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AG: Schools move to TVA tower doesn't violate the law

State Attorney General Herbert Slatery issued the opinion Wednesday.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Moving Knox County Schools' administrative offices to leased TVA property violates no state law requiring a school board to have "custody and control" over public school property, the Tennessee attorney general has opined.

Herbert Slatery's opinion released Wednesday stems from a dispute between Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs' administration and county Law Director Bud Armstrong. State Sen. Becky Duncan Massey sought the opinion to resolve the question.

Armstrong argued county schools administrators couldn't move into leased TVA property because it wouldn't have full legal custody over it as required by state law.

The mayor's officials, however, said his interpretation went too far.

The system's central offices are going to move from current headquarters at the Andrew Johnson Building on Gay Street to the vacant TVA Tower East north of Market Square.

The move probably will start happening this year, and the University of Tennessee System also has signed on to move several offices there from the Knoxville campus and other area locations.

Credit: WBIR
Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs led a media tour Monday of the empty TVA Tower East downtown.

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Knox County will lease by easement the tower's 12 floors. The UT System will sublease and occupy the upper half.

The county and TVA have agreed on what amounts to a total 40-year deal. Knox County also will buy the Summer Place parking garage and office space.

Negotiations were ongoing for about two years to seal the arrangement and involved the administrations of both former Mayor Tim Burchett as well as Mayor Glenn Jacobs.

Jacobs' office wanted Slatery to clarify whether moving the central offices to the federally controlled building violated the requirement that a school board have custody and control over its school property.

Knox County doesn't have the power to unilaterally force the school board to move the administrative offices, Slatery wrote. But that's not a factor in this situation.

The school board blessed the deal 5-3 last month with members Jennifer Owen, Tony Norman and Patti Bounds voting against it. Member Mike McMillan missed the vote.

"As long as the lease agreement for the office space does not impinge on the duty to manage and control the public schools under its jurisdiction and does not impinge on the Board's authority to have the county's school property in its charge, locating the Board's administrative offices in the TVA East Tower would not be prohibited by these statutory provisions," Slatery's opinion states.

The AG also noted that under state law a local school board has the discretionary power to lease and sell its buildings and to let its buildings be used "for public, community or recreational purposes under such rules, regulations and conditions as may be prescribed from time to time by the board of education."

The word "custody" also doesn't mean a body such as a county has to have utter control over the property, the AG wrote.

"Thus, the requirement that the Board have the 'custody' of all county school property does not foreclose the Board from relocating its administrative offices to the TVA East Tower because the Board does not have to have 'dominion of supremacy of authority' over the county's school property."

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