Since its completion in 2008, the brick- and marble-clad Howard Baker Center has established an iconic presence on the University of Tennessee campus.

Before he became an outstanding governor of Tennessee, Phil Bredesen was a highly successful health-care entrepreneur. And I doubt whether anyone else in the land combines his grasp of the nation’s health-care system from the perspective of both public and ...

County Mayor Tim Burchett persists in proclaiming that he’s going to cut off county funding to the Ten-Year Plan for housing the chronically homeless unless its directors impose a ban on alcohol consumption that may well violate the federal Fair ...

Amid all the fanfare over plans for launching a new high school next year with a science, technology, engineering, and math emphasis, another noteworthy new high school program is also due to start at an existing school.

KCDC’s President Alvin Nance envisions a transformation of the Five Points area involving total replacement on a much more dispersed basis of the 500 housing units that are now crammed into Walter P. and its adjoining Dr. Lee Williams Complex ...

On the surface, both of the proposed charter schools embody innovative concepts that would appear worthy of consideration. One is for a grades 7-12 boarding school called the Booker T. Washington Academy to be located on the underutilized Knoxville College ...

Every time I hear the “Not in My Backyard” opposition arise to a prospective site for supportive housing that fulfills the city’s Ten-Year Plan for ending chronic homelessness, I think about my own experience with the homeless in my own ...

As the rest of downtown has flourished over the past decade, the stretch of Jackson Avenue between Gay Street and Broadway has remained dormant. Attempts to jump-start its revitalization through restoration of its most prominent buildings, the McClung Warehouses, went ...

With the city’s $30 million transit center now completed, there are scarcely any new city or county public building projects anywhere in prospect. Hence, it becomes less readily apparent what justifies continuation of the Public Building Authority’s $11 million annual ...

Knox County’s 3,217 high school graduates in 2007 fell more than 10 percent short of the mark, and fewer than half of them scored 21 or better on the ACT, representing an even bigger shortfall to be overcome.

On one of his last forays before being voted out of office, former County Commissioner Paul Pinkston aimed a punitive county ordinance at employers who hire illegal aliens.

Health care reform is by no means something that’s just being imposed from the top down by governmental mandates. It’s also emanating from the bottom up with initiatives on the part of doctors to change the way they practice medicine ...

After years of listening to University of Tennessee officialdom proclaim its resolve to achieve big gains in the university’s graduation rate, it’s disheartening to learn that the percentage of undergraduates earning degrees on the Knoxville campus has scarcely budged over ...

Bill Baxter’s disparagement of Bill Haslam in a recent guest column in the News Sentinel supporting Zach Wamp for governor reeks of peevishness on Baxter’s part.

After having stooped low in recent years, I’m encouraged to believe that Knox County government is on the verge of standing tall and becoming a major source of community strength and pride.