Knox County Mayor Burchett accused of nepotism, allowing employees to be paid for no work

A complaint to the state comptroller and anonymous emails to county commissioners accuse Knox County Mayor Tim Burchett of violating nepotism laws in the hiring of his stepson, a county laborer with a history of legal troubles.

Tyler Steven McCree, the son of Burchett's wife, was living in the mayor’s home and listed Burchett as his No. 1 reference when he applied for the job on March 21, 2015.

He was hired five months later, despite a county policy that prohibits an “elected or appointed official to advocate, supervise, manage or cause the employment" of a relative within county government. Step-child is listed among the relations covered by the policy.

In an interview, Burchett said McCree got the job without his involvement. The comptroller’s complaint, obtained by the USA TODAY NETWORK-Tennessee from the complainant on condition the person not be identified, alleges: “No other candidate would have been considered for even a split second having the same record as McCree.”

Complaints to the comptroller are not public record.

Drugs, contributing to delinquency arrests

The complaint and the emails include copies of the initial pages of incident reports from the Blount and Loudon county sheriff’s offices accusing McCree of rape, contributing to the delinquency of minors and possession of drug paraphernalia. The emails were sent last week to Knox and Blount county commissioners from knoxleaksvol3@gmail.com and knoxleaks18@yahoo.com. The USA TODAY NETWORK-Tennessee reached out to the two email addresses but did not immediately get a response.

The issue also was raised by businessman Brad Mayes during a recent Republican gathering in Powell, during which Burchett, who is running for Congress, defended McCree, saying he had “turned his life around, and, in my book, a kid like that needs a medal on his chest.” The confrontation was posted on YouTube.

McCree was arrested Dec. 15, 2013, when he was stopped for speeding by a Loudon County deputy. Two 17-year-old girls were in the car with McCree, who was 21 at the time.

According to the incident report, he admitted he had taken the girls to a party where they drank alcohol, smoked marijuana and stayed out after curfew. He was charged with two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

Loudon County Sheriff Tim Guider said his office no longer has a copy of the incident report and it is his understanding the charges had been expunged. Neither the Loudon County Circuit nor General Sessions courts have any criminal records for McCree on file.

McCree was arrested again on June 26, 2014, in Blount County after failing to appear on a citation for possessing drug paraphernalia. The case was dismissed after he completed four hours of community service.

Rape accusation, no evidence found

On Jan 30, 2014, McCree was accused of rape. The first pages of a Blount County Sheriff’s Office report are included in the complaint and the emails.

They detail an 18-year-old woman’s accusation that she went to McCree’s apartment, where he knocked her to the floor, unzipped his pants, pulled down her pants, and raped her orally and vaginally.

A supplemental report not included with the complaint nor the emails states that McCree’s account of the incident was consistent with the woman’s, except that he said the sex was consensual.

The supplemental report says a sexual assault nurse using a rape kit found only an abrasion on the woman’s elbow. The investigator wrote that the woman “did make a statement to me that everything was going good, but after sex, he used her and believes he had a plan to get even with her.”

Three other people in the apartment reported hearing no altercation and noticed nothing when the woman left except that she did not say goodbye.

Deputies later concluded there was no evidence to proceed with prosecution.

Knox County’s pre-employment background investigation did not include mention of any of McCree’s legal problems, and on his application he answered “no” to a question that asked if he had been “convicted of or pleaded guilty to a crime in the past 10 years, which has not been annulled, expunged or sealed by a court.”

A criminal history report the USA TODAY NETWORK-Tennessee requested from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation showed only records that McCree had failed to make court appearances in 2014. No records of criminal convictions have been found by the news organization.

No commercial driver's license

The complaint to the comptroller also states that McCree was hired although he did not have a required commercial driver’s license. The original posting for the job said that a commercial driver’s license was required “within six months from date of employment.”

McCree’s performance evaluation at the end of 2015 listed as a goal “to get his CDL license,” but by the end of 2016, he had not obtained the license and the same goal was listed again.

The complaint says that McCree was not reprimanded for this failure and, instead, was recently transferred to a position that did not require a commercial driver’s license.

Dwight Van de Vate, senior director of engineering and public works, said McCree's position did not require a CDL unless he wanted to move to the Laborer 2 level, and the transfer occurred because McCree completed an associate's degree and was given expanded responsibility working with the county’s AmeriCorps team.

McCree, 25, now makes $26,683.80 a year, according to the Knoxnews database of county salaries.

McCree declined comment.

'It's obviously political'

Burchett said he was not involved in McCree’s application and was not contacted as a reference. He said many Knox County job applicants include his name as a reference.

"Just because he’s my stepson shouldn’t preclude him from working if he’s qualified for the job,” he said.

He called the complaint politically motivated.

