Sterchi Stuff Forever!
I enjoyed reading the Jan. 30 article by Jack Mauro about the Sterchi Lofts.
My wife and I bought the Sterchi mansion on Dry Gap Pike in 1998 and have been restoring this wonderful old house & gardens to its 1910 glory. We are happy to know the Sterchi building downtown is also being restored and preserved.
Too much of our historical heritage has been demolished to make way for the "future." Hats off to the developers of the Sterchi lofts!
Buddy & Linda Malin
Knoxville
Self-Serving Bills
Presently, there are at least two legislative items at the Tennessee State Capitol that can provide us with insight as to the increase in personalized and frivolous legislation being promoted by elected officials.
First, in Knoxville, Sen. Burchett and Rep. Brooks are sponsoring legislation that is both self-admittedly for the personal interest of a colleague and glaringly shortsighted in its attempt to limit the free access to public records. The Burchett/ Brooks legislation is designed to appease the requests of Knox County Sheriff Hutchison to place time restraints on open record laws in Tennessee and essentially to make political survival the overriding goal of any bureaucracy.
The sheriff, who similarly admits to the personalized nature of the bill, has unfortunately forgotten that he has been hired and paid to enforce the current laws of the land and not to interpret them. As most of us learned in grade school, it is because of this aggrandizement of executive power at the expense of the Legislature that our government has a division of powers. Burchett and Brooks need to realize that before they do a favor for a friend they should consider the repercussions of an act that would limit not only the Tennessee citizen's right to public records but would also greatly hinder their own attempts to have vital information at hand and ready when they are researching items that could directly effect legislation.
Second, in Cleveland, Tenn., Sen. Miller and Rep. Bunch are sponsoring legislation that is quite obviously personal in nature and anti-constitutional in substance. The two officials have been dogged for years because their voting records often lack foresight and their actions, like this one, are remindedly from the hip and not the head. Their un-Republican-like attempt to create new taxes, albeit on the delivery of free newspapers, is a vain attempt to silence criticism that is more often than not aimed at their inefficiencies as lawmakers. Those of us who stayed awake during elementary school social sciences learned the joy of living in a society where the press can roll without the keen supervision of a totalitarian big brother.
Although Miller and Bunch have self-tailored their legislation to only affect one county in Tennessee, it would be quite simple for other legislators who are critiqued for their job performance to amend the bill to include counties, and ultimately newspapers, that question their actions.
The taxation on delivery of free newspapers would ultimately bring about their demise and allow for only the affluent class to operate and disseminate such information in printed form. We call these paid-for newspapers. My advice to these legislators is to cease spending our valuable time and the money we throw at them to be good stewards of the legislative process and to start working on real life issues that are universal, patriotic, effectual and not simply another piece of legislative litter.
Roger Killen
Knoxville
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