Michael Silence’s story on County Commissioners’ use of honorary resolutions takes the biggest
share of the top front, and carries over at length on A9. There’s a nice table showing the increase
in resolutions as the elections grow nearer (but wouldn’t a graph have been better?). The
interesting part is that everyone thinks that public-access TV coverage of Commission meetings
drives this phenomenon. Given how few people actually watch that stuff, does it matter? The
story doesn’t explore this, but the answer is probably yes: since hardly anyone votes in local
elections, even a few hundred interested people make a difference. (Best quote: John Schmid,
saying “The public only remembers the last thing you did for them.”). The effect of small groups
of voters on elections where no one votes is also explored in the Metro Pulse this week, in href=“http://www.metropulse.com/dir_zine/dir_2001/1129/t_edcorner.html”>very good
piece by Jesse Fox Mayshark.

Most of the rest of the front is taken up with a wire story on prison uniforms (though with a nice
local sidebar by J.J. Stambaugh). The photo by Saul Young is good, but would have had more
impact if it had been in black and white rather than color – and that would have gone well with
the headline, “It’s a black and white issue.” But, dammit, we paid for that color press and we’re
gonna use it!

A wire story reports that most (actually all) other missing persons cases get less attention than
Chandra Levy’s. Nothing wrong with that, but the Chattanooga Times-Free Press has href=“http://www.timesfreepress.com/2001/jul/22jul01/missingpersons.html”>better story with a
local angle by one of its own writers, Anne Patterson Braly. Perhaps if the Sentinel were to
hire more reporters in place of some HGTV flacks – oh, hell, who am I kidding?

The real action in today’s paper is on the editorial front. The Sentinel’s lead editorial condems
the “excesses” of “rioting” at the Capitol last week. (Ben Atchley was “jostled!”) Tom Humphrey
takes a more detached view, reporting on a reporter (how 21st century) who ordered a pizza, only
to have its delivery impeded by the demonstrations. When the pizza finally did arrive, the
sergeants-at-arms whisked it away to the House chamber and gave it to some legislators, leaving
the reporter unfed.

One of the great things about the Sentinel is that it publishes so many letters to the editor. The
letters on the tax protest are worth reading (and why are there two – count’em, two – letters from
Las Vegas, Nevada?). But one that should inspire some followup from the Sentinel’s reporting
staff appears at the bottom right of page H4. Apparently, Brett Winstead of Dunlap was stopped
because his license-plate light was out. The officer then asked him if he was carrying a lot of
cash. Whose business is it, asks the driver, if he carries cash? Answer: the cops want to seize it,
and force you to take them to court if you want it back, under asset-forfeiture laws. Winstead
properly told the cop it was none of his business, but a multipart series (they do those, don’t
they?) on asset forfeitures in the region would be interesting. There’s a lot of that going on
around here, and it’s basically legalized theft.