📰 THE DUMP — SEPTEMBER 12, 2025
Your weekly look at the weird, the wild, and Williamson County.
Hey again — thanks for tuning in. It’s been a tough week. But we’re glad you’re here, because this is your weekly look at the weird, the wild, and Williamson County.
This week we’re talking deputy pay raises that somehow made the top brass richer. We’ll check in on Franklin’s new plan to cure traffic with neon and parking decks, and we’ll step inside the county commission’s bond brawl. And yes, we’ve got updates from the Casada-Cothren long march to sentencing.
And to close, we’re going to talk about silence — and what it says when no one’s saying it after this week’s tragedy on the national stage.
Let’s dump it out.
🚓 WHOSE RAISE WAS IT, ANYWAY?
Williamson County didn’t just back the blue this year—it bankrolled it. Twice. After months of hand-wringing about losing deputies to higher-paying departments, Sheriff Jeff Hughes made the pitch: we’re bleeding talent, morale is low, starting pay is too soft, compression is killing the ranks. The County Commission bit hard—$1.3 million in June to lift salaries toward the 75th percentile. When that didn’t stem the exits, they came back with another round of raises. Bigger checks, same churn.
Then came the comment section. Under a Nick Beres (NewsChannel 5) post—now deleted—a commenter alleged the raises didn’t flow to the street at all, but pooled at the top. The claim: Hughes padded a “bloated” administrative layer, even naming multiple “chief deputies,” and the inner circle got “massive raises” while rank-and-file saw the crumbs. It goes further—micromanagement, denied time off, morale collapse, and undercutting specialized units that were making progress on drugs and crime. Spicy? Absolutely. Confirmed? Say it with us: rumor. A sharp one. Posted under a TV journalist’s page.
Why does it stick? Because outcomes still don’t match the promise. We were sold: pay more, lose less. But deputies are reportedly still walking, and taxpayers are staring at a “raises” line that somehow didn’t fix a retention crisis.
So here’s the credibility gap: The sales pitch to the public and the Commission was deputy pay. If the execution was administrative elevation—bigger brass and thicker middle management—then the policy failed.
Let’s stop guessing. This isn’t hard—just provide a spreadsheet and the courage to hit “publish.” Show the raise ledger by rank and title: who got what, when, and by what percentage. Post the before/after org chart. Share the retention metrics you promised would improve—applicant counts, academy throughput, vacancy rates, 6/12/18-month attrition.
And for the County Commission, especially you budget hawks: request an independent review of what was asked for, what was appropriated, and what was actually executed. If the numbers clear you, great—frame them. If they don’t, fix it. Either way, stop making taxpayers play detective.
WW BOTTOM LINE
The county raised taxes to raise deputy pay. Deputies still left. Sheriff Hughes raised admin staff instead. The money went up the org chart. Small towns got the invoice. And Nick Beres’ comment section got deleted.
🔫 RIGHTS CHECKED AT THE BORDER? SKRMETTI TAKES AIM AT MASSACHUSETTS
Tennessee AG Jonathan Skrmetti and 24 of his Republican colleagues just told the Supreme Court that constitutional rights don’t need a boarding pass. Their brief in Marquis v. Massachusetts takes aim at Boston’s gun licensing scheme for out-of-staters — because apparently freedom ends when the Mass Pike begins.
Here’s the setup: Philip Marquis of New Hampshire gets into a minor wreck in Massachusetts. He does the honest thing, tells the cop he’s carrying his legally owned firearm. Instead of “thanks for letting us know,” he gets “you’re under arrest.” In Massachusetts, nonresidents have to apply for a “temporary” gun license — temporary in the same sense that your kitchen remodel is temporary. The wait runs 40 to 170 days, and the fees feel more like buying a Fenway ticket than paying an administrative cost.
Skrmetti & Co. say the Bay State is turning travelers into second-class citizens. The Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen decision already took a sledgehammer to New York’s rules, and now Republicans want to see if Boston’s can survive the same stress test. Spoiler: probably not.
“Tennesseans’ Second Amendment rights don’t just disappear when they visit Massachusetts,” Skrmetti said. Translation: you shouldn’t have to choose between carrying legally and surviving Logan Airport security.
WW BOTTOM LINE
Massachusetts wants your rights to stop at the toll booth. Skrmetti’s brief makes it clear: the Constitution doesn’t run on E-ZPass, and your freedoms shouldn’t come with a surcharge, a Red Sox tax, or a six-month waitlist.
