It was a pretty mundane budget meeting at the Rutherford County Courthouse. No “horror stories” in the sheriff’s spending plan, as some people had heard prior to the meeting. It was believed Robert Arnold was proposing a new pay plan, but commissioners approved just a few increases for warrants officers and other personnel, in addition to $1 million for new vehicles and $158,000 for yet more uniforms.

At the end of the evening, though, as I was walking down the steps from the second floor, sheriff’s office chief administrator Joe Russell was walking up—possibly to confront me—and said something to the effect of, “You’re the reason my son was threatened.”

Caught off guard, I responded, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He said that I had put a picture of his house in The Post (not the Pulse) showing election signs in the front yard and that someone had threatened his 16-year-old son as a result.

Let me say that I am truly sorry if someone threatened his son.

Here’s what happened: I wrote a story about Russell’s wife, Rutherford County Administrator of Elections Nicole Lester, having election signs in her yard in advance of the May Republican primary. The signs touted Arnold for sheriff, Andy Brunelle for public defender and Jennings Jones for district attorney, and their opponents were upset.

Rutherford County Election Commissioner Johnny Taylor brought up the matter at a commission meeting, so it was fair game. And even though the state Division of Elections said it was legal, a question remains about whether it was appropriate for the top election official in the county to show favoritism. Several local Republicans have mentioned to me they thought it showed poor judgment.

When Russell passed me on the stairs that evening, I knew nothing about any threat, although I wasn’t surprised that he was upset with the initial article about the signs.

Yet when he went past me he also said something to sheriff’s candidate Dale Armour and former sheriff’s candidate Ralph Mayercik, who were standing there, and it sounded as if it were a bit of a threat toward me.

But who’s keeping statistics? So I let it go (since I’m trying to hold the blood pressure down).

It raised its head again recently, though, in another encounter at the courthouse.
I was working on a story about Russell, who runs Sheriff Arnold’s campaign, gobbling up Internet domain names for candidates Bill Kennedy and Mike Fitzhugh when they announced they were running for the sheriff’s post last year. In an e-mail to sheriff’s office Public Information Officer Lisa Marchesoni, I asked if Russell did the computer work on sheriff’s office time and whether it was ethical to take website domain names from other candidates.

Marchesoni replied by e-mail that she forwarded the message to Russell, though I was asking for a response from the sheriff. I didn’t receive any e-mail response from Russell, but when I saw him that same night at a county commission meeting at the courthouse, I approached him as he was leaving the main meeting room and asked him about the domain names.

His only response was, “Is it ethical for Sam Stockard to put a picture of my house in the newspaper and cause my son to be threatened?”

I pointed out that he wasn’t directly answering the question. But that’s about all I could get out of him. Again, keeping the blood pressure low, I returned to the commissioners’ meeting.

Incidentally, Russell’s sheriff’s office salary is set at $68,970 next fiscal year but, according to county documents, was to be $84,197 under the sheriff’s initial proposal, which apparently was one of the “horror stories” budget committee members described.

A week later
You’d think this thing about the election-signs picture might die down. You might be wrong. But if you think this column is developing a theme, you’d be right. I was interviewing Nicole Lester in her office a couple of weeks ago about a pending vote by the Election Commission whether to fire her, keep her or let her resign.

Election Commission Chairman Ransom Jones raised the matter during a June 9 meeting, and in a subsequent interview he said she failed to work office hours as he requested—often coming in for only a couple of hours in the morning—and showed poor leadership in the office, which led to “terrible” morale. This had been going on almost since she took the job in 2011, and he had warned her to change in a November 2012 letter he placed in her personnel file.

Anyway, in addition to matters Jones brought up about her work performance, I asked her about recently taking the Election Office van to the sheriff’s office to be washed by inmates. Some people could argue that such an arrangement creates too cozy a situation between an elected official running for office and the county’s top election official.

Lester disagreed and said she took the van there to be washed simply because that’s a service they offer at the jail. She said she’d paid for it to be washed previously and had washed it at her house too. (If I’d been thinking, I would have asked, “Why are we paying someone about $90,000 a year to get the van washed?” Maybe that’s why she has to leave the office early.)

