Metro Pulse/Ear to the Ground

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Rhea on Her Way...

Pamela Reed, the controversial paramour of J. Wade Gilley when he was president of UT, is leaving the Knoxville Journal, the weekly newspaper she's been reporting for under the assumed name, Ashley Rhea, for the past few months. Reed/Rhea reported mostly on education subjects, including UT, the institution she is suing for firing her. Phil Hamby, the Journal publisher, says she's working out her resignation now, and he doesn't know what she's got planned next. Hamby says he didn't see any conflict in her reporting on the university. "I never got one complaint about anything she wrote," he says. He did initially decline to hire her if she insisted on the pen name, Hamby says, but he relented when she joined the Society for Professional Journalists under the name Ashley Rhea and told him the SPJ didn't object. "Lots of people in the media here and around the country have used names that weren't their birth names," he says. "She got a raw deal at UT," he says and explains that he decided to give her a job in spite of the fact she had no prior journalism experience. He says he doesn't know her reasons for wanting the pen name. "It wasn't me protecting her. I expect she wanted to protect herself," Hamby says. He says he didn't ask whether Reed would be staying in town.

Legislative Split-up

State Rep. Jamie Hagood has filed for divorce from Jeff Hagood, the fellow lawyer she's been married to since 1997. The action was filed in Knox County Chancery Court Oct. 22, a couple of weeks before her reelection (without opposition). The complaint asks for alimony and an equitable distribution of property and an injunction restraining both parties from harassing, assaulting or abusing each other or making disparaging remarks about the other to either party's employer. We'd have to guess those employers include the people of the state, in Jamie's case. Represented by attorney L. Caesar Stair III, she asks the court to grant a divorce on grounds of irreconcilable differences, but the complaint asserts that there could be, in the alternative, charges of inappropriate marital conduct against the defendant. The couple have no children. No answer to the complaint had been filed by press time.

Meeting of the Minds

County Executive Mike Ragsdale is getting high marks for his efforts to make peace between warring factions (County Commission vs. the school board, Sheriff Tim Hutchison vs. Knoxville Police Chief Phil Keith, library board vs. Friends of the Library) during his first 100 days in office. But Mayor Victor Ashe shows no sign of sheathing his sword as he enters his lame-duck year. After Monday's special called City Council meeting to approve a $612,000 paving contract for a connector between Middlebrook Pike and Western Avenue, Ashe stood before a TV camera and again blasted Council members who have complained about the increased number of these specially called meetings. "If they didn't want to work, they shouldn't have hired on," Ashe said. Two weeks ago, Council member Joe Hultquist blasted Ashe for "blindsiding" him after a specially called meeting to announce the creation of a new park in Hultquist's South Knoxville district.

Council members Nick Pavlis and Mark Brown were not in attendance at the Monday meeting, the notices for which went out the previous Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. Pavlis, who married his fiancée Joy Reece Friday, didn't fall back on the honeymoon excuse, and has taken the position that these Ashe-called meetings are "grandstanding." He has compiled figures on Ashe's attendance at regularly-scheduled meetings and says Ashe was absent for 14 of the 74 regularly-scheduled meetings from 2000 until November 2002, left early 24 times, missed 1,009 votes and skipped 39 public forums, which occur at the end of the meetings. Pavlis also observes that Ashe will skip the Dec. 10 Council meeting to attend a National League of Cities meeting in Utah.

Saving South High

When Knox Heritage members appeared at a school board workshop Monday to ask for another reprieve for the old South High School building (which school officials had scheduled for demolition this year), their request seemed to rub West Knox board member Brian Hornback the wrong way. Hornback went off on a fiery property rights jeremiad, and condemned Knox Heritage and the historic preservation movement for interfering with private property. When board chair Sam Anderson could wedge a word in edgewise, he advised Hornback to slow down and take a breath. "This is public property we're talking about, Mr. Hornback," Anderson said.