The residents went to the school board and were turned away. The commission failed them.

Their last stop by default was the mayor’s front door. And Burchett opened it.

He proposed the whole “let the developer build it and pay for it and we’ll lease it back” deal.

It was different.

For Knox County, anyway.

(Not the rest of the world, mind you.)

But here’s the problem.

The school system has some pretty tough standards on how they build new schools.

(And yeah, when they renovate a school, it’s certainly not going to have all the standards as a new one would, which kind of makes it a moot point, but I’m getting off track here.)

Anyhoo, the high standards mean big bucks. About $13 million for a new Carter Elementary School.

(I’m not going to rehash the whole episode here. If you know it, then you’re probably still reading. If you don’t, then you’ve left and aren’t missing anything. I've also provided links to old stories along the way. That's what those underlined words are. Heh.)

We got six proposals yesterday. That’s it.

I know the administration is happy about that. (or that’s what members are saying publicly.) I know county purchasing director Hugh Holt (whom I jokingly told I hope no one bids because I’m tired of covering the story) said that’s good, too. And county communications manager Michael "he who manages one person" Grider put his spin on it, also, with some press release that I promptly filed in the trash can.

Blah, blah. Whatever.

That’s not good.

It was advertised for a longer than usual period of time. It got great play in the media. And about 100 folks representing 50 groups attended the pre-bidding conference (or whatever it was called) in March.

Six isn’t going to cut it. And yeah, I know some of the folks teamed up, so that dwindles down the real numbers.

But more should have bid.

It would have created the true competition Burchett sought when he started this ordeal. It would have lowered the price.

But I don’t think it did or will.

Here’s the problem:

Despite the county’s attempts to stave off open records laws and not release the bid packages (which I still haven’t gotten a real explanation for why that’s the case), I know some of the proposed price tags.

One group told me it would cost $12 million to build.

The other? $15 million. That’s $14 million they’ll take out in loans, and the county - I’m pretty sure this is how it is proposed - would need to come up with $1 million.

Yeah, it’s only two of the six bids. But it’s also two-thirds of the bidders and the bidders I just cited know what they’re doing. They’ve successfully done big projects before. They know the numbers.

And the prices are close to what the school system has been telling folks it would cost the whole time.

It just doesn’t appear that the old East Knox County school can get built for a bargain.

And the school board isn’t going to accept that.

(Actually, let’s not kid ourselves here. The school board was never going to sign off on the deal. Even if it did come in way under $13 million. But that’s another post for another day.)

So, what I guess I’m trying to say is that I applaud Burchett’s efforts. But I don’t see this thing happening.

(If it does, I’ll buy the guy a drink. And post about it. If only so people can call that ridiculous tattletale line.)

And when the administration does throw in the towel, I know a lot of folks will take their shots.

And maybe rightly so. I don’t know.

But, at least Burchett tried.

No one else did.

There.

Those are my nice words for the day.

Tune in tomorrow and I’ll find some way to kick the administration in the nads.

You know, cause it’s fun.

You found a what? And where?

OK, I take some liberties here, poking a little fun at the elected folks I cover.

And some I don't.

But as many of you know, I like to have some fun with the big tin can on top of the hill, too.

So, we all received the following company-wide email a little while ago:

"An electronic device was found in the ladies restroom on the second floor (near name deleted's office). If you have lost an electronic device, please come by HR to identify and claim."

Heh.

Now if it was a cell phone, don't you think the sender would have said that? Or a hair dryer? Or even a calculator?

Now if someone can find me that scene from Fight Club where the character says something like: "Nine times out of ten it's an electric razor. But every once in a while it's . . . ."

Oh man, I kill myself sometimes.

Going to go hang out by HR to see who shows up.

Cause I'm mature like that.

How the local state delegation voted

From what I understand the State Election Commission went ahead and signed off on the local delegation’s picks for the Knox County Election Commission.

It was expected, since the local folks obviously know more than the state folks, which is, uh, pretty typically in the ridiculous world of politics.

Actually, really that’s a good thing.

But don’t tell anyone on the state level that, let alone the federal level.

Because they obviously know what’s better for us, than we do. Most of the time. Just ask them.

Anyhoo, I’m rambling here. I Just wanted to note that we’ll have the same election commission as we’ve had the last few years with one notable exception.

That means Democrats Cassandra McGee Stuart and Cameron Brooks, as well as, Republicans Chris Heagerty and Bob Bowman. In addition Rob McNutt, who somehow managed to vote illegally seven times yet no one seems to care because it was an honest mistake, will replace Paul Crilly, who will go down in local Republican history as a turncoat because he didn’t vote to oust Greg Mackay, the election administrator and a Democrat, two years ago.

Heh.

