Here’s a very heartening story the AP is running today, about Knox County, Tennessee, where voters are effectively sweeping out the old county bureaucracy and instituting transparent processes where cronyism long held sway.

By DUNCAN MANSFIELD, Associated Press Writer Tue Feb 26, 5:50 AM ET

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – Maybe it was the expensive lobster lunch. The questionable federal grants. The collective amnesia about term limits. The blatant nepotism.

Knox County voters turned out in record numbers — more than any other county in Tennessee — in the Super Tuesday primaries on Feb. 5, and it had little to do with the presidential race. The issue was county government, and the public was growing weary of business as usual in this eastern Tennessee county of 400,000.

The primaries and last week’s temporary appointments of eight new faces to the Knox County Commission may mark the end of that perception.

“After years of apathy, the voters are taking back their government,” said new commissioner Sam McKenzie, a 42-year-old radiation safety officer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Knoxville will never be the same. Check out the entire article. Things had gotten really bad in Knox County. The $227 lobster lunch for three, charged to a county credit card, was only the tip of the iceberg. The change that’s happening is enough to bring many smiles to one’s day. May it spread like wildfire throughout the country.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen