The Southern Highland Reader

WAYNESVILLE–The Smoky Mountain News wraps up coverage of 11th district rep. Heath Shuler’s misadventure with the Tennessee Valley Authority with this news story, from reporter Giles Morris and an editorial.

Morris’s lead for the news story:

While Congressman Heath Shuler, D-Waynesville, was cleared two weeks ago by the House Ethics Committee of any wrongdoing related to a Tennessee real estate deal, controversy erupted again a week later when the Tennessee Valley Authority released a report that showed he’d been lying to the media for months.

The lead from today’s editorial:

Now that it’s clear that Rep. Heath Shuler, D-Waynesville, did indeed mislead everyone about his involvement in a land deal that one of his companies negotiated with the Tennessee Valley Authority, constituents will be forced to make a character judgment that could stick for the rest of his political career.

REGIONAL–The Hendersonville Times News, along with the Knoxville News Sentinel, have followed closely 11th District Congressman Heath Shuler’s real estate misadventure involving the TVA in east Tennessee.

The Times News warned early on that even the appearance of influence-peddling in real estate matters would recall memories of Shuler’s predecessor, Republican Charles Taylor.

In a Friday editorial, the Times News “wraps the thing up neatly, and says Shuler’s damage in this case is self-inflicted.

Here’s the lead:

KNOXVILLE–The Knoxville News Sentinel’s Josh Flory has closely followed the controversy surrounding 11th District Congressman Heath Shuler’s real estate dealings and contacts with the Tennessee Valley Authority, and has reported new information.

Shuler was cleared of ethical misconduct allegations last week by the house ethics committee, but a new report seems to contradict Shuler’s assertion that he did not contact the TVA to exert influence in what amounted to a personal business matter.

Read Flory’s post here. See more posts about this story in the left hand column.

NATIONAL–11th District congressman Heath Shuler has been cleared by the House ethics committee of any wrongdoing in a Tennessee land deal, according to the Washington Post.

An excerpt from the Post:

According to a letter sent to Shuler Wednesday by the ethics committee, that IG investigation “could not find any evidence that you violated any ethics rules.” And after its own “thorough review,” the committee said it “has determined that your actions in these matters were not improper in any way and did not violate House rules.”

Read the piece here.

NATIONAL–11th District congressman Heath Shuler is the subject of a House Ethics Committee investigation over a land-swap controversy in Tennessee, according to the Washington Post, which acquired a leaked memo that discloses the investigation.

Here’s the Post’s lead:

House ethics investigators are reviewing an allegation of “preferential treatment” in a land deal involving Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.), a former Washington Redskins quarterback, according to a July committee document obtained by The Washington Post.

Read the Post story here.

The Hendersonville Times News and the Mountain Xpress were the first to report the story in our area.

Our series of posts shown to the left outline the details of the controversy.

REGIONAL-The smidgen of Tennessee lakefront property at the heart of a controversy involving 11th District congressman Heath Shuler was listed as a Shuler asset in 2007, but not 2008, reports the Hendersonville Times News.

An excerpt:

Shuler, who went into real estate development in East Tennessee after his career as a quarterback at the University of Tennessee and the NFL, claimed ownership of between $9 million and $42 million in real estate assets in his 2007 financial disclosure statement. The largest asset was the Cove at Blackberry Ridge near Knoxville, which became the subject of a TVA inspector general’s report into whether the agency was showing favoritism in granting water access development permits.

The entire story.

STATEWIDE–11th District congressman Heath Shuler told the Chattanooga Time Free Press that the heat he feels in congress — even on a bad week like this one — is nothing like the pressure Tennessee quarterback Jonathan Crompton (a Waynesville product, by the way) is feeling today at the University of Florida’s “Swamp”.

An excerpt:

“Playing in the Swamp is much tougher than this,” the 37-year-old Shuler said Thursday evening. “When you look at the people involved (in the TVA controversy), I’m 99.9 percent certain that this is politically motivated. That’s just politics.

“But when you play college football at a place like Tennessee, you feel like you’re representing the entire state every time you go out on the field. That’s much more pressure.”

Read the column here.

KNOXVILLE-11th District Congressman Heath Shuler on Wednesday denied knowledge of the working of a land deal between the Tennessee Valley Authority — over which he has some oversight in Washington — and a land development company in east Tennessee in which holds interest.