The group, if I’m not mistaken, will reorganize so to speak in 20 days. A Republican - because that’s the party with the most folks in the local Legislative delegation – will be the chairman. And the secretary spot goes to a Democrat.

You can imagine what the first order of business will be.

In the meantime, if you’re curious about how the local Republican state lawmakers voted when they made recommendations to the board, I think I have the breakdown.

(This was the secret vote done a couple weeks ago. They needed to do it in secret because they didn’t want the folks who elected them to know how they voted. Actually Steve Hall didn’t mind talking about it. But I digress.)

Anyway, no one in the Knox County Deathstar can keep a secret, so they talked to someone who talked to someone else who then played the telephone game with their brother’s cousin’s mother or whomever and it got back to me.

So I’m probably off a little bit here.

But I doubt it.

The vote for Rob McNutt was 5-3.

Senators Jamie Woodson and Randy McNally and Representative Ryan Haynes voted for Donnie Ellis.

Senator Stacey Campfield and Representatives Steve Hall, Frank Nicely, Harry Brooks and Bill Dunn voted for Rob McNutt.

I'm pretty sure that's how it went down.

But, hey, if I'm wrong then they can call and let me know.

No, Wisconsin, I won't help you

I’m apparently on a number of mailing lists that I don’t want to be on, but whatever.

(You’d think people would bother to look up where I work and what I cover. But they don’t. Because they’re lazy.)

Case in point, the other day AFT send me a press release about the pissing match going on between the Republican lawmakers out in Wisconsin and the teacher union.

The Republican Party of Wisconsin wants a professor to turn over his emails to them. The AFT complains that it’s really a ploy to embarrass him and they don’t want to do it.

So, they send a bunch of reporters this release.

I responded and they responded back.

I’m sure the Republicans will use the information against the union, if it’s damning.

But so what? It’s public information. Don’t write stupid crap in public records.

Here's the dialogue.

The first email:

Statement by Randi Weingarten, president, American Federation of Teachers, on Wisconsin Republican Party’s FOI requests for university faculties emails.

The Wisconsin Republican Party and others filed Freedom of Information Act requests for e-mails sent by William Cronon, a professor at the University of Wisconsin who has criticized the recent anti-union legislative actions of Gov. Scott Walker and others. The requests were for e-mails from his university e-mail account containing a wide range of terms, including the word “Republican” and the names of certain Republican politicians.

WASHINGTON—The information requests by the Republican Party of Wisconsin and conservative think tanks such as the Mackinac Center for Public Policy are nothing more than attempts to intimidate university faculty members. Clearly, their goal is not to seek the best solutions for the economic problems we face in the states and as a country, but rather to shut down open political discourse and to limit the academic freedom of professors whose independent voice has always been a critical component of public debate. It is time for politicians and policymakers to stop vilifying educators and public employees, and tackle the real work of strengthening our schools, institutions of higher education and public services so we can get our state economies back on track.

###

The AFT represents 1.5 million pre-K through 12th-grade teachers; paraprofessionals and other school-related personnel; higher education faculty and professional staff; federal, state and local government employees; nurses and healthcare workers; and early childhood educators.

Here’s my response:

Hello:

Couple quick questions.

I'm not up-to-speed on Wisconsin open records laws, but regardless . . .

Don't you think you subvert the freedom of information by not releasing these emails and, perhaps, set a precedent by not releasing them?

I have no dog in this fight (although I'm watching it closely since there is some overlap with a teacher union battle here in Tennessee), but if you have nothing to hide, then why not release the emails?

Then defend yourself if there's an issue over their content.
I don't know. Maybe it's just me.

But I don't think you're going to find much sympathy from a reporter.

Regards,

Mike Donila

Do you think they had a good answer? Hell no. They send me some BS editorial written by one of their own that appeared in the New York Times. Don’t bother reading the crap. Just look at the one bold telling sentence I underlined. And note that the writer is wrong. The open records law applies to all public officials. And yes, university professors are public officials if they're getting paid with tax dollars.

I don’t care what your political leaning is. If you’re a reporter and you want to defend them for keep the emails private, then you suck.

This is what they sent me (The American Thought Police by Paul Krugman):

Recently William Cronon, a historian who teaches at the University of Wisconsin, decided to weigh in on his state’s political turmoil. He started a blog, “Scholar as Citizen,” devoting his first post to the role of the shadowy American Legislative Exchange Council in pushing hard-line conservative legislation at the state level. Then he published an opinion piece in The Times, suggesting that Wisconsin’s Republican governor has turned his back on the state’s long tradition of “neighborliness, decency and mutual respect.”

So what was the G.O.P.’s response? A demand for copies of all e-mails sent to or from Mr. Cronon’s university mail account containing any of a wide range of terms, including the word “Republican” and the names of a number of Republican politicians.

