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21 Apr, 2017

Body camera footage inside schools, hospitals would be exempt under bill headed to governor

By |2017-04-24T10:01:00-05:00April 21, 2017|Categories: crime records, Legislature|Tags: |0 Comments

Body camera footage inside hospitals and schools would be exempt under the legislation. Legislation that would exempt some body camera footage from the Tennessee Public Records Act is headed to the governor's desk for signature. The House and the Senate passed legislation that would make confidential footage shot inside health care facilities, schools, and inside homes in some instances. Here is what the bill lists as exempt: (1) Video taken by a law enforcement body camera that depicts the following shall be treated as confidential and not subject to public inspection: (A) Minors, when taken within a school that serves any grades from kindergarten through grade twelve (K-12); [...]

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21 Apr, 2017

Senate approves bill to open TBI records in police-involved shootings

By |2017-04-21T10:05:16-05:00April 21, 2017|Categories: crime records|Tags: , , , |1 Comment

The Senate this week voted 30-0 to make TBI investigative records in police-involved shootings open to the public after the "prosecutorial function" is finished. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has an exemption in the Tennessee Public Records Act that allows it keep its records confidential even after the case is over, but this legislation would create an exception for police-involved shootings. “This is extremely important legislation for Tennessee," said state Sen. Brian Kelsey, R-Germantown, who signed on to the bill as a co-sponsor and who carried similar legislation last year. (see video) "We need to make this information public to exonerate our law enforcement officers who are at times wrongfully accused [...]

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21 Apr, 2017

No tax-supported entity should get secrecy in spending

By |2017-04-24T17:28:29-05:00April 21, 2017|Categories: Tennessee Coalition for Open Government|Tags: , , , , , , |0 Comments

A shadowy situation has emerged in Chattanooga with an organization that manages millions of taxpayer dollars with no transparency and such a surprising disregard for accountability that one wonders what it would take to wake up elected officials who are supposedly in charge. Welcome to the Chattanooga Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, whose lawyer threatened to sue the county after a commissioner dared to shed a little sunlight on how it spends tax dollars. The Chattanooga CVB is on track to get $7.8 million in hotel/motel tax this year via a pass-through arrangement with the Hamilton County government. The Chattanooga CVB gets almost all of its funds from [...]

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12 Apr, 2017

5 things to watch in public records policies

By |2017-04-12T11:29:39-05:00April 12, 2017|Categories: requests|Tags: , , , , , , , |0 Comments

To influence government, citizens must have access to information. In Tennessee, an important safeguard to that access is the state’s public records law. But sometimes that law gets ignored or flouted, and government entities create rules or habits that make it hard, confusing or downright impossible for citizens to access public records in a timely way. Last year, lawmakers took a step in the right direction toward encouraging compliance with the Tennessee Public Records Act, and passed a law that requires every government entity in the state to establish a public records policy by July 1. The public records policies must outline the process for citizens to make public records [...]

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