If you’re a frequent flyer at the Hamilton County Courthouse seeking old records about family members or would like to know about local government functions in the 1950s or are wondering if a map is available that shows what sat on your land 100 years ago, your curiosity could cost you in the future.
It could, that is, if a bill passes in the General Assembly this session that would assess fees just to view public records.
Currently, there is no charge in Tennessee to view such records. However, there can be a cost if copies of the records are requested.
The bill, SB 2534 and HB 2635, is being pushed by the Tennessee Association of Chiefs of Police and the Tennessee Sheriff’s Association and is sponsored by state Sen. Ferrell Haile, R-Gallatin, and state Rep. Dave Wright, R-Corryton.
It states that a requester will be required to pay “reasonable costs including, but not limited to, the labor costs associated with locating, redacting and producing each record requested for inspection.”
Haile told the Nashville Tennessean the law is meant to curtail the public’s ability to request a “ridiculous amount of information that is meant to harass” law enforcement departments.
That’s throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Surely, there are ways to amend the Tennessee Public Records Act, especially with specificity to law enforcement, to reduce harassing requests without drawing the curtain across the free viewing of most public records.
It turns out we’ve been here before, according to Deborah Fisher, executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, and the last time didn’t go so well for a similar bill.
In 2015, it was the Tennessee School Boards Association pushing for a charge to inspect records. In time, the bill’s sponsors asked the state Office of Open Records Counsel to study the issue over the summer and report back.
What the office found – not surprisingly, to us – was that people wanted to retain the right to examine public records without being charged to do so.
What they found is not likely to have changed in the six years since. For instance, citizens believed charging a fee:
* Would shut out those who can’t afford to pay.
* Had the potential to create unbudgeted “slush funds.”
* Promoted the thought of “secrecy” in government.
* Was antithetical to the country’s heritage of liberty and freedom.
* Was akin to “double billing” since the information being sought had already been collected through tax dollars.
Once the study was reported in 2016, the sponsors withdrew their bill.
Since that study, according to Fisher, a number of laws have been passed to make the dissemination of public records more fluid and to address some of the people who abuse the system.
As to the latter, one measure allows a government entity to stop fulfilling public records requests for citizens who never show up to inspect the records they request, to not fill any more requests from someone who has failed to pay for copies on previous requests and to pursue an injunction against a requester who is abusing the law with an intention to “interfere with government operations.”
Citizens quoted in the study, Fisher wrote in an article on the Tennessee Coalition for Open Records website, also suggested government entities more closely adhere to changing technology with the result that more and more records are able to be viewed online.
The result, they said, would be a more open, transparent government.
(In 2020, state law was amended to prohibit a government entity from authorizing the destruction of public records subject to disclosure if the entity knows the records are subject to a pending public records request made to that entity. The amendment rose from a 2019 incident when Hamilton County destroyed records for which this newspaper had made a public records request.)
The webpage for Hamilton County contains a section on open records requests, and it states that “the Tennessee Public Records Act grants Tennessee citizens an enforceable right to access open public records that exist at the time of the request.” It goes on to detail that “there shall be no charge for inspection of public records” and how, when and where those records might be requested. It also details the prices of copies, if they are requested.
We wish the policy weren’t 16 pages long, a detriment to many who are interested in such records but don’t want to have to wade through jargon in order to be able to request a record showing Great Aunt Betty’s address in 1906.
But for now, at least, we can request and look at that record. If the bill passes, we’ll have to pay to do so. To keep the openness in government we have, we hope the bill goes the way of the 2015 measure.