Certain local and state government employees, including law enforcement and court staff, would be allowed to require government agencies to redact their home addresses and other information from all public records under a bill proposed in the Tennessee Legislature.

Already, government entities are prohibited from disclosing the home addresses of their government employees [T.C.A. §10-7-504(f)], and anyone — not just government employees — can request that a property assessor “unlist” their name from the ownership field of a property record in an online searchable database. [T.C.A. §67-5-517]

The new bill, SB209 / HB 1019, takes a more universal approach. It would apply to any record, not just records associated with the government employee’s work, but also records that would apply to any citizen, such as property or voting records or records associated with arrests or crimes.

The bill is sponsored by Sen. Ed Jackson (R-Jackson) and Rep. Lowell Russell (R-Vonore).

Also new would be a requirement to keep confidential any official photographs of the government employee or photographs taken in the scope of the person’s employment.

Other information made confidential would include telephone numbers, social security numbers and dates of birth, some of which are already confidential under the law. For example, social security numbers are universally required to be kept confidential under T.C.A. § 10-7-504 (a)(29). The public records law also requires the redaction of certain telephone numbers, such as the telephone numbers of law enforcement officials.

The effort to reduce access to the home addresses of government employees has been a steady march in recent years out of fear that a would-be criminal would make a public record request for a government employee’s address and use it to stalk or harm the employee. No such case of using public records this way has been documented, possibly because addresses are widely available outside of government public records and can often be found on the internet. Would removing addresses from government records provide a sense of false security when other security measures for at-risk employees would be more effective?

This bill applies to only certain classes of government employees and lays out a process for them to notify government entities to make their records confidential. The information appears to remain confidential even after the person no longer works for the government.

The employee classes include:

  • Active or former sworn state and local law enforcement officers,
  • Correctional and correction probation officers
  • Personnel of the Department of Children’s Services whose duties include the investigation of child abuse, neglect, exploitation, fraud, theft, or other criminal activities;
  • Personnel of the Department of Revenue or of local government agencies whose responsibilities include revenue collection;
  • Justices, judges, chancellors, commissioners, and staff of state and local courts;
  • District attorneys general; and
  • Public defenders.

The bill requires the individual to submit a written request to each state or local government agency with records of or access to the information made confidential by the bill. Upon receipt of the request, the government entity must comply and redact those records before releasing them.

The bill allows the governing body of a local government to establish an individual to handle to receive the requests and distribute a notice to all agencies and departments.

Interestingly, the bill requires the redaction of a home address. But for some records, such as property records, the address is key information in the record. The way the bill is written would require that the address in a property record be redacted, but the name of the person would remain available.