Employees of the Knox County Clerk‘s office were surprised to receive a letter at their home address from a probable 2018 candidate for Clerk. The letter included the state business card (paid for by the taxpayers) of the current State Representative. How did the candidate receive the mailing list for all active employees? Since it is a violation of state law for anyone that is a county employee to have their residential street address released.
T.C.A. § 10-7-504(f): home and cell phone numbers; residential information (including street address, city, state and zip code) for state employees and residential street address for county, municipal and other employees*; bank account information; social security number; driver license information except where driving or operating a vehicle is part of the employee’s job description or job duties or incidental to the performance of the employee’s job; and the same information of immediate family members or household members.
The likelihood that said candidate can say they got the employees names and then looked up the addresses is not plausible as some employees addresses can not be located in public searches (employees that rent and do not own property, so addresses are only located on payroll records) and some employees may have recently relocated. So, either Arnett or someone with access to the Clerk’s database released the list of addresses to the probable candidate or the campaign staff of the probable candidate, a violation of state law.
Is this another incident of Arnett being unaware of the law and/or his duties as Clerk? Like here less than two years ago when Arnett was unaware of his responsibilities to collect the Knox County hotel/motel taxes. Or is this Arnett’s attempt to derail the probable candidate in replacing him? This candidate may want to reconsider Arnett as a mentor and any campaign staff that thought his letter was a GREAT idea.
