Open records aren’t state secrets
To whom does the government belong?

Jack McElroy
Editor
11/28/2004

In America, you'd think there wouldn't be much disagreement over that.

Government belongs to the citizens: We the People.

            But, try asking your local government for records of what it is doing. There's a good chance you'll be told it's none of your business.

            That's what a recent audit of access to public records showed in Tennessee
anyway.

            The audit was conducted by the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, a new organization that represents groups and individuals who believe the public's business should be, well, open to the public.

            State law agrees with that. It says that state, county and city records "shall at all times, during business hours, be open for personal inspection by any citizen of Tennessee."

            There are specific exceptions, of course, for safety and privacy reasons.

            But the presumption is that Tennessee's citizens can see the records of what their governments are doing.

            Stories about the audit have appeared in the News Sentinel and many other newspapers around the state over the past few days.             The results are disappointing but not surprising.

            Over the past several years, similar audits have been conducted by open-government groups in many states. Tennessee is actually a little late to the game.

            The approach is generally the same everywhere. Citizen volunteers go into local government offices and ask to see some basic public records. In Tennessee, the requests were for police incident reports, school zero-tolerance reports and zoning board minutes.

            These are not state secrets. They are basic documents that officials use to record public business: a crime occurring, a weapon entering a school, a decision being made on how property can be used. The school records, by the way, don't include the names of the children involved.

            Yet, in more than a third of Tennessee's cities and counties, the sheriffs and police thumbed their noses at the requests. So did 40 percent of the school districts. Even some of the planning and zoning offices thought the records of their rulings were secret.

            Some of the volunteers were treated as though they were doing something wrong. Law enforcement officers, in particular, gave auditors the third degree.

            When volunteer Liset Marquez asked the Sequatchie County Sheriff's Office why she couldn't see the records, an officer told her, "Because it's the law."

            Wrong. The law says the exact opposite, and it would be nice if all law-enforcement professionals knew that.

            Granted, public officials have a tough job. Privacy and security concerns are greater than ever these days.

            But ours is still an open society, and government still belongs to the people.

            The TCOG audit serves as a reminder of this.