University of Tennessee President John Petersen has been called on the carpet and is now the subject of an inquiry from the Tennessee Ethics Commission.
Unlike his predecessor, John Shumaker, Petersen isn't in trouble for trying to buy the university a new plane or new carpet. This inquiry arises from ethics commission members questioning the veracity of disclosure statements filed by Petersen.
Petersen gained the attention of the ethics commission because he failed to file a "statement of disclosure of interests" for 2008 on time. For his tardiness on the matter, the commission was scheduled to determine whether to levy a fine on him. Instead, it ended up wading into uncharted waters.
Commission member Ben Purser, a retired FBI executive, questioned how Petersen could have listed that he had no investments of more than $10,000. Purser said his perusal of public documents showed that Petersen has earned more than $1.5 million since mid-2004. Purser said he found it hard to believe that Petersen's sole source of income was his University of Tennessee salary and that he had no outside investments.
Commission members discussed their options, which included opening a formal investigation, issuing a subpoena and/or examining his books. They opted to take a preliminary step by sending a "letter of inquiry."
Petersen was hit with a $250 fine for filing his forms late, down from the $600 recommended by ethics commission staff. The fine was reduced to $250 when commission member Linda Knight pointed out that, by law, the commission can only assess a fine of $25 a day for every day that a violator is late until a disclosure form is properly filed.
NashvillePost.com attempted to contact Petersen about the fine and the income questions raised by the ethics commission, but his staff said he was unavailable.
In related news, the Ethics Commission ended up taking a pass on two of their more high-profile cases.
The first was the matter of Seigenthaler Public Relations. State Sen. Doug Jackson (D-Dickson) had asked for an advisory opinion from the commission as to whether work that the public relations firm was doing during the "wine in grocery stores" debate was considered lobbying.
The commission and its staff had been going back and forth on the question until deciding today that they would not issue an opinion on the matter.
Amy Seigentaler Pierce told NashvillePost.com after the decision, "We appreciate this wise and thoughtful decision by the Commission. Due process is a tenet of our justice system and, in this case, there had been an initial rush to judgment without the benefit of all the facts. That can never lead to a fair conclusion and fairness is the very basis of ethics."
On the matter of Robert Gowan, the former senior staffer of Gov. Phil Bredesen who had wanted to know whether giving advice without actually lobbying would be considered lobbying, the commission dropped the matter altogether.
The commission had been working on an advisory opinion, but Gowan's request to withdraw his request for an advisory opinion would go along with legislation passed by the Tennessee General Assembly. The legislation has yet to be signed by Bredesen, but it would allow anyone who has requested an advisory opinion to stop the process.
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