Marc Perrusquia, a journalist whose reporting has exposed problems in the Memphis police department, has filed a lawsuit challenging the city's denial of access to documents that would show how the city responded to a history of trouble with three officers.
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.
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.
Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle ruled today that the Registry of Election Finance violated the Open Meetings Act when it voted by email outside of a public meeting to accept a settlement to reduce the fines of a state lawmaker. (See final order.) Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle The board's executive director, Bill Young, has said that he followed the process outlined by the Attorney General's Office in coordinating the email vote of the six-member election finance board. In addition to voting outside the public eye by email, there was no public notice of the meeting. The lawsuit was filed by several news media organizations and Tennessee Coalition for Open Government in [...]
Chancellor Ellen Lyle is scheduled to hear arguments today in an open meetings lawsuit filed by several news media organizations and Tennessee Coalition for Open Government against the Tennessee Registry of Election Finance. Attorney Paul McAdoo The plaintiffs argue in The Associated Press, et al., v. The Tennessee Registry of Election Finance that the election finance board violated the open meetings law when it voted on reducing $65,000 in civil penalties that it had levied against Rep. Joe Towns, D-Memphis. The penalties had accumulated over two years as Towns repeatedly failed to file campaign finance disclosures required by law. The board took the vote by email to settle the penalties [...]
