State lawmakers are reviewing exemptions to Tennessee’s Public Records Act for the first time in 30 years. Since the report from 1988, the number of loopholes has grown more than sixfold.
“This looks like a several years’ endeavor,” Rep. Bob Ramsey, R-Maryville, commented Tuesday at a first meeting of the Ad Hoc Open Records Committee.
The panel was named to catalogue the exemptions and determine whether any could be eliminated — or if some need expanding, given new technology advances. The Tennessee Comptroller’s office did the detail work of combing through state law, federal law, common law and other agency rules. Attorneys counted
563 exemptions just in the Tennessee Code Annotated*, with nearly 30 added just this year.
New exemptions bar public scrutiny of travel records related to business recruitment and expand protection for victims of violent crimes. Comptroller staff suggested the panel may also want to consider additional exemptions for building plans, which they were surprised to find are completely open to the public. But they noted that many of the statutes are not clearly worded.
“In some cases, there are even exceptions to exceptions,” Comptroller chief of staff Jason Mumpower said.
Roughly a quarter of the exemptions overlap in some way, related to guarding Social Security numbers, tax information or trade secrets. Very few of them are located within the part of state law related to open records. Many are slipped into new laws without any debate, which is why the
Tennessee Coalition for Open Government is requesting a re-justification of every exemption.
“You may only be hearing from the entity who wants the exemption, and the public really hasn’t had much of a chance to even know that is being considered or to offer a different perspective for you,” TCOG executive director Deborah Fisher said.
TCOG is pushing to reconsider the blanket exemption for all Tennessee Bureau of Investigation files, except for officer-involved shooting cases.
“Even the FBI releases documents at some point,” Fisher said.
Open government advocates also want more transparency related to economic development incentives, which are often shrouded under exemptions related to tax information and trade secrets, even when millions of dollars in taxpayer money is involved.
And to make sure exemptions don’t continue to balloon, TCOG wants all future exemptions to include a periodic review.
The legislative committee reconvenes Sept. 13 to hear from groups ranging from district attorneys and sheriffs to journalists and citizen activists. Any recommendation by the panel would have to be approved by the General Assembly.
*Correction added to clarify that the number of exemptions only includes those in TCA.
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