What would you do *right now* if you got a 90% pay raise?
Today in Tennessee Segment 6/19/26
I'm Daniel Wagner from the Patriot Punk Network, giving you the latest Tennessee news in 3 minutes or less.
This is our Today in Tennessee Segment brought to you by Estate of Creative. Local, ready-to-go furniture restored and ready for you
Let's Go!!
Round 1
A Monroe County Sheriff’s Department let a trusty inmate be used as free labor on private projects, and now two employees are under indictment.
Fleet manager Neal Townsend and garage employee Jamey “Lee” Frank took custody of an inmate from his assigned county work sites and brought him to a privately owned watercraft repair business where they were also working off the clock.
Frank was putting the inmate to work on vehicles and equipment that weren’t government property, and even helping raise a sunken boat for a nearby marina.
The inmate was allowed to drive a county truck and a golf cart unsupervised and was seen smoking, even though tobacco is considered contraband under jail rules.
On top of that, the department never gave Frank the required training for supervising inmates, had no clear policy for take‑home vehicles, and didn’t properly track where inmates were supposed to be during the day.
In April, a Monroe County grand jury indicted Frank on one count of official misconduct and one count of unlawful use of inmates… but, based on my reading of the situation, I don't think the inmates were the ones complaining.
Round 2
Remember that nearly 90% pay raise the Sumner County Commission tried to sneak in for themselves?
Yeah, it didn’t die.
They want a $450-a-month bump for every commissioner, taking them from $500 to $950 for a part-time elected position.
At the June 8 Budget meeting, Commissioner David Klein made a motion to strip the proposed raise from the budget, but 3 commissioners voted against him and kept the raise alive.
That little change is gonna cost Sumner County citizens an almost $130,000/yr.
But that isn't even including the retirement contribution jump by $26,000, Social Security by almost $9,000, Medicare by another couple grand, and a brand-new “Commissioners’ Stipend” of $14,400.
Add it all together, and the cost of running JUST the Commission leaps to over a half million/yr.
This is the same crew that’s voted 11 times against letting citizens decide term limits at the ballot box, but they’re all-in on voting themselves a fatter check?
Make it make sense…. well, dollars, I mean.
That's two rounds down, one to go. Tag someone in the comments who would love to see our TITS
Round 3
A new state investigative report says one AEMT was billing two agencies for more than a hundred thousand dollars of time he never actually worked.
Adam Johnson, a part-time advanced EMT with Cumberland County and a full-time AEMT and firefighter with Wilson County, falsified his paper timesheets at both jobs between August 2023 and September 2025.
Johnson claimed over 4 thousand hrs at Cumberland County EMS that records don’t back up, including shifts where he was already on the clock in Wilson County, and days where dispatch logs and electronic patient care reports show he wasn’t on any ambulance crew at all.
He walked away with at least 112k dollars in unearned pay from Cumberland County alone, plus another 4,500 dollars in bogus overtime from Wilson County.
The report says he also collected nearly 9,700 dollars in “questionable” pay from Wilson County for hours that don’t show up in their incident or task records, all while supervisors in both systems approved his timesheets without cross-checking.
That was your daily Tennessee news roundup.
Come see us tomorrow at the THOMAS E. DAVIS CONGRESSIONAL TOWN HALL where I will be moderating a discussion between the candidates seeking to represent Tennessee's 4th Congressional District in Congress.
Doors open at the Coffee County Veterans Building in Manchester at 9:00 AM
Get 10% off when you mention "PUNK"