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Hamilton County, Chattanooga mayors promised blind trusts to avoid conflicts

Staff photo by Matt Hamilton / Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly, left, and Hamilton County Mayor Weston Wamp speak during the launch celebration for the Volkswagen ID.4 electric SUV at the Chattanooga Volkswagen Assembly Plant in 2022. Both mayors while campaigning pledged to put their assets in a blind trust. Staff photo by Matt Hamilton / Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly, left, and Hamilton County Mayor Weston Wamp speak during the launch celebration for the Volkswagen ID.4 electric SUV at the Chattanooga Volkswagen Assembly Plant in 2022. Both mayors while campaigning pledged to put their assets in a blind trust.

By David Floyd May 11, 2024 14 min read

As candidates, both Hamilton County Mayor Weston Wamp and Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly said they would put their assets into blind trusts to clamp down on potential conflicts of interest.

Kelly, a longtime Chattanooga auto dealer before his election in 2021, has done so. Wamp has not, pledging to instead refrain from making any new investments in local companies as mayor.

In theory, blind trusts ensure officials don’t know how their actions in office affect their investments, allowing them to focus on their constituents’ best interests, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Setting one up can, however, be time consuming and expensive. In these arrangements, public officials hand control of their business interests to an independent, unaffiliated trustee, who has power to buy and sell their holdings without their knowledge.