Review finds some TN government agencies violating law on open records
A newly-released audit shows some government agencies in Tennessee are making it difficult for citizens to access public records and, in some instances, violating state law, reports the Associated Press. It covered city and county governments as well as school districts.
Open records advocates had hoped that a state law that passed in 2016 would make it easier for people to access information that should be publicly available to citizens. But the audit by the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government found that some agencies had adopted rules that were so rigid that they threatened to slow down or thwart the process of getting records.
“It makes people feel like they don’t have a right to public records when they have to jump through all these unreasonable hoops,” Deborah Fisher, executive director of TCOG, said of the rules that many government agencies had adopted in their public records policy. She described it as part of a “locked-down” culture within some government entities where citizens need to get a type of security clearance just to get records of ordinary government business, even minutes to a public meeting.
The Tennessee Legislature passed a law two years ago that required every government entity in the state to establish a written public records policy by July 2017. Each policy was to include details on how citizens can make a public records request and the contact information of the person who could get them the records.
As part of its audit, TCOG sought public records policies of 306 government entities, including counties, school districts and cities, from October 2017 to March 2018. It was able to obtain and examine 259 policies.
A number of government agencies surveyed — 15 percent — did not respond to requests to mail or email a copy of their public records policy, the audit found. Nine agencies insisted that the only way to get a policy would be for someone to appear in person. Some said their agency did not have a policy.
And while new technology is evolving to make it much easier to take copies of documents using cameras on phones and apps, 48 percent of the policies obtained and examined wouldn’t allow it, the audit found. Many of the policies — 41 percent — made no mention of whether citizens could use personal equipment, such as a cell phone to make copies. Only 5 percent of the policies allowed it, according to the audit.
Note: The full TCOG report on the audit is HERE.
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