Gov. Bill Lee’s administration is seeking a sweeping exemption to the public records law that would close any public records of the Tennessee Department of Tourism Development if the commissioner determines that the information is too "sensitive" to release. The exemption would most likely hide information about outcomes related to its marketing efforts.
Autopsies of murdered children would become confidential under a bill that passed a House subcommittee on Tuesday. TCOG testified against the bill, noting examples of when journalists, often working with extended family members, used autopsies to shine light on coverups and mistakes, including a child shot in head by Memphis police in a botched housing raid and child killed by his mother's boyfriend in Columbia.
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.
House Majority Leader William Lamberth has filed a bill for the special session next week that would close autopsies and other reports of medical examiners in cases involving "victims of violent crime who are minors." The bill, HB 7007, seeks to make those reports and autopsies of children who are 17 and younger "not public documents."
For 2 1/2 years, Memphis journalist Marc Perrusquia has received perfunctory communications from the city of Memphis that it is still reviewing and considering his records request, each time pushing the date for their response down the road. Perrusquia is asking for audits of a Memphis police program that provides intervention for officers who have exhibited behavior or performance problems. However, the city has stonewalled his request, contacting him 41 times over the 2 1/2 years extending the "time necessary" to complete the request. Now he has filed a lawsuit challenging those delays and in an effort to shake loose the audits.
