I read the excerpts from Megan Barry’s book that ran in the Nashville Banner, and I have been sent the more salacious bits, and I have been yelled at once again for not being nice to her. (I guess probably linked to my comment over at Bluesky that we’re lucky the transit referendum passed, because we will need more buses for everyone since the former mayor is throwing people under them.) And I’ve been feeling bad about voting for her, because I got on Beyoncé’s internet and told everyone she was the better option, and then she went and released this book.
So, I’m just going to say it. Megan Barry should have left most of this shit in the past. It’s weird to read a political memoir in which she talks about her undergarments and who’s doing what to them. It seems cruel to put such private details of her liaisons in front of the public after her lover has already paid such a steep price for getting involved with her. And I still end up in the same place I was back when I wasn’t going to vote for her. I feel like I’m watching Megan Barry once again self-harm in public.
Did I laugh when I read what she claims she said to Sheriff Daron Hall? (“When I first came into office, he wanted blue police lights added to his car. I informed him that blue lights were reserved for actual law enforcement and pointed out that he just ran a corrections center.”)
Yes. That’s funny as hell.
But it's also not true. The sheriff is an actual law enforcement position, and the sheriff’s department is a law enforcement agency. I even double-checked this with the sheriff’s office. I also asked if they have blue lights. They don’t, but no one recalls the mayor and the sheriff ever discussing it. (The fact that I had to ask about the blue lights is more than embarrassing for me, because I drove by the jail to look at a sheriff’s car, and there was a sheriff’s department car and a regular Metro police car and a Metro Parks police car, and their lights all looked the same to me. I was out there trying to do actual reporting for you, but I was thwarted by my own poor eyesight.)
There’s another bit that stands out as being untrue:
It’s really hard, most of the time, to make clean moral decisions about who to vote for
"Jerry, what’s with the range for the theft—between $10,000 and $60,000? Have they even completed an audit?" I ask.
He clears his throat. I’ve noticed he does this before saying something he knows is going to upset me.
"Because for it to be a felony, the amount has to be more than $10,000. The DA is saying you stole $11,000. He wants you to be a felon."
"What a total fucking asswipe," I say.
Jerry is Megan Barry’s attorney, meaning he’s an attorney (obviously), meaning he knows that felony theft is over $1,000 according to Tennessee law. I can’t speak to whether or not the district attorney was trying to jack Barry up by picking an amount that would make her theft a class-C felony rather than a class-D felony. (Sentencing for class-C felonies is harsher than sentencing for class-D felonies.) But he wasn’t bumping her over the line from misdemeanor to felony. Barry’s attorney would know that. Any attorney who read the manuscript would know that.
Which brings me to my main point: Megan Barry pleaded guilty to a felony. In fact, that class-C felony.
Let’s go back to the Tennessean story about it:
Barry and Forrest attended 10 city-funded trips by themselves without other mayor’s office staff present, including to conferences overseas in Paris and Greece and the two to Washington cited in the affidavit. Barry and Forrest are both married.
Forrest also earned $173,843.13 in overtime from July 2015 through Jan. 15 of this year, according to city data, more than the amount earned by the four other police officers in Barry’s detail combined.
Barry says in her book: “Rob didn’t bill for more hours than he worked. At least not that I know of, but it’s not like I was helping him fill out his timesheet in the postcoital glow. I have never even seen a timesheet.” She is framing this to be all about her paramour potentially overbilling the city and shifting the blame for her misfortune onto him. But no one was saying that Forrest was cooking the books. They were saying that the mayor misused city funds to pay for her lover to join her on trips. And that’s what she pleaded guilty to and repaid the city for.
I get why she’s pissed at District Attorney Glenn Funk, and I’m certainly not going to begrudge her that anger. But it’s also bizarre that she doesn’t appear to realize the favor he did for her in keeping her out of prison.
Not only that, but for as many potshots as she takes at Forrest, she seems unaware of just how much liability she opened the city up to by taking up with him. Imagine if, instead of pleading guilty to the charges against him, Forrest had told the D.A. that he didn’t feel he could say no to Barry and keep his job. What if he’d decided to sue the city?
She’s fortunate she didn’t receive a harsher sentence. She’s fortunate she didn’t cost taxpayers a ton of money.
The win means a fourth term for Green in a seat he didn’t initially want again
Why would you publish this? And what if she had beaten Mark Green in the 7th Congressional District race? What if she were headed to Congress as this book came out?
It’s such a stupid move from a person who is very smart that, like I said, it feels intentional. It feels like she’s asking us to witness her put herself in harm’s way yet again, I guess so we can cheer for her yet again. But man, even though I can’t look away, I wish I hadn’t looked in the first place.
