While Lumpy and Scooby are yammering about getting buffooned by the Spanish Inquisition (nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!) and calling for the District Attorney General to get involved in the Knox County p-card scandal, Mayor Ragsdale was already way ahead of them on compliance.

The KNS said last week [1] that Mayor Ragsdale had reported the credit card abuses to the State Comptroller. It probably had something to do with this [2].

The new state law [3], which went into effect in May of 2007, requires public officials "with knowledge based upon available information which reasonably causes him/her to believe that a theft, forgery, credit card fraud, or any other act of the unlawful taking of public money, property, or services has occurred shall report such information in a reasonable amount of time to the office of the Comptroller of the Treasury."

Which is exactly what Ragsdale did. Instead of grandstanding for the cameras, maybe Scooby and Lumpy and Pinkston could have simply filled out this form [4]. The question now is, why didn't they? Seems like they are required by law to do so. Not to start a witch hunt or a McCartney hearing [5] or anything.

(Thanks to alert reader M for bringing this to our attention.)

UPDATE: WBIR has this document dump [6] re. the p-card scandal. Page 18 is a fax from the Knox County DA's office dated July 5th regarding the state law. Page 19 is the Fraud Reporting form. The only employee mentioned is Requitta Bone.