QUESTION OF THE WEEK
This week is Sunshine Week, a national initiative to promote the importance of open government and freedom of information. In your experience, are state and local governments and government agencies doing a good job with transparency, or is there room for improvement?
Recent improvements to the Tennessee Public Records Act have helped to streamline the open records process and reduce the time it takes for state residents to view records. Unfortunately, some government officials and bureaucrats – especially at the local level – still impose unreasonable (and sometimes illegal) fees to provide records. Others simply lie about what records are public or even deny that records exist. To make matters worse, there is still little recourse for residents who don’t receive the records they are due other than costly court battles.
Ensuring that policy makers comply with sunshine laws, which require that public meetings are open and held with proper notification, remains a problem as well.
Too often, government leaders and bureaucrats forget that there is a difference between following state open-government laws and being truly transparent and accountable. Every city and county in Tennessee should post their budgets, monthly financial statements and check registers online to prove that tax dollars are being spent appropriately.
To further improve government transparency, state lawmakers should end the troubling practice of exempting themselves from state open records laws. Further, they should remove the ridiculous residency requirement to obtain public records in the Volunteer State.