1/3/09
TVA Official: Truth in Report "Misleading"

Says there are "big T" Truths, "little t" truths and "engineering-speak" truths
From APB reports. KNOXVILLE, Tenn. Tennessee Valley Authority President and CEO Kilmore Trout on Friday downplayed the significance of a February 2008 inspection report of the TVA Towers Executive Bonus Vault, saying the truth as related by the engineer who compiled it was "misleading..."

12/31/08
City Council OKs Controversial 'Cow Parking' Ban

Ordinance aimed at keeping cud-chewers off front lawns
From APB reports. KNOXVILLE, Tenn. The Knoxville City Council approved on Tuesday night an ordinance setting new regulations to restrict the parking of bovines and other farm animals on front yards in residential neighborhoods...

12/30/08
Tagging of Elected Officials Popular

Humane 'catch and release' program allows citizens to track politicians' movements
From APB reports. KNOXVILLE, Tenn. Tranquilizing and electronically tagging Tennessee's 132 lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have resulted in more than 300 special state House and Senate tags for the lawmakers and family members, a public records request has found.

Trackers either fell the politicians with tranquilizer darts or catch them in humane traps baited with large sums of cash in plain brown bags or all-expenses-paid 'fact-finding' junkets to Monte Carlo. They then fit them with electronic monitoring devices and release them back into the wild halls of government...

12/29/08
After Cash Vault Bursts, TVA Seeks New Bonus Disbursement Method

TVA CEO Kilmore Trout says agency may go paperless after "cash cascade"
From APB reports. KNOXVILLE, Tenn. TVA President and CEO Kilmore Trout said this morning that in the future, a third-party banking firm will monitor TVA's system for storing the kind of cash bonuses that caused a massive cash flow in TVA's downtown Knoxville offices last week. The third-party banking firm will review and evaluate whatever kind of storage vault and bonus disbursement system is used in the future.

Original estimates put the bonus cash flood at 26 millions dollars, but those estimates have been revised upwards to 1.1 billion dollars. It has been learned that quantities of gold and silver were also in the vault when it failed, but it is unclear whether any of the precious metals were released when the vault wall burst. The dollar deluge inundated several offices in the TVA Towers and swamped TVA Plaza in its entirety.

At a news conference in front of the piles of sopping bills at the TVA Towers, Trout outlined his efforts to respond to the deniro disaster, including the possibility of going paperless.

"We TVA executives are sort of an old-fashioned lot, 'old school' as the kids might say," explained Trout. "We like to feel the heft of the sacks of gold and silver plates, we like to touch the stiff, starchy texture of stacks of newly minted hundreds, we like to smell the distinctive, earthy odor of wads of well-traveled bills, we like to taste... But anyway, as I was saying, we're looking at several different possible methods for future bonus disbursements, including direct deposit to numbered Swiss bank accounts..."