A high profile part of the Governor Bill Haslam’s legislative package, and one of the most important to state business interests, has quietly faded away this session. The governor wanted a law to make secret, the information filed by private companies asking for government grants.

That bill was buried today in a Senate Committee that isn’t scheduled to meet again.

At the end of the Senate Commerce Committee meeting, Chairman Jack Johnson turned in his chair to find out what Senator Bo Watson wanted to do with the governor’s much debated “due diligence” secrecy bill.

“Leave that on the heel, or General Sub? General Sub. So members, that’s Senate Bill 2207, goes to the General Subcommittee, and we are again, adjourned.”

In other words, Watson abandoned the bill in a committee that was shutting down for the year.

The Hamilton County Republican later said the Haslam administration had asked him not to pursue passage of the bill.

Critics had argued that in asking for more confidentiality, the governor’s bill would have kept the public from finding out even the ownership of businesses receiving state tax money.

In a statement, the Department of Economic and Community Development says concerns about the confidentiality bill “merited further discussion.” State officials say they’re trying to balance transparency with maintaining Tennessee’s “competitive advantage.”

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The bill, SB 2207 Norris/HB 2345 McCormick, took aboard three major amendments in the Senate as sponsors tried to make it more palatable to a majority of lawmakers.

The House version made it all the way to the floor but there is was postponed, waiting on the Senate’s action. The Senate committee’s action ends any chance of the bill passing this year.

Senate amendment 3 was the basic rewrite of the bill, later modified by definitions of “ownership interests.”

That wording would be a logical place to start if the administration takes another run at the issue next year.