Chaney Farms| Land & Cattle Sevierville TN

NASHVILLE — Officials in 10 Tennessee towns and cities contract with a red light camera company, Redflex, which is receiving intense scrutiny nationwide after allegations it was involved in a large bribery scandal in Chicago.

Tennessee Watchdog was able to reach officials in four of those 10 government entities — and only one of them knew anything about the reports.

RED LIGHT: Is trouble brewing with a company that various towns and cities in Tennessee have hired to operate red light cameras?

Ben Harkins, a program manager for Farragut’s Traffic Enforcement Program, didn’t comment on the reports he had read, other than to say no company officials have ever tried to bribe him.

“We don’t accept trips, dinners or anything like that. Everyone pays their own way,” Harkins said, adding the town, which has about 20,000 people, only has four intersections with these cameras.

“Redflex has tried to assure us that they don’t want this to happen again.”

Farragut Mayor Ralph McGill, who has to approve renewal contracts with Redflex, didn’t know about the company’s troubles in Illinois.

Farragut’s taxpayers pay nothing to the Arizona-based Redflex, Harkins said, although the company gets a hefty portion of every fine.

Farragut Mayor Ralph McGill

“Once Redflex got the contract, at their own expense they install new equipment and provide all maintenance. The company gets the lion’s share of a $50 fine the town gives to someone caught racing through a red light,” Harkins said, adding that amounts to about $37 for the company and $13 for the town.

The town’s contract with Redflex expires at the end of this year, Harkins said, adding the company originally competed against four other vendors to get the current contract.

According to the Chicago Tribune, a fired Redflex executive, Aaron Rosenberg, said in a lawsuit the company hands out bribes and gifts to dozens of municipalities in Chicago and 13 states.

The paper reported that Rosenberg is participating in an ongoing federal investigation on the matter.

“The explosive allegations, accompanied by few specifics, suggest investigators may be examining Redflex’s business practices around the country in the wake of the company’s admission last year that its flagship camera program in Chicago was likely built on a $2 million bribery scheme,” according to the Tribune.

“Redflex fired Rosenberg and sued him for damages in an Arizona court in February, largely blaming him for the company’s wrongdoing in Chicago.”

Jody Ryan

The company lost a $100 million contract with Chicago after the Tribune reported a sketchy relationship between Redflex and a city official, although it continues to operate the city’s red light camera program, the paper reported.

In addition to Tennessee, Rosenberg said the company bribed officials in California, Washington, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Florida, New Jersey, Virginia and Georgia, the Tribune reported.

Redflex spokeswoman Jody Ryan told Tennessee Watchdog in an e-mail the company has made several changes within to correct any problems, including introducing a new whistleblower program.

“Since we announced the findings of our internal investigation, we have signed, renewed or executed over 90 contracts,” Ryan said.

The towns and cities in Tennessee that contract with Redflex, in addition to Farragut, according to Ryan are:

•  Oak Ridge
• Johnson City
• Kingsport
• Mount Carmel
• Selmer
• Union City
• Morristown
• Clarksville
• Jackson

Officials in Selmer, Union City and Jackson told Tennessee Watchdog they also didn’t know of the reports about Redflex’s alleged bribery in Chicago.

Watchdog.org reported in January that Rosenberg had a business partnership with the city of Tacoma, Wash., in his official capacity with the company.

Contact Christopher Butler at chris@tennesseewatchdog.org. or follow him and submit story ideas on his official Facebook page.

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NASHVILLE — Officials with Clarksville’s city-owned Internet announced Monday, April Fool’s Day, that all of their 15,000 customers, many of whom are business owners, had been kicked offline — again.

Clarksville Department of Electricity officials, despite the timing, weren’t pulling any gags about problems with their Lightband service.

Lightband customers, already furious about a massive and lengthy outage only one week earlier, likely wouldn’t have laughed even if the announcement were a hoax.

