With a new year and a new city government, what lies ahead for Knoxville? Mayor Madeline Rogero’s promise to make our town greener and more livable needs to be translated into policies, and there is cause for optimism.

Until this month, no composting facility near Nashville could accept food waste. A couple of Lipscomb University graduate students noticed this opportunity a couple years ago. Now, finished with their degrees, they have started a business, obtained permits, and built ...

Coal and timber land is often owned by small holding companies that are owned by larger corporations and institutional investors. This makes it difficult to find an actual person associated with the land, and even county property assessors are sometimes ...

With a new Carter Elementary now assured, County Mayor Tim Burchett deserves cheers, but only in the sense that you clap for stragglers in a charity 5k run who were just trying to prove they could finish

Redistricting is one of the ugliest processes in our democracy. But there is a way to stop the shenanigans.

Gloria Johnson is the best candidate in the race, the one who can be trusted to act on behalf of people, not corporations.

Privatization of public services has been a trend in government for a couple decades. It was hatched as a Republican concept, but because it enables graft and does little to limit legislative spending powers, it soon caught on among Democrats ...

If your primary objective is delay, local government is here to please. County government has a long history of delays and a toolshed of tricks, but recent votes have a revealed a new tool in the arsenal.

Demographic trends point toward continued population growth in Knox County, but where are the newcomers going to work and live?

TVA is the process of determining its environmental priorities for the coming decades, and they want your input.

Because the political center has drifted so far right, Republicans have been pushed against the barriers of respectability. State legislators break those barriers often to gain rightward ground. While this is a source of amusement for many, particularly those outside ...

Monday came in like a lion, a powerful storm with flooding as bad as we’ve seen in a decade. It went out like a lamb, County Commission deferring action on the Hillside and Ridgetop Protection Plan for 60 days. It ...

Groundhog Day came early this year, at least the Bill Murray version. City Council treated Knoxvillians to repetitive absurdity when they replaced the mayor and 5th District city councilman. It took 16 rounds of voting to put Charlie Thomas on ...

Treating what is left of county farmland as nothing more than bait with which to lure jobs will result in a county without character. As experience proves, businesses attracted by the infrastructure and incentives that local governments like to dangle ...

Whether ghosts are real is not as important as whether the living consent to be haunted. A road upgrade in the works since 1989 without fruition is haunted by the political heft of car dealerships no longer with us and ...