She continued, complaining that I had taken the picture of her house with election signs in front of it, which she said belonged to her husband (as if anyone could tell) and that when the state said it was legal, it should have ended there. No story should have been written. (Apparently, she’s so busy editing The Post, she doesn’t have time to be at the office.)

Lester said the picture led to a threat to her son by someone who drove by the house, and she called it “irresponsible” on my part. (Again, I am sorry, but I can’t be held accountable for someone else’s stupidity.) But we must ask: Just who is being irresponsible here?

Firebrand candidate
Heather Ann Brown, an independent candidate for Rutherford County Mayor, can rile up some people.

That’s what happened when she met with Sheriff Arnold this spring to discuss a spate of reports on file about her and Dorsey Meeks.

Brown, of Versailles Road in Rockvale, said she was to meet earlier this year with a sheriff’s office lieutenant to talk about a stack of reports, which she felt were targeting her and Meeks because they spoke out last year against the county and sheriff’s budget.

She was 15 minutes late and missed the meeting with the records lieutenant, she said, so then she asked to see the sheriff. “They kept putting me off and I got a little antsy,” she said.

Eventually, she wound up getting to meet with Arnold, who, she said, had five minutes before he went to lunch. Meeks, who admits he has an “anger management problem,” says he went outside so he wouldn’t say anything stupid.

Meanwhile, Brown contends, Arnold’s body language was “disrespectful.”

She says she told him they were there to talk about a report that shed Meeks in a bad light. The sheriff asked her for a copy of the report, but she refused to give it to him and told him she would schedule another appointment with the lieutenant.

Somewhere during the conversation, she apparently said something that irked the sheriff. She contends he stood up, pointed his finger in her face, cussed her out and then kicked her out.

“I said I was not going anywhere until you apologize,” she says.

Arnold called several officers into the room and had Ms. Brown escorted out, she says.

In response to questions about the incident, Sheriff Arnold denied cursing her, though he admitted using “strong language” toward Brown. The sheriff’s office also produced numerous incident reports dealing with Brown and Meeks, most of which involved confrontations with neighbors.

Ah yes, the classic “she said, he said.”

Not long after I met with Brown and Meeks, a report surfaced about signs on their property next to an Ernest Burgess for county mayor sign on adjacent land. One said “Low representation” and had a possum hanging from it, and the other two said, “Higher taxes” and “Barney Fife.”

Brown is a bit of an enigma. She can be reasonable one minute and then say some rather odd things the next. She was under control during a county mayor election forum, saying Rutherford County needs to “take a step back” and stop borrowing so much money. But she also answered one question regarding budget constraints with a string of words about high wires and balancing acts that I just couldn’t figure out.

During a budget public hearing, she was highly critical of county commissioners. On the one hand, she said the county’s debt is too high (mainly because it builds schools that cost $20 million to $40 million), but then she said it’s a shame that the county has one portable on its school campuses.

She is concerned about the rate of growth and the impact on spending and the ability of the water supply to meet its needs.

“We need to look at resources,” she says.

From what I understand, Consolidated Utility District, which serves most of unincorporated Rutherford County, takes its water from Percy Priest Lake and has plenty of supply.

Another independent
Teresa St. Clair, also an independent candidate for the mayor’s office, said during the mayoral forum she believes taxpayers are being “overcharged a great deal of money” for the way the county handles its employee benefits plan.

St. Clair, an insurance broker and chief operating officer for Medibid, also said she believes the county must do a better job on garbage disposal and managing the landfill, though she didn’t specify which one. The county operates a demolition landfill for yard and construction waste, while Allied Waste runs a massive sanitary landfill next door that collects household garbage and special waste from across the region.

Rutherford County’s “trademark is its pastoral character,” she says. “I’d like to preserve that.” She says she favors policies that back small businesses over corporate stores and says she would educate the medical community on free-market practices to benefit county government.

What he said
“I find it to be comical and an insult to my intelligence,” commented Dorsey Meeks, speaking about the sheriff’s budget during a County Commission budget committee public hearing. He pointed out that it includes $43,000 for dry cleaning.

Of course, Meeks also has accused me of being on the sheriff’s payroll. I’m still waiting for my first check.