🚦 GRIDLOCK SPRINGS: BOMA LIGHTS THE NEON WHILE THE TRAFFIC DIES
Franklin BOMA met September 9 and decided the cure for Cool Springs congestion is … more Cool Springs. If you thought Carothers and McEwen were already the Bermuda Triangle of traffic, buckle up — the city just approved Orium on one side of the intersection and a supersized Ovation on the other. Welcome to Gridlock Springs: a lifestyle destination where the only thing moving faster than the developers are your blood pressure readings.
The night started sweet. A prayer, a pledge, and local landlord Mike Comer showing up to complain that his crew-cab dually can’t escape Gist Street without playing demolition derby with the mailboxes. His renters are boxed in, the runoff floods his yard, and his neighbors treat the street like a permanent car show. BOMA nodded politely, told him to “give staff your number,” and then turned right back to rubber-stamping projects that will make his commute even worse. That’s Franklin hospitality: bless your heart, now here’s 900 new apartments.
Orium was first out of the gate. Developers promised a “post-COVID executable” plan, which in English means “smaller office towers, bigger apartments, and plenty of string lights to distract you from the traffic.” They even bragged the new design reduces daily trips by 4,000 cars — the kind of math trick Enron would’ve sent out in a press release. BOMA swooned and approved neon halo signs, digital wayfinding screens, and enough Edison bulbs to power an SEC frat party. It’s not Franklin’s historic charm, but hey, it’ll look great on Instagram under #placemaking.
Then came Ovation, the mega-project that swears it isn’t tripling density, it’s “reducing units by 186.” That’s like saying you’re on a diet because you only ate four dozen donuts instead of five. The buildout promises 1.2 million square feet of office, 350 hotel rooms, and a 30,000-square-foot “entertainment venue,” which sounds a lot like Topgolf with fancier shrubbery.
Citizen Cleve Crow, a retired engineer, got up and did what traffic engineers never do in public: he told the truth. The intersection is already rated Level of Service F — that’s engineering code for “you’re not going anywhere, so bring a podcast.” Ovation wants to shove 8,000 cars into a signal that can only handle 1,600 per cycle. He compared it to L.A. rush hour, but at least Los Angeles has palm trees. We’re getting neon-washed parking garages and another “mixed-use plaza.”
And speaking of parking garages: BOMA’s pièce de résistance was voting 5–2 to approve a six-story deck facing Carothers and McEwen. Staff begged them not to, but the board decided it would look fine as long as the developers added “architectural rhythm.” Translation: slap some fake windows on it and call it art. So now when you roll off I-65, you’ll be greeted by a lake on one side and a concrete shoebox on the other. Franklin: where symmetry means water features paired with bunkers.
The board did toss residents one crumb: they capped one tower at eight stories instead of ten. Huge win. Break out the ribbon-cutting scissors and balloons, Franklin just saved you from two whole floors of skyline anxiety.
WW BOTTOM LINE
Franklin just voted to pave the future of Cool Springs with neon and gridlock. The developers got everything they wanted. The board congratulated itself for “reducing trips.” And you, dear citizen, just got sentenced to five signal cycles at Carothers and McEwen. Welcome to Gridlock Springs — please enjoy your stay, because you’re not getting out.
💥 BOND BRAWL: COMMISSIONERS TAG-TEAM AGAINST PARKS, TAG IN THOMPSON STATION 💥
If you tuned into Monday’s Williamson County Commission meeting hoping for a quiet civics lesson, you got a cage match between debt hawks, park parents and one deputy built like a linebacker.
Commissioner Bill Petty opened with the numbers: county debt has grown from $592 million in 2017 to $2 billion today, with $109 million a year going to debt service. He acknowledged some of Williamson County’s fields are crumbling and kids deserve better, but still insisted, “We can’t borrow. Pay-as-you-go or bust.”
Translation: the children can keep playing in cow pastures until the county digs up couch-cushion change.
Commissioner Lisa Hayes echoed him, calling the parks “sad” and “heartbreaking,” then voted “no” anyhow. Commissioner Judy Herbert countered, noting her sons played on the same fields 25 years ago and nothing has changed. Commissioner Jennifer Mason added perspective: Williamson’s $2 billion debt is less than 1% of its $105 billion tax base. In other words, if your mortgage was 0.89% of your home’s value, you’d be bragging about it.
Then came round two: Thompson’s Station. The town pays $250,000 for sheriff coverage that Sheriff Jeff Hughes said costs closer to $1.5 million. Commissioner Paul Webb compared it to Fairview, a city of similar size that spends $3.1 million on its own police. Thompson’s Station tax rate is 10 cents — you can’t buy a gumball for that, but somehow it buys sheriff’s deputies.
