Mayor Elam, Vice-Mayor Sellers, City Manager Robertson, and six employees file complaint against Sorey

lead story in both The Chronicle and The Mt. Juliet News.
Mayor Linda Elam, Vice-Mayor Will Sellers, City Manager Randy Robertson, and six city of Mt. Juliet employees have filed an ethics complaint against County Commissioner Chris Sorey.
The Complaint was sent to Wilson County Mayor Robert Dedman, who indicated that he had turned it over to [...]

Sorey conducted background checks on fellow county commissioners

Headline from the Mt. Juliet News, Dec 10, 2008.
Bernie Ash (district 23) and Gary Keith (district 17) both confirmed that they had been contacted by the Smyrna Airport Authority and told they were on the list of people whose information was improperly accessed.
Mt. Juliet Mayor Linda Elam called on Sorey to resign, apologize, and pay [...]

Mayor Linda Elam on Monday night asked that Wilson County Commissioner Chris Sorey resign from office

Story in the Tennessean:
MT. JULIET — Mayor Linda Elam on Monday night asked that Wilson County Commissioner Chris Sorey resign from office because a TBI audit showed he had used a state Web site to run unauthorized background checks on her and other city workers and elected officials.
Vice Mayor Will Sellers, whose records were also [...]

Depositions postponed in former City Planner’s lawsuit – City withholding emails

Both the Mt. Juliet News and The Chronicle carried stories this week reporting that depositions in the federal lawsuit filed by former City Planner Bobby Franklin had been postponed.
The depositions had been scheduled to begin this week, but the City has refused to turn over to Franklin’s attorney several hundred emails which have been requested. [...]

Linda Elam: pot, kettle, black, & glass houses

Linda Elam did another mailing to Mt. Juliet voters last week. The point of this one was to directly attack Wendell Marlowe’s record.
Here’s the relevant section of the postcard mailing:

Point Number One: If you’re going to attack one of your opponents, it’s really not smart to misspell his name. Marlowe spells his first name “Wendell,” [...]

Developers have picked their candidate in the Mt. Juliet Mayor’s race

Wendell Marlowe has raised by far the most money – $10,725. More than the other three candidates combined. And most of the money has come from realtors and developers.
Two questionable business contributions are to be found in Marlowe’s Financial Disclosure form.
One is from Summit Realty Group in Mt. Juliet, which the TN Secretary of State [...]

New Permanent Pages

The persistent refusal of the City of Mt. Juliet to abide by the Tennessee Open Records law as well as the City Commission’s blithe persistence in refusing to deal with their laughable “ethics” code have both been commented on at Radio Free Mt. Juliet.
Both issues are important enough to merit their own permanent reference pages, [...]

The story Linda Elam wants you to forget

Mayor working for MJ retail developer, still hasn’t told city staff
New employer was major contributor in county mayor campaign

$24,970 (out of a total of $51,334) was contributed by Ken Powers, Commercial Realty Services, and related entities. The Mayor began working for CRS in September of 2006, and continued working for them until shortly after an [...]

Will Sellers and The Chronicle – What did the Commissioner say, and when did he say it?

On the cover of the July 30th Chronicle, there was a prominent quote from D2 Commissioner Will Sellers – “They’ve got reason to worry.”
At the August 11th meeting of the City Commission, Commissioner Sellers approached the editor of The Chronicle, Tomi Wiley, and demanded a front-page retraction, claiming he never said that.
Wiley had her notes from [...]

Mt. Juliet census director admits to stealing money

from The Tennessean, May 20, 2008. Story by Clay Carey:
The organizer of Mt. Juliet’s special census has quit his city job and admitted to stealing thousands of dollars in town money.
City employee Mike Chambers said he took between $10,000 and $15,000 over a period of several weeks by falsifying invoices related to the census, which [...]