Also, Compass reports that the finding against Victor Ashe regarding an employee discrimination lawsuit was overturned on appeal.

Well, This is more than a bit misleading. The appeals court did not address and certainly did not overturn the substance of the finding of discrimination at the heart of this matter. Rather it only dealt with the injunction that was established to prevent further retaliation against the affected firefighters and its impact on the ability of the Mayor to manage the Fire Department. The Court of Appeals ruled that this injunction was no longer necessary because Mayor Ashe was term limited and the Fire Chief in place at the time of the incidents was no longer serving as Chief.

I encourage all to wade through this entire rather technical discussion of injunctions but two key paragraphs follow.

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As an initial matter, the injunction grants class-wide relief to all Knoxville firefighters, despite the fact that the firefighters never sought nor received class certification.   The injunction is limited to Ashe, over whom the court properly had in personam jurisdiction;  however, the operative question for review is the extent to which the class-wide injunction burdens Ashe. While district courts are not categorically prohibited from granting injunctive relief benefitting an entire class in an individual suit, such broad relief is rarely justified because injunctive relief should be no more burdensome to the defendant than necessary to provide complete relief to the plaintiffs.

In light of the fact that the plaintiffs are adequately protected by the laws and regulations of the City of Knoxville, that Mayor Ashe cannot serve as mayor beyond his current term, that former chief Bruce Cureton has retired, that Deputy Chief Pressley was found not to have violated any of the plaintiffs' civil rights, that plaintiffs, Frank Potter, Kenneth Scarbrough, and William McGinnis were transferred back to their favored stations in August, 1996 during the pendency of their civil service grievances, that the merit pay system has been discontinued, and that Mayor Ashe has conceded that it was wrong for him to transfer Frank Potter, the undersigned finds that the plaintiffs have not demonstrated a substantial likelihood of future injury for which injunctive relief is warranted.

Betty Bean’s Metro Pulse article from 2002 provides a good summary of the substantive issues and the initial ruling by the Civil Service Hearing Officer.

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Just wait until the KNS buyouts go into effect. :/

Yes, Compass is providing ongoing coverage of the case, both on the website and in our daily newsletters.

As for the question about KNS and Victor Ashe's column, I will say that I have repeatedly asked that question to Jack McElroy. His answer was always that it was an opinion column, so it was OK if it didn't present all the facts. I pointed out to Jack (multiple times) that Victor often uses his column to report news items, but without any of the journalistic standards or practices that typically accompany news reporting. It would be one thing if KNS was doing real news stories on an issue (like this one), and then Victor was expressing his opinions.

But in this case and many others, literally the only information about an issue at knoxnews is in Victor's columns -- which leads to terribly distorted coverage, because it's all filtered through Victor's longstanding personal agendas. With no disrespect to Victor, who I think is just taking advantage of whatever leeway KNS gives him, I think this is journalistically irresponsible. Reporting inaccurate and distorted information is worse than not reporting it at all. If a story is worth an opinion column, it's worth assigning a real reporter to.

Of course, McElroy won't even be there now, so who knows what level of oversight or accountability Victor or anyone will have there.