A bill that allows governing bodies to post notice of their meetings on their websites passed a House committee, but not before pushback on a provision that requires the governing body to also mail or email the meeting notices to citizens who request it.
A House subcommittee is scheduled on Tuesday to consider a bill that would expand the confidentiality around applicants for the chief executive positions at state colleges. State Rep. Mark White is sponsoring a bill to expand the confidentiality related to filling top positions of president and chancellor at all state colleges. HB 473, sponsored by state Rep. Mark White, R-Memphis, would allow a search committee to keep confidential the identity of applicants for the president or chancellor positions at all state colleges except for the finalist or finalists selected. The bill would allow a search committee to reveal only the single finalist they select, although the committee [...]
A subcommittee of the Advisory Committee on Open Government will meet on Friday to review a 2018 change in the law that expanded confidentiality for college president candidates at state colleges. The subcommittee will meet at 3 p.m. Friday via a Webex conference call. The public may attend with this link. The subcommittee has been asked to discuss the effectiveness of the 2018 amendment to the higher education executive search statute (Tenn. Code Ann. § 49-7-154) in preparation of a report from ACOG to the governor and speakers of the House and Senate. 2018 law expanded confidentiality of finalist candidates In 2018, the Legislature expanded the confidentiality of college president [...]
The Commercial Appeal recently did a story about a bill in the Legislature, supported by TCOG, that would solve the issue of business entities claiming that government documents about payments made to them are confidential because the payment they received constitutes a trade secret. It flies in the face of the Tennessee Public Records Act that states "all documents ... made or received pursuant to law or ordinance or in connection with the transaction of official business by any governmental entity" are public records. But the business are getting away with it. See below for an example with Google and the Montgomery County Industrial Development Board, and the University of [...]
Tennessee Coalition for Open Government recently provided the Open Records Ad Hoc Committee 13 exemptions or categories of exemptions that are interfering with the public's right to know what government is doing. Deborah Fisher, executive director of TCOG "As you will see, many of the exemptions listed have problems related to overbreadth or vagueness that we suspect may exceed the public purpose of the exemption. We know that some of the considerations we are bringing forward were not part of the debate when the exemptions were passed by the legislature," TCOG's letter said. "While this list may not cover every exemption that impairs transparency in government, we wanted [...]
