A bill that proposed allowing county legislative bodies to satisfy the public notice laws by posting notice of public meetings on a "social media platform" was amended this week in a House subcommittee to remove the mention of social media platforms.
The deputy attorney general for Tennessee argued in court this week that reports by consultant McKinsey and Co. regarding the re-opening of Tennessee and other government responses during the COVID-19 pandemic are exempt from the public records law because revealing them would open up the executive branch to second-guessing by the public.
A new law requires all law enforcement in Tennessee to make monthly reports to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation on the use of force. The data will include information from any police action resulting in death or serious bodily injury to a person or the discharge of a firearm at or in the direction of a person.
In the second public records lawsuit against Gov. Bill Lee's administration in a matter of weeks, Nashville Post journalist Stephen Elliott says that the administration's claim of a "deliberative process privilege" to keep secret a consultant's reports during the COVID-19 pandemic has no basis in state law.
Transparency dogged the TNInvestco program from the beginning, including with a lawsuit demanding to know how the recipients were chosen. Lawmakers also, when creating the program, enacted statutes to keep confidential the specific results of the state's investments.