Floyd is best known nationally for The Friday Night Jamboree but a pissing contest over what may be either a simple personnel matter or a case of insider trading and more at the local bank is bringing a new level of unwanted national attention to the area.

Newspapers around the country report the fight between The Bank of Floyd and chief financial officer David Welch. Welch blew the whistle on what he says are improper accounting procedures in the bank’s holding company. The bank fired him, claiming insubordination. Welch took his case to the U.S. Department of Labor, which reviewed the case under the Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower protection law and ordered the bank to put Welch back on the job in what became the first application of the new law.

“Sarbanes-Oxley was expressly enacted by Congress to foster the disclosure of corporate wrongdoing and to protect from retaliation those employees, officers and directors who make such disclosures,” wrote administrative law judge Stephen L. Purcell in a Jan. 28 decision.

The bank, in its appeal of the decision, contends this is a personnel matter, nothing more. Welch says he was canned because he blew the whislte on insider trading by bank officers.

Meanwhile, the dispute has tongues wagging at local eateries and has garnered the attention of national media, which forced The Floyd Press to cover the story, but only two weeks after it appeared in papers around the country.