Sundquist Takes Ball, Goes Home
Recently, NewsChannel 5 aired a series of damning reports exposing how some of Gov. Don Sundquist's pals got lucrative state contracts without bidding on them, in obviously questionable deals. Well, it seems one of the governor's other buddies didn't like Channel 5 exposing such shenanigans. So, recently, the head of the administration's highway safety office, Art Victorine, pulled state business away from Channel 5, as the Nashville Scene reports this week. Victorine pulled $120,000 worth of highway safey public service announcements from Channel 5, the top-rated station in Nashville. Victorine says he ran the plan to pull the ads from Channel 5 past both Sundquist and Tennessee Department of Roadbuilding Commissioner Bruce Saltsman. I guess Victorine, Sundquist and Saltsman think retailiating against Channel 5 is more important than reaching the maximum number of people with the highway safety announcements.

Victorine, incidentally, was head of American Airlines' Nashville hub until it closed - and was running AA's Nashville operations when it benefited from one of Nashville Mayor Phil Bredesen's many corporate-subsidy deals. Bredesen's Nashville gave the airline a big chunk of Nashvillians' tax dollars to underwrite and promote a Nashville-to-London route that the airline soon abandoned.