The key to all these ethics issues can be found at the Blount County Human Resources site. MTAS and CTAS are both following the same state guidelines.

" personal interests that impact or appear to impact the discretion of officials and employees"

"personal interests that affects or would lead a reasonable person to believe it affects the person's exercise of discretion"

Now try to define reasonable.

R- for whatever reason I can not use quoteblocks in reply.

Oops. Should be fixed now.

I seem to recall something about this in relation to the raging ethics issues over in Knox County.

I'm not clear on the details and I'm not sure what law covers all this (and I'm too lazy to look), but I seem to recall there is some controversy that the complaint has to be detailed and specific and that the person making the complaint basically has to lay out the evidence before ethics committees would proceed with an investigation. In the case of Knox County, I believe there was also an opinion that anonymous complaints wouldn't be considered.

If I recall correctly, it raises an issue in regard to protecting anonymous whistle-blowers from retaliation.

Mr. Tingle made his observations/accusations right out in the open. And can I point out that there is yet ANOTHER reference to American Fidelity Bank in that document? Apparently, John Loope serves on their "advisory board" along with our Sheriff and many other notables in county/city government.

The Ethics Legislation that the State passed recently is totally useless and serves no purpose as far as ethics goes. The law is so vague, it is a complete waste of time to file any ethical complaint. Foxes guarding the hen house.