If this action strikes you as no big deal, you’re missing the point. The hard right —which these days is more or less synonymous with the Republican Party — has a modus operandi when it comes to scholars expressing views it dislikes: never mind the substance, go for the smear. And that demand for copies of e-mails is obviously motivated by no more than a hope that it will provide something, anything, that can be used to subject Mr. Cronon to the usual treatment.

The Cronon affair, then, is one more indicator of just how reflexively vindictive, how un-American, one of our two great political parties has become.

The demand for Mr. Cronon’s correspondence has obvious parallels with the ongoing smear campaign against climate science and climate scientists, which has lately relied heavily on supposedly damaging quotations found in e-mail records.

Back in 2009 climate skeptics got hold of more than a thousand e-mails between researchers at the Climate Research Unit at Britain’s University of East Anglia.

Nothing in the correspondence suggested any kind of scientific impropriety; at most, we learned — I know this will shock you — that scientists are human beings, who occasionally say snide things about people they dislike.

But that didn’t stop the usual suspects from proclaiming that they had uncovered “Climategate,” a scientific scandal that somehow invalidates the vast array of evidence for man-made climate change. And this fake scandal gives an indication of what the Wisconsin G.O.P. presumably hopes to do to Mr. Cronon.

After all, if you go through a large number of messages looking for lines that can be made to sound bad, you’re bound to find a few. In fact, it’s surprising how few such lines the critics managed to find in the “Climategate” trove: much of the smear has focused on just one e-mail, in which a researcher talks about using a “trick” to “hide the decline” in a particular series. In context, it’s clear that he’s talking about making an effective graphical presentation, not about suppressing evidence. But the right wants a scandal, and won’t take no for an answer.

Is there any doubt that Wisconsin Republicans are hoping for a similar “success” against Mr. Cronon?

Now, in this case they’ll probably come up dry. Mr. Cronon writes on his blog that he has been careful never to use his university e-mail for personal business, exhibiting a scrupulousness that’s neither common nor expected in the academic world. (Full disclosure: I have, at times, used my university e-mail to remind my wife to feed the cats, confirm dinner plans with friends, etc.)

Beyond that, Mr. Cronon — the president-elect of the American Historical Association — has a secure reputation as a towering figure in his field. His magnificent “Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West” is the best work ofeconomic and business history I’ve ever read — and I read a lot of that kind of thing.

So we don’t need to worry about Mr. Cronon — but we should worry a lot about the wider effect of attacks like the one he’s facing.

Legally, Republicans may be within their rights: Wisconsin’s open records law provides public access to e-mails of government employees, although the law was clearly intended to apply to state officials, not university professors. But there’s a clear chilling effect when scholars know that they may face witch hunts whenever they say things the G.O.P. doesn’t like.

Someone like Mr. Cronon can stand up to the pressure. But less eminent and established researchers won’t just become reluctant to act as concerned citizens, weighing in on current debates; they’ll be deterred from even doing research on topics that might get them in trouble.

What’s at stake here, in other words, is whether we’re going to have an open national discourse in which scholars feel free to go wherever the evidence takes them, and to contribute to public understanding. Republicans, in Wisconsin and elsewhere, are trying to shut that kind of discourse down. It’s up to the rest of us to see that they don’t succeed.

More on election commission mess

On Monday, the State Election Commission is expected to rubber stamp the nominations the local Legislative delegation made to the Knox County Election Commission.

That means the panel won’t change except for Rob McNutt taking over for Paul Crilly because the Republicans couldn’t stomach one of their own jumping ship and voting to keep county Elections Administrator Greg Mackay, a Democrat.

Late last week I wrote a story about McNutt forgetting seven times that he voted in the wrong precinct, and word was going around that he might step down.

You know, because the election commission kind of defines elections around here, and he kind of forgot how, where and when how to vote.

I never believed he’d step down, and News Sentinel staff writer Tom Humphrey (the most kick-ass state government reporter in all of Tennessee) pretty much confirmed it earlier this week.

(I don’t think Tom wrote about it, since it’s pretty much a non-issue now, but I might as well throw it up here, since I mentioned it earlier in the week.)

Humphrey said that the state senators and representatives he spoke to about the issue said the matter is over, so far as they are concerned, barring anything further.

Republican state Sen. and (McNutt's good pal) Stacey Campfield, for example, said the election is finished and “the time for yelling is before the election, not after.”

(On a side note, I have no idea what he’s talking about. What election? The nominations the delegation made last week without bothering to research the candidates? That election? Nooooooo. There’s always time to yell. Or scream. Heh.)

State Rep. Ryan Haynes, also a Republican and the chairman of the Knox County delegation, says if there’s anything problematic, it would be left to the state commission to decide against the delegation recommendations.

Of course, that’s not going to happen.