Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill HaslamNASHVILLE — Gov. Bill Haslam said Thursday he opposes efforts to weaken Tennessee’s Open Meetings Act, which bans most governing bodies from conducting the public’s business behind closed doors.
A former Knoxville mayor, Haslam said his experience watching the City Council operate in public gives him little basis to believe changes are necessary to the 1974 “Sunshine Law.”
The law prohibits two or more members of most public bodies, including county commissions, city councils, school boards and state regulatory boards, from deliberating in secret.
“Those rules actually worked and led to better discussions at City Council meetings,” the governor told reporters.
Commissioners in Williamson, Obion and Lewis counties have passed resolutions urging state lawmakers to let them to discuss public business in private as long as they don’t have a quorum. Local governments argue that the law, upheld in 1976 by the Tennessee Supreme Court, is too restrictive.