Seven days before the era of Phil Ballard ends, we are reminded of his cronies. Whether it is his crony Post Hole Toby’s boy up in HR that Ballard would call when he had an employee that he was scared he couldn’t handle. He liked to pick and choose when the Property Assessor Office fell under Knox County HR or didn’t. Like one of those times the office didn’t was when he would award Crony Jim Weaver a gosh awful amount of Vacation time also known as county taxpayer cash.

I’ve been told that Ballard has put GPS on all county cars except for Crony Weaver and employee Gary Mahoney. Ballard setting rules for everyone but his cronies, we will not miss.

Let us not forget, when he hired his Black Wednesday Commissioner Crony Craig Leuthold. Then Leuthold becomes County Trustee and in about 15 months is rejected by the county voters for Ed Shouse. Ballard brings his crony Leuthold back. Now I hear that Leuthold is preparing to move to Criminal Court Clerk Mike Hammond’s office because it’s not expected that Leuthold will be retained by the new Property Assessor.

Then there’s the Carter and Corryton Cronies that Ballard has employed in the Assessors office. Rodney and Spencer, always willing to do what Phillip told them to do. The hiring of the ex wife of a PR flack, that would surely help his public image, right?

We wont forget, Cronies and the Crony Capitalism.