NEW GRANT SOUGHT TO HIRE DRUG PROSECUTOR

District Attorney General Joe Crumley is optimistic he will receive a new
grant to replace a recently expired one that paid for a prosecutor to work
primarily on drug cases.

If that happens, Crumley will have to find someone else to handle these
cases. Michael Phillips, who had tackled drug prosecutions in Washington
County Sessions Court since December, left the district attorney general's
office last week.

The prosecutor was funded by a grant to M&M Properties in 2001 from the
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. M&M manages Tyler and
Clark Manor apartments in Johnson City, and the prosecutor was able to work
on drug cases involving those two complexes and a 10-block area surrounding
them.

But that grant expired at the end of April. Crumley said it was available
for only two years and there was no chance to have it renewed. He said he
had worked on the possibility of asking local governments to pick up the
tab but decided instead on the new grant when there was a potential to
obtain it.

Crumley said he should know by the end of May whether he has received the
grant, which is funded by the federal Office of Criminal Justice and is
good for three years.

"I think it's very likely we'll get it," he said.

The district attorney general's office has been in this position before. It
lost a grant in 2001 to pay for a domestic violence prosecutor, only to
obtain a new one a year later.

The good news with the new drug grant is the prosecutor could work in all
four counties in the 1st Judicial District. The only way a drug case in
Carter, Johnson or Unicoi counties or the outer reaches of Washington
County could be handled through the previous grant was if it had a
connection to Tyler or Clark Manor.

Should it happen, Crumley will be seeking a lawyer to handle these drug
cases. He said Phillips told him May 12 that he was resigning.

"He just walked in Monday and said he was called to the ministry," Crumley
said.