Updated on December 8, 2023.
On Thursday, November 30, the Smith County Commission filed a brief in support of their motion to dissolve the temporary restraining order obtained without mandatory notice by the Board of Education. (SEE PDF BELOW)
Within the 29-page brief, the County states that “This lawsuit was improvidently (and apparently illegally) brought, and is a (double) waste of taxpayer funds by the Board of Education, which most certainly has unclean hands… The lawsuit is also substantively meritless.”
The brief is broken into three main sections:
- The Plaintiff’s Complaint is substantively meritless. The County Commission engaged in lengthy public deliberation, following extensive public comment on this very subject, following input by members of the Board of Education, the Director of Schools, and even the BOE attorney, and even a presentation by the Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury personally, as well as the Comptroller’s staff, and voted in a regular public meeting by a supermajority to adopt the 1981 Act.
- The Board of Education lacks standing, and further has unclean hands by violating the Open Meetings Act in filing this lawsuit.
- The Court should never have issued an ex parte restraining order, and the Board of Education intentionally violated the law by seeking it.
See the full brief below.
The first hearing for the case was held on Friday, December 1 in chancery court. At the hearing on Friday, Chancellor C.K. Smith ruled that the Financial Management Committee could resume meetings and partially lifted the temporary restraining order filed by the Board of Education.
The next time the case is set to appear in court is on December 28-29, 2023 in Lebanon.
The next meeting of the of the Financial Management Committee will be held at the Smith County Chamber of Commerce on December 14, 2023 at 5:00pm.
Following the court appearance, Smith County Jeff Mason released the following statement:
“We are pleased that Chancellor Smith allowed us to move forward with the December 14th meeting of the Financial Management Committee created as part of the implementation of the Financial Management Act of 1981. We believe that attorneys Danny Rader and Jeremy Hassler presented a firm case that no wrongdoing was done by the Smith County Commission and that the Commission acted well within their rights to vote to implement the 1981 Act at its October 9th meeting. This suit is a waste of taxpayer dollars and the need to defend the commission for doing the job that the people of Smith County elected them to do will create more unnecessary spending. We look forward to this being behind us soon and moving forward with the plan to bring more transparency, efficiency and effectiveness to Smith County Government.”
Smith County Insider contacted the Board of Education on Tuesday evening, December 5, for comment. They responded at 8am on Friday, December 8, at 8am. Director of Schools, Barry Smith and the Board of Education released the following statement:
Director Barry H. Smith and the Smith County Board of Education are pleased that the Court agreed with the Board of Education that an open meetings act violation likely occurred depriving the parents, taxpayers, and Board of Education employees the opportunity to know the facts and ramifications of what was being done behind closed doors. The granting of an injunction preventing the County from moving forward with the new taxpayer funded position of finance director is the first step to allow voters and taxpayers to have input on this important decision. This injunction would also give the commissioners the opportunity to do the right thing and present this issue to the taxpayers and voters by referendum as allowed by law instead of county government forcing it upon the citizens.