As before, many irate customers whipped out their smart phones and took CDE to task on the public utility’s Facebook page.

But one poster, Jonathan Harrison, had a constructive suggestion.

Indeed, Clarksville-Montgomery Public Library Director Martha Hendricks confirmed to Tennessee Watchdog her library uses Charter, a private competitor, and anyone who needed Internet service was free to come there.

“CDE Lightband does not have a stellar reputation at this point, in my opinion, and is a relatively new service,” Hendricks wrote in an e-mail to Tennessee Watchdog, adding she didn’t want anyone to view this as an endorsement for Charter.

The library, Hendricks said, is not entirely county funded — therefore, library officials have the option to use whichever Internet service they wish.
CDE: CDE’s customers are apparently active on the utility’s official Facebook page, as requested.

“Perhaps in the future, we will look at them again if and when things improve — this is the second major outage for CDE lately that has affected the county’s ability to do work.”

But other county and city agencies, including the police and sheriff’s department, use Lightband, according to Jamie Dexter, Natalie Hall, Elizabeth Black and Jennifer Rawls, who serve as spokesmen and women for those agencies.

They all said that Monday’s Internet outage didn’t impair their duties as they still had access to phone services.

CDE spokeswoman Christy Batts told Tennessee Watchdog the public utility wasn’t to blame.

“This is the first time since that time frame that we have had back-to-back outages of this significance,” Batts said.

“It took out everyone on our system. In both instances, it was from connections to the Internet with third party providers that we had no control over.”

Lightband customer Kate Matties, who said the outage caused problems at her business, seemingly isn’t so ready to accept that explanation.

“The fiber connection is fast — when it works,” Matties said. “It’s like owning a Ferrari that’s broken down two days a week. If it doesn’t get you where you need to go, when you need to go there, what’s the use?”

Christy Batts

As Tennessee Watchdog reported last week, several Clarksville business owners lost a lot of money last week when their government-owned Internet went down.

Things got so heated that CDE Lightband officials warned their own Internet customers to stop posting abusive language on its official Facebook page.

The business owners are generally smaller in scale when compared to the multi-million dollar businesses CDE hoped to serve in an industrial park outside city lines.

Currently, CDE officials can’t legally expand their government-owned Internet outside the city.

Rep. Joe Pitts, D-Clarksville, told Tennessee Watchdog last week he had postponed a bill that would have allowed such an expansion, at least until next year’s Tennessee General Assembly session.

Contact Christopher Butler at chris@tennesseewatchdog.org. or follow him and submit story ideas on his official Facebook page.
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By Chris Butler | Tennessee Watchdog

NASHVILLE — If you’re a state employee in Tennessee, especially a teacher, and you’re pining for a raise, then what you’re about to read will probably make you mad.

You likely know you aren’t getting a salary increase for the upcoming fiscal year. But did you know the Tennessee General Assembly is about to give a pay raise to state judges, who generally make in excess of $160,000 per year?

SALARY INCREASE: State judges in Tennessee are going to receive a nice salary increase — but teachers and other state employees aren’t.

State Supreme Court rulings dating back to 1873 dictate that judicial salaries are fixed and can’t fluctuate during a judge’s eight-year term.

Technically, according to the bureaucrats, these state judges will resume getting a cost-of-living increase next year. Judges have been eligible for COLA increases, per state law, since 1991, said John Rader, who provides legal counsel to Republican Gov. Bill Haslam.

Rader told the Finance Ways and Means Committee this week that, if they wanted to, legislators could change the law and not grant the automatic increases to these judges.

On top of that, according to the Tennessee Bar Association, state judges will also see salary increases of $5,800 per year in 2016.

General Sessions judges would have their pay increases delayed and adjusted according to the population of their jurisdictions, the TBA added.

“The salary increases proposed are for 2016, 2018 and 2020, and the reason we are proposing them this year is because if they are going to be proposed they have to be proposed before the judges start their term on Sept. 1, 2014,” Rader said at the committee hearing.

