tennessee

About Deborah Fisher

Deborah Fisher has been executive director of Tennessee Coalition for Open Government since 2013. Previously she spent 25 years in the news industry as a journalist.
24 Mar, 2025

Comptroller’s Report: DA’s Conference has been violating Open Meetings law

By |2025-03-24T15:31:46-05:00March 24, 2025|Categories: adequate public notice, Legislature, minutes, Open Meetings|Tags: , , |0 Comments

Just days after the District Attorneys General Conference pushed a bill through committee to exempt many of their meetings from the Open Meetings Act, a Comptroller's audit of the DA's General Conference was released that found that the conference and its committees have largely been violating the open meetings act. The Open Meetings Act requires governing bodies, including governing bodies created by the Legislature, such as the district attorney general's conference, to give adequate public notice of meetings and record and maintain minutes. However, the DA's Conference gave public notice for only a handful of its meetings from 2021 to 2023. For example, its executive committee met 30 times but [...]

17 Mar, 2025

Public university payments to student athletes to be confidential under proposed bill

By |2025-03-17T11:31:35-05:00March 17, 2025|Categories: Legislature, public university records|0 Comments

The Knoxville News Sentinel reports on proposed legislation that will allow public universities in Tennessee to keep confidential money paid to student athletes as part of potential new revenue sharing deals. The bill requires total annualized aggregated amounts to be available, but no specific individual payments.

17 Mar, 2025

Citizens should have access to clear agendas for all government body meetings

By |2025-03-17T10:51:52-05:00March 17, 2025|Categories: Legislature, meeting agenda, Open Meetings|Tags: , , |0 Comments

The Tennessee Legislature first passed the "agenda requirement" within the Open Meetings Act in 2023. But it applied only to city and county legislative bodies, such as city councils and county commissions. In 2024, the Legislature expanded the agenda requirement to cover state boards and commissions. This year, the Legislature has a chance to complete the sound advance toward transparency in government and require that all governing bodies that are subject to the Open Meetings Act have an agenda that is available to the public before the meeting.

10 Mar, 2025

Rep. Elaine Davis shares emotional story of trying to speak to school board

By |2025-03-10T17:28:05-05:00March 10, 2025|Categories: Legislature, public comment|0 Comments

Rep. Elaine Davis shared an emotional and personal story while talking about her bill to expand the public comment law to allow people to talk about matters that are germane to a local governing body, but not necessarily on the agenda. Davis talked about how boards sometimes restrict comment to agenda items, so when there is something that a citizen needs to bring forward, they are blocked from doing so. The bill passed 60-30 with two present and not voting. Davis recounted how the school board would not hear her concerns about the need to have a health professional at each school. The story stemmed from a son with [...]

27 Feb, 2025

Industrial development boards can skip public hearings under proposed bill

By |2025-03-03T10:59:14-06:00February 27, 2025|Categories: economic development, Legislature, public comment|Tags: , , |0 Comments

A proposed bill would allow industrial development boards to skip public hearings on new development projects when they "amend" their plans. This also means they would not have to publish two-week advance notice before voting on the amended plans. Industrial development boards are used to subsidize private development projects by capturing property and sales taxes to help pay for the project, usually through tax increment financing zones or payment-in-lieu of taxes agreements. The elimination of public hearings is part of a larger bill that appears designed to spur new housing by expanding the definition of what types of projects can be funded through the capture of property and sales taxes.

Go to Top