VOTERS NEED COONROD INFO SOON

The scrutiny of Chattanooga City Councilwoman Demetrus Coonrod is on the increase.

In recent days, City Attorney Phil Noblett said the case of her residency is expected to go to Hamilton County Circuit Court, and now the attorney has acknowledged there are questions about technology classes provided by a nonprofit she runs.

Coonrod is not up for re-election to her current position until 2025, but she has chosen to challenge incumbent state Rep. Yusuf Hakeem, D-Chattanooga, in the Aug. 1 state Democratic primary.

Depending on what the court determines — if, in fact, the residency question goes to court — she could be judged as not living in her City Council district or the state House district she wants to represent.

For the District 28 House race against Hakeem, state law says candidates must live in the county in which they run for at least one year (in which she is qualified) and that the district must be represented by a qualified voter of that district. If she is judged not to live at the address she gives as her residence and instead at a home she owns that is not in the district, she subsequently could be judged as not being a qualified voter of that district.

Since the withdrawal deadline for the August election passed last week, whatever the court determines will be impactful, especially if the ruling goes against her and it occurs after ballots are printed.

For the moment, what is peculiar is that the results of the city auditor’s investigation were shared with members of the City Council but not released to the public.

City Auditor Stan Sewell cited attorney-client privilege for not releasing the report, and Noblett said the report may contain confidential information. If both of those are the case — and the executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open government said a completed audit should be a public record under state statute — it makes us wonder why the information was shared with the City Council.

The inquiry began when Sewell, Noblett and members of the City Council received an anonymous complaint. The house where Coonrod claims to live is in her council district and in the state House district she is seeking to represent, but the home she owns — and where loan documents say she must be the principal resident — is in unincorporated Hamilton County and just outside the House district.

The process for when Noblett would seek a Circuit Court hearing is unclear, and it’s more than three months until the August election (though early voting begins July 12), but voters need plenty of time to digest the information, no matter what is found.

Now, though, Sewell has acknowledged he is investigating discrepancies in the sign-in sheets of Coonrod’s nonprofit, ReWake, which is one of several organizations through a program called Tech Goes Home that provide computer skills training to people seeking employment after coming out of prison.

It’s an area the councilwoman knows all about, she says on the site’s webpage.

“In 2008,” Coonrod says, “I was a scared returning citizen. There were no resources available to assist with re-entry into society after prison. I found myself alone. Re-Wake was birthed from lived experience. We focus on the whole family to break mental incarceration.”

One of the benefits the page says the nonprofit offers is employment and occupational services, which would likely include computer training.

Participants in Tech Goes Home receive $15 per hour during the 15-hour program, a stipend that helps make up for lost work time during class attendance. Sign-in sheets and attendance, in turn, are critical for participants to receive the pass-through money provided for the program by the United Way of Greater Chattanooga.

Though no one is alleging any official wrongdoing, the appearance of impropriety might arise if attendance sheets didn’t match the number for which pay was requested or the number who said they attended.

Officials with the Enterprise Center, a nonprofit group through which the Tech Goes Home program is administered, said they have turned over various documents to the city’s audit department regarding “claims made against one of our vendors.”

Coonrod has denied allegations both involving her residency and the tech program but said any other comments would be inappropriate during the investigations.

The city councilwoman and state House candidate deserves the benefit of the doubt until any investigations and/or court adjudications are complete, but voters need to have all the information in the near — rather than long-term — future so that they can make a proper judgment about a public office-seeker.