“It’s obviously political. It’s unfounded. I think they’ve slandered my stepson,” he said. “I think my opposition is (polling in) single digits and they can’t attack me on my political record. So, they are attacking my family. That is the state of politics in this country today and I think that’s why folks are fed up with it."

Burchett is running for the soon-to-be-empty congressional seat held by U.S. Rep. John J. Duncan. His opponents for the Republican nomination are state Rep. Jimmy Matlock, R-Lenoir City, and businessman Jason Emert. Democrats Renee Hoyos and Joshua Williams are also running.

Sean Lansing, a spokesman for Matlock, said, "Like the rest of East Tennessee, we are learning about these allegations of nepotism from the Knoxville News Sentinel. Like with other allegations against Mayor Burchett, it is not up to us to judge, it is up to voters to decide whether or not this disqualifies him from representing the 2nd District in Congress.”

Chris Olmstead, Emert’s campaign manager, said, “The fact that a lot of people list Tim Burchett as a reference when applying for jobs in Knox County is precisely the problem.”

Olmstead pointed to Burchett’s 2012 hiring of his University of Tennessee fraternity brother, Burton Webb, to be finance director despite limited qualifications. Burchett fired Webb a few weeks later after it was disclosed he was under indictment for theft in Kentucky.

Employee paid when not working

Beyond McCree, the complaint also alleges that Burchett ignored evidence that a county employee, who has supported his congressional campaign, has been paid while not on the job.

According to the complaint, Benjamin Bean, 26, an analyst in the county Finance Department, submitted fraudulent time cards showing he was working while he was not in the state or, in some instances, not even in the country.

For example, the complaint cites Aug. 21, 2017, when Bean posted on social media that he was in Nashville to see the solar eclipse while also billing the county for an eight-hour day of work.

In another example, on Sept. 17, 2017, Bean posted on social media that he was in Bexley, a borough of London, to attend the graduation ceremony of Rose Bruford College, where he received a master’s degree. The ceremony, however, was held Sept. 15, the same day Bean worked eight hours, according to his time card.

The complaint includes copies of time cards and logs of access to the city-county parking garage.

Time card signatures faked

The complaint also alleges that many of Bean’s time sheets had signatures that did not appear to be his, and that Bean had no qualifications to be hired as a financial analyst, a job that now pays $42,848 a year, according to the payroll database.

Bean majored in biochemistry and theater at the University of Tennessee and studied acting at Rose Bruford.

Chris Caldwell, county finance director, acknowledged signing Bean's time cards.

He said Bean was hired on a temporary basis in May 2017 to do special projects for the Finance Department. Many of those assignments kept him outside the City-County Building, such as helping the county’s IT department test software to allow employees remote access the county computer system.

“Any assignment he did came from me,” Caldwell said. “He was told when he started that, ‘I’m going to give you special projects to do. I need you to keep them confidential for one; and two, you just report to me.’”

He said he maintained a separate log of the time Bean actually worked and often signed his time card for him.

“Quite frankly, what I probably should have done is just signed it myself and not signed his (signature),” Caldwell said.

He attributed the errors to innocent mistakes and said Knox County’s Human Resources Department had been made aware of the entry for Aug. 21 and eight hours would be subtracted from Bean’s annual leave time.

The USA TODAY NETWORK-Tennessee reviewed Caldwell’s separate accounting of Bean’s hours and found other discrepancies, including six two-week billing cycles that showed Bean working more than 80 hours but paid for 80 and two billing cycles that showed Bean working less than 80 hours but paid for 80.

Bean said that, aside from the Aug. 21 mistake, he'd worked the hours for which he'd been paid, although he might have been owed "a couple of hours" overtime for which he wasn't compensated.

He said that, regardless of what his social media posts seemed to indicate, he hadn't been out of the country since taking the county job.

The comptroller complaint included copies of postings he made to social media supporting Burchett’s congressional campaign, which appear to have been made during lunch hours or on weekends.

Burchett said he did not know Bean before he began with the county and does not oversee him.

Chief of staff also accused

The complaint also claims that Burchett’s chief of staff, Dean Rice, violated the Hatch Act by promoting Burchett’s congressional race on social media during work hours and that Rice, on a number of occasions, traveled to the Middle East during work hours. The Hatch Act is a law that prohibits political activity of some government employees.

Rice said any social media activity he has done was during his lunch break. The complaint includes a screen-grab of a tweet Rice retweeted but does not include the time.

Rice said he hasn’t traveled internationally since January 2016 and when he does travel, he pays for his own expenses and does not do it on county time.

“It is clear through the evidence of McCree and Bean that there’s a pattern where Knox County Mayor Tim Burchett’s closest staffers get away with taxpayer waste and potentially violating the law,” the complaint says.

The state comptroller frequently investigates allegations of misconduct by public officials but will not comment on what it is investigating.