Steve, below is a recap of other local, state, and federal instruction prohibiting employees of various government entities from serving on the legislative bodies and/or elected boards of those same governments.

• City of Knoxville, with regard to service on the Knoxville City Council (City Charter, Article IV, Section 40): “No person shall be eligible to serve in the office of councilmember who holds any other elective public office or who is a City of Knoxville employee (and) any councilmember who shall cease to possess any of the qualifications herein enumerated shall forthwith forfeit the office.”
• Knox County, with regard to service on the Knox County School Board (County Charter, Article V, Section 5.01): “No member of the Commission or any other public official or employee of the Board of Education shall be eligible for appointment or election to the Board of Education.”
• State of Tennessee, with regard to service in the state Senate or House of Representatives (Tennessee Constitution, Article II, Section 26): “No judge of any court of law or equity, secretary of state, attorney general, register, clerk of any Court of Record, or person holding any office under the authority of the United States shall have a seat in the General Assembly; nor shall any person in this state hold more than one lucrative office at the same time...” (Note: Per legal staff with the State Election Commission, legal precedent exists for defining “lucrative office” to include state employees.)
• United States of America, with regard to service in the U. S. Senate or House of Representatives (United States Constitution, Article I, Section 6, Item 2): “No senator or representative shall, during the time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil office under the authority of the United States which shall have been created, or the emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time, and no person holding any office under the United States shall be a member of either house during his continuance of office.”

In contrast, a single statute exists in state law to condone the practice (TCA 5-5-102), which reads as follows:

• “Notwithstanding any provision of the law to the contrary, any county employee, otherwise qualified to serve as a member of the county legislative body, shall not be disqualified from such legislative office by reason of being a county employee.”

The law director believes, as do we, that the January 12, 2007 Tennessee Supreme Court opinion in Jordan vs. Knox County affords us the opportunity to call a referendum on setting qualifications for commission service, such that our practices in this matter conform to those at every other level of government--local, state, and federal.

Tamara Shepherd :

"1) Knox County elects 55 positions among its executive, legislative, judicial, and school board positions. CAN WE EVEN NAME THEM ALL, AND IF WE CAN'T, HOW CAN WE PRESUME TO PERSONALLY QUALIFY THESE PEOPLE FOR THEIR OFFICES?"

If you took out judges, wouldn't you cut this number in like 1/4 to 1/3? There's divorce court, circuit court, small claims court, criminal court and chancery court. How can you get rid of judges? Is that a good idea?

...don't get me wrong. But absent standard policies, we would end up with the "perogative of the officeholder" ruling the day, and the County Mayor could freely appoint 100s of cronies into lucrative positions. I don't buy the argument made earlier that "he'd be a fool to do it" or "he'd have to appoint people from both factions to make people happy." HAH!

Consider the federal government, where the President appoints lots of important positions (Sec of Defense, Sec of State, judges). The legislative branch has the opportunity to review and approve/vote down the appointees. The proposal before us lacks this extremely critical check and balance!

I spoke with one of the committee members today about some concerns, the prime one really being that the "message" and ability to answer some of the questions isn't as far along as it should be, to be making a big media splash. Please don't take any of these questions as criticism, but an opportunity to make these ideas workable. But many more moments like the inability to answer George Korda's question on budget votes, and the committee is in for rough waters. The commission is going to be a very hostile audience, and they will pose the same questions we're posing here. And they'll use it for justification to blow the committee off.

My suggestions on some of the questions to be posed:

What about small conflicts that could cause a commissioner to not vote on the whole budget? The annual budget would be a special case excluded under COI rules- it would be unreasonable to assume a commissioner would base a budget vote based on a conflict that might only represent 0.01% of the budget. The budgeting process is clearly done at too high a level for COIs to come into play.

Mayoral appointments would cement too much power in one office. The proposal would include a requirement to place the fee offices under standard policies for pay, promotion, hiring, firing, overtime, travel allowances, and perks (Commission would need the authority to review these policies and any changes as a check/balance). Commission would also have to approve each appointment and any replacements by majority vote.

At large seats would require well-funded campaigns and would not be "representatives of the people" / in hands of developers um... good luck with this one. I'm not sure how you address this concern. Given the fact that it gives the movement a metro government "air" (not that there's anything wrong with it...), I might suggest dropping this one.

Finally, the proposal needs to define "conflicts of interest" and not leave it up to the Law Director (as stated on Inside TN) to define it. It must include family members and it should include major contributors, IMHO.

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Fighting for Reform and Representation, Fourth District
Steve Drevik, Commission Seat 4-B
(link...)