TSEA President Bob O’Connell

“Once they start their term we can’t go back next year and offer them a raise because that would be giving a raise within their term.”

Other state employees aren’t eligible for this type of COLA increase, Rader said.

“The reason for the COLA increase is because other state employees are able to get a raise from year to year, and that raise varies,” Rader told the committee. “Judges cannot receive those discretionary raises within their term. The COLA increase is hypothetically intended to offset a judge’s salary versus a state employee’s salary over an eight-year period.”

The pay increases will cost taxpayers $1.4 million, but they aren’t a part of this year’s upcoming fiscal budget, Rader said.

The two sponsors of this legislation, state Rep. Charles Sargent, R-Franklin, and Sen. Mark Norris, R-Collierville, didn’t return Tennessee Watchdog’s requests for comment.

Two strange bedfellows, Tennessee Tax Revolt President Ben Cunningham and Tennessee State Employees Association President Bob O’Connell, have problems with the situation.

“I don’t think judges ought to be singled out for special treatment, certainly not in this environment, when taxpayers are having to cut back and when people are seeing less income,” Cunningham told Tennessee Watchdog on Friday.

O’Connell told Tennessee Watchdog on Thursday he understands that state law makes a pay increase for judges necessary, but he wishes other state employees were also receiving this perk.

“Teachers and state employees are getting zero,” O’Connell said.

Ben Cunningham, with Tennessee Tax Revolt

“We’re in an awkward position at the TSEA also, and we don’t like to campaign for anyone’s salary to go down in any way.  However, there are some basic fairness issues. If any special group has a built-in cost-of-living escalator, well that’s fine for them, but we should all have it.

“State employees, even though for three years in a row they’ve gotten across the board raises, they’ve been very meager, and in each case below the cost-of-living increases for that year,” O’Connell added.

Republican State. Sen. Stacy Campfield, at another committee meeting this week, also complained.

“When we’re telling teachers we can’t afford to give them pay raises and they don’t make a fraction of $168,000, and we’re telling a lot of state employees, many of whom probably don’t make $20,000 to $30,000, that we can’t afford to give them pay raises,” Campfield said.

“I can’t justify giving a pay raise to someone who is making $168,000 plus benefits, even if it is just in the future.”

The Tennessean reported last month the state has a $160 million gap in this year’s state budget due to poor sales and business tax collections. Haslam announced that teachers and other state employees wouldn’t receive a raise as a result.

District attorneys and public defenders were originally eligible for the same raises the judges will likely receive, but they no longer are, according to the TBA.

“Salaries for those positions do not have the same constitutional protection,” according to the TBA.

Contact Christopher Butler at chris@tennesseewatchdog.org. or follow him and submit story ideas on his official Facebook page.

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NASHVILLE — Tennessee Watchdog reporter Chris Butler appeared on FOX 17 News of Nashville on Wednesday to discuss how $60 million of taxpayer money, meant for tourism promotion, is going across state lines.

In a release, Tennessee Department of Tourist Development officials announced late last month they have selected VML, a global marketing agency, for a five-year contract to increase tourism in the state.

FOX 17 of Nashville reporter Mikayla Lewis interviewed Tennessee Watchdog reporter Chris Butler Wednesday about a $60 million state contract.

In the article, Tennessee Watchdog questioned why the money is going to Missouri, especially when Tennessee has so many marketing firms of its own.

FOX 17 reporter Mikayla Lewis interviewed Butler, who discussed how eight of the 40 vendors that the TDTD selected to compete for the contract were Tennessee-based.

The tourism release said VML, which has offices scattered throughout the world, will open an office in Nashville, but the release didn’t say when.

State officials did not specify when VML plans to open its Nashville office, and VML officials have thus far not responded to Tennessee Watchdog’s requests for comment.

The advertising contract includes website, social media, research and public relations work, TDTD officials said.

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