Petty wanted to jack their rate to a cool million. Commissioner Greg Sanford hinted the town’s mayor is willing to pay more, they just weren’t asked. An “escalator clause” was even discsuued to ease them into adulting. Meanwhile, Commissioner Barb Sturgeon compared the town to her brother-in-law freeloading rent until he finally moved out when she raised the price. Thompson’s Station friends, get ready — the bill is coming due.
Finally, for comic relief, Commissioner Herbert asked why the sheriff’s office keeps buying Tahoes instead of cheaper sedans. Sheriff Hughes didn’t blink: today’s patrol cars carry laptops, rifles, body armor and officers like Deputy Freddie Moore — who is, in the sheriff’s words, one of the “beefy, bulk weightlifters” on staff. Apparently, the fleet isn’t sized for mileage, it’s sized for quads.
WW BOTTOM LINE
Parks aren’t pork, Thompson’s Station isn’t a charity case, and if Freddie can’t fit in a Civic, then let him have his Tahoe. But you can’t preach fiscal discipline while stiff-arming College Grove families or letting a “real town” pay lemonade-stand prices for sheriff coverage. Either fund the fields, raise the tax rate, or admit the kids can keep playing ball in a cow pasture.
⚖️ NOT AN “AGENT,” JUST A CON ARTIST? — CASADA & COTHREN LOSE 3, STILL WALKING INTO SENTENCING
Former House Speaker Glen Casada and his onetime fixer Cade Cothren are back in federal court today for sentencing. In May the jury said “yep, that happened” (Casada guilty on most counts, Cothren guilty on all), and nothing about this week changes the plot—just trims a side quest.
Here’s the twist: Judge Eli Richardson tossed three federal-program charges because the government didn’t prove the duo were acting as “agents of the State” for those specific counts. That’s a definition win, not an absolution. The core stuff—the Phoenix Solutions sock-puppet mail mill, the fake “Matthew Phoenix,” the honest-services fraud and friends—still anchors the case. And yes, Robin Smith already pled and told jurors she helped hide who was really running Phoenix. None of that evaporates because “agent” didn’t land.
So this is your calendar ding: sentencing is today at 9. Same courtroom, fewer excuses.
WW BOTTOM LINE
Three charges fell to a technicality; the story didn’t. The jury wrote the ending in May—today the judge says the numbers out loud.
🚽 FINAL FLUSH: REALITY CHECK
Around here, the neighborhood icebreaker’s predictable: “So, which part of California are you from?”
Sure, we rib folks a little. They roll in from California, Chicago, New York. They’ve got that look in their eyes—shell-shocked, on edge. They tell us stories about where they came from, and sometimes we just shake our heads and say, “Relax. This is Tennessee. We don’t live like that here.”
Many of these people are disaffected Republican refugees. And sometimes their intensity feels over the top. But after this week, you start to wonder: what exactly did they see back there? Maybe we were too quick to dismiss it. Because when they talk about intolerance, hatred, and the death of debate—well, we just watched it play out on a national stage in the most grotesque way imaginable.
And that brings us to you, local Democrats — the ones who keep insisting you’re the “reasonable” ones.
Not the lockdown-stay-at-home crowd from just a few years back (though you were). Not the radicals from California. Just the moderates, the neighbors. That’s your message. But after this week? Not seeing it. Because what we’re not hearing from you is outrage. We’re not seeing shock, sadness, or separation. Not one clear voice saying, “That is not us.”
Instead, we see the same tired hedges. The “gun violence” talking points. As if this is standard. No — a man known for handing others a microphone, for his “let’s talk about it” attitude, was assassinated in front of the nation for simply expressing his views. That is not simply “gun violence.” That is political murder.
And while you hedge, scores of online posters are now out of work for their own stupidity. These weren’t anonymous trolls. Some were credentialed, polished, successful in their careers — until they couldn’t resist spewing raw hatred. Hatred, mind you, that they claimed to despise in Charlie Kirk. The hypocrisy is staggering.
Democrats, it’s as if you can’t even be human, can’t show the smallest shred of kindness, lest you lose part of your radical base. And if that’s the calculation, then let’s be honest: you’re not moderates at all.
Charlie Kirk himself once put it this way:
“When people stop talking, really bad stuff starts. When marriages stop talking, divorce happens. When civilizations stop talking, civil war ensues. When you stop having a human connection with someone you disagree with, it becomes a lot easier to want to commit violence against that group… What we as a culture have to get back to is being able to have a reasonable disagreement where violence is not an option.”
Now, Williamson County Democrats — let’s talk about it.
And that’s it. Thanks for sticking with us this week. We know there’s been a lot happening beyond Williamson County. We’re grateful you take a few minutes to check in on what’s happening right here at home.
We’ll be back next week. Until then, have a great weekend, and we’ll see you soon.