A Nashville judge said the expenses related to harassment of a 19-year-old legislative intern by then-state lawmaker Scotty Campbell are exempt from the public records law based on a House rule and a policy on workplace harassment. But Chancellor Russell Perkins refused to buy the state's broad argument that the General Assembly is exempt from the public records law.
An independent investigation of the state's secret handling of lethal injection drugs shows it did not follow state protocols for testing the materials. The state should fix this and address the secrecy about lethal injection drugs going forward.
The Bristol Herald Courier reported in a Sunday story a geographical sales analysis of lottery data. But it could only tell half the story. Why? The line that separates Bristol, Tenn., from Bristol, Va. is also the state line. While it could report data from Virginia lottery sales in Bristol, Va., the same data from the Tennessee lottery in Bristol, Tenn., is confidential under an exemption in the Tennessee Public Records Act. In Bristol, Va., half of the largest retailers of lottery tickets sell their tickets in an area that is home to some of the city's lowest-earning residents. The newspaper explained that it wanted to do the same [...]
The Jackson Sun hit a public records roadblock in its ongoing probe into the accreditation problems at the University of Tennessee at Martin. Here's the short story: Tom Rakes resigned his position as chancellor at UT-Martin on May 31, 2015, and is now teaching a few online classes at the university for a lowered salary of $185,520. The university was placed on academic probation in December 2015 after years of notification to the university of key problems from its accrediting body. UT system President Joe DiPietro declined to say whether performance issues were a factor in the chancellor's resignation. So the newspaper asked for Rakes' personnel file, expecting to see Rakes' [...]