The Tennessean’s lead:

North Carolina Rep. Heath Shuler said Wednesday that he did not contact the Tennessee Valley Authority while the agency was considering a water access deal that was key to a housing development in which he was an investor.

The Waynesville, N.C., Democrat’s statement appears to contradict the conclusion in a report by TVA’s inspector general released Tuesday, and it further clouds a complex and politically charged issue.

The Tennessean’s story is here.

REGIONAL–The Knoxville News Sentinel and reporter Josh Flory have followed for over a year the story of Rep. Heath Shuler’s involvement in a real estate development company that swapped some land with the Tennessee Valley Authority.

The significance is that the TVA is a federal agency, and that Shuler sits on a committee that provides oversight of that agency.

Here’s some background.

In a blog post today, Flory reports that a TVA employee seemed to be playing duck’n'cover. Flory’s lead:

A former TVA employee allegedly provided false information to the agency’s inspector general in connection with an inquiry that involved U.S. Rep. Heath Shuler, according to an IG’s report.

The allegation was included in a report that was released to the News Sentinel under the federal Freedom of Information Act.

According to the TVA IG’s “Report of Administrative Inquiry”, which was released on Monday and dated June 9, the former employee denied knowing that Shuler, a North Carolina Democrat, held an ownership in The Cove at Blackberry Ridge LLC, a waterfront project in Roane County.

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The controversy centers on TVA’s Maintain and Gain Lakeshore Management Program, which allowed landowners to gain water-access rights in one location by trading rights they owned somewhere else on a reservoir.

Last year, the News Sentinel reported that an entity with ties to Shuler — a former University of Tennessee football star — received approval for a transaction that provided 145 feet of water-access rights along the shoreline of Watts Bar Reservoir in Roane County.

That entity, The Cove at Blackberry Ridge LLC, agreed to relinquish 150 feet of water-access rights in Rhea County and also provide about $15,000 for a shoreline bank stabilization project at a different location on Watts Bar Reservoir. Investors in The Cove at Blackberry Ridge included Shuler, who was formerly a member of the House transportation committee’s Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment. That subcommittee is one of two congressional panels that provide formal oversight of TVA.

Read the whole piece here.

REGIONAL/NATIONAL–The Knoxville News Sentinel reported on Tuesday that the story about congressman Heath Shuler’s involvement in a small Tennessee land swap with the Tennessee Valley Authority isn’t dead.

From my earlier post on the subject:

The swap essentially provides water access at Watts Bar Resevoir to a [housing] development called The Cove at Blackberry Ridge, in exchange for an equal amount of shoreline elsewhere on the same lake and $15,000. Shuler is an investor in the Cove at Blackberry Ridge.

Shuler has ties to the development company, and sits on a committee that exercises oversight over the TVA. This suggests the possibility of conflict of interest, although no evidence of such has been presented. When I posted about it a year ago, it struck me as much ado about not-so-much, but the News Sentinel reported in its Tuesday that a sealed report on the matter has been forwarded to the house ethics committee.

The News Sentinel, by the way, has sued to have the report made public.

KNOXVILLE/REGIONAL-The Knoxville News Sentinel-affiliated Knoxvillebiz.com recently reported that U.S. Rep. Heath Shuler, congressman of North Carolina’s 11th district, was party to a land-swap with the Tennessee Valley Authority.

The deal has drawn attention because Rep. Shuler, of Bryson City, sits on a committee that exercises oversight over the TVA.

The swap essentially provides water access at Watts Bar Resevoir to a development called The Cove at Blackberry Ridge, in exchange for an equal amount of shoreline elsewhere on the same lake and $15,000. Shuler is an investor in the Cove at Blackberry Ridge.

Shuler’s investment in the development predates his election to congress by approximately one year. Both Shuler’s business group and the TVA say he wasn’t involved in negotiating the deal. Furthermore, Knoxvillebiz.com noted, Shuler has “leaned on” the TVA over a number of issues, most notably pollution in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the ongoing conflict regarding the “road to nowhere” along the north shore of lake Fontana.

To us, it seemed like relatively small potatoes. Maybe so, says the Hendersonville Times-News’s editorial board, but still, Shuler needs to understand how these things are perceived.

The Times-News says, essentially, “too much of this is how your predecessor lost his job, Sen. Shuler.”

The Asheville Citizen-Times, meanwhile, takes a look at the issue in its Tuesday editorial. It arrives at the apparent conclusion that the incident is being overblown.