Rep. John Hood Regrets His Last Piece of Legislation

By Kleinheider Posted on July 30, 2008 at 3:29 pm

From Colby Sledge:

One of Hood’s last sponsored pieces of legislation, co-sponsored by Murfreesboro Republican Sen. Bill Ketron, allowed state and local employees to file complaints against businesses allegedly employing illegal immigrants.

Hood has said he wouldn’t have sponsored the bill if he had known that ordinary citizens couldn’t file complaints after Ketron amended the bill. By late May the law had resulted in only two resolved complaints — both filed by Ketron — and no penalties.

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Tags: Bill Ketron, John Hood  

Red, Wine And Hot

By Kleinheider Posted on July 29, 2008 at 10:46 pm

Theo Emery writes up Red, Wine and Food’s Senator Ketron appreciation event:

Word of the event was spread on the campaign’s Facebook page, drawing in about 50 people. The invitation promised “a break from the summer heat,” but a sweltering two-story atrium in a tony downtown apartment building on 2nd Avenue provided anything but.

Fans roared overhead as attendees wandered back and forth shuttled between one table with platters of fruit and cheese, and a second tucked discreetly in the back with bottles of red and white wine. Campaign bumper stickers poked out of purses and pockets, and nametags drooped from lapels.

At about 6 p.m., Jarron Springer, president of the Tennessee Grocers and Convenience Store Association, took the microphone to thank the attendees for coming. He said changing the law was a matter of common sense. “What it comes down to is, why not wine? Why not now?”

Onlookers nodded appreciatively, and Springer introduced the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Bill Ketron, a Murfreesboro Republican. “Let me ask a question right off the bat: who likes wine?”

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Tags: Bill Ketron  

Does “Light Refreshments” Mean Free Wine Or Not? [UPDATE: Yes]

By Kleinheider Posted on at 12:52 pm

From the folks trying to get wine in your grocery store:

Red White and Food is hosting its first member social at 5:30 tonight in Nashville.

Sen. Bill Ketron (R-Murfreesboro) will be the featured speaker. Sen. Ketron sponsored our legislation in the last General Assembly session.

UPDATE: Nikki Klemmer of Atkinson Public Relations responds to my query as to whether there will be wine and whether said wine will be free of charge at their shindig:

To answer your questions, yes and yes. Our bartender is licensed by the Alcoholic Beverage Commission, and we’ll require proof of age for everyone who opts for wine. The Tennessee Grocers & Convenience Store Association is a strong supporter of the Responsible Vendor Act, which requires grocery and convenience stores to check the age of everyone purchasing alcohol.

The event is a reception for Red White and Food members, primarily to meet Sen. Ketron and thank him for introducing the legislation to allow wine sales in retail food stores.

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Tags: Bill Ketron, putting mom and pop out of business, Red White and Food  

Declaring Rule 13 For Having An iPhone

By Kleinheider Posted on May 5, 2008 at 12:13 am

A very interesting article appeared in the Tennessean under the byline of Theo Emery this weekend taking to task, Senator Bill Ketron for his failure to declare Rule 13 until after the vote on the cable compromise bill which gave telcom giant AT&T the ability to enter the Tennessee cable market under conditions, more or less, of their choosing.

Now, I’m not one to declare media bias or make constant notations about which party’s candidates and officeholders get their party affiliation mentioned when they do dirt and which party’s candidates and office holders do not, but this article seems both rather hard on the Senator and quite emphatic about which party he belonged to.

Of course, nothing would seem much amiss about the Senator being called out for not being as upfront with his conflict of interest as he could have been or his party being mentioned had it not been for the fact that it is the other party who seems to have the more intriguing conflicts of interest in the AT&T deal.

As has been noted, while Senator Ketron’s wife simply works for the wireless division of the telcom giant many, many folks with ties to the Bredesen administration and the Democratic Speaker of the House’s wife were hired by AT&T as lobbyists, consultants and PR men. The fact that these connections were mentioned by the very same author of the Ketron piece two months ago makes the lack of that information in the recent article all the more troublesome.

This weekend’s article focuses almost completely on Ketron, a Republican, and his decision to declare Rule 13, which means a legislator is declaring a possible conflict of interest, with the clerk’s office rather than from the floor. The article paints this as somehow nefarious even though at the end of the article the author concedes that a member of the opposite party did the exact same thing.

The reporter also goes so far as to interview the spokesman for AT&T about the Ketron situation without even mentioning the fact that until very recently that spokesman worked for the Bredesen administration.

It just seemed after reading the article focusing on a prominent Republican and his conflict of interest on the AT&T deal that the interests of the Bredesen administration and the Speaker of the House were well served by such a piece appearing after the deal was done, making much of the connections the same reporter brought to light two months ago, a distant memory in the public mind.

SEE ALSO:
Mike Byrd
Chris Sanders
Grantham Is Talking
Moore Thoughts

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Tags: AT&T, Betty Anderson, Bill Ketron, Bob Corney, Jimmy Naifeh, Rule 13