There’s big trouble over at Knoxville City as more information continues to creep out regarding the Community Development Department. The bigger question regards the Mayor himself. By law, will he be accountable for corruption involving federal grants? I’ll continue to watch this story.

The initial report is huge, but it looks like Scott Barker over at the Knoxville News Sentinel is doing a good job of getting through it. What Barker calls irregularities at this point is starting to look more like public corruption.

The Carpetbag Theater merely provided the opening act for one of the city’s troubled federally funded grant programs.

A city probe into its Community Development Department found irregularities in four other grants that went to programs recommended for approval by the department’s former director.

and this:

The probe found “irregularities” in the following projects:

# The Alzheimer’s Association of East Tennessee: The organization’s application for $75,000 to fund an adult day center for impaired seniors was incomplete. Though an independent program, the center would be located in Kesler’s church. Kesler said she disclosed the relationship between her church and the Alzheimer’s Association.

# The Literacy Imperative: The application for $160,000 to fund its proposed Center of Literacy and Enterprise was incomplete and received the lowest average score from the staff among ranked programs. Staff members told investigators that Kesler and the executive director, John Sibley, are friends. Sibley declined comment Wednesday.

# The Wee Course at Williams Creek: The golf course for youngsters in East Knoxville didn’t have a complete application for its $85,000 grant for administrative support for seven programs. Sam Anderson, who as senior director of the Department of Community and Neighborhood Services was Kesler’s boss at the time, is on the board of the municipal course.

And this:

According to Kesler and Anderson, they made the final decisions and passed the recommendations on to the mayor. Haslam in turn submitted them to City Council for final approval.

and this:

Also, Jones said the staff was told to recommend a $100,000 grant to Project GRAD because Haslam is on the organization’s board of directors.