Open records committee mulls changes to public record exemptions

A joint legislative committee tasked with evaluating exemptions to Tennessee's Public Records Act has a painstaking task ahead of it: to decide what to do with the state's hundreds of exceptions to a law that holds citizens are entitled to government records.

The Open Records Ad Hoc Committee was formed in June by Lt. Gov. Randy McNally and House Speaker Beth Harwell, a result of the Comptroller of the Treasury's Office of Open Records Counsel determining there were 538 exemptions to the state's open records law.

That number that has increased to 563 since this past session.

When it was enacted in 1957, the Public Records Act, which states that all government records are presumed to be open to inspection by citizens unless otherwise provided by law, had just two exemptions.

The study took place after Harwell and McNally during Sunshine Week in March 2017 called for a "through and comprehensive review" of exemptions to the law, a number that was less than 90 in 1988.

The issue at hand, as outlined Tuesday in a presentation by Jason Mumpower, chief of staff of the state comptroller's office, is the need to weigh privacy concerns for citizens — such as Social Security numbers and banking and medical information on documents — with the public's right to access information on government proceedings.

Some of the hundreds of exemptions on the books now have been around for decades — even before the tenure of McNally, the current longest-serving member of the Tennessee General Assembly, Mumpower noted — and are likely not all applicable.

Deborah Fisher, executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, presented to the committee the organization's recommendations for dealing with a growing list of exemptions.

Chiefly, Fisher advocated for implementing a sunset review of all public records exemptions, meaning the exemption would only remain in effect for a specified period of time before expiring unless it is renewed.

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She also suggested that the committee look to improve the state's process of creating new exceptions, including requiring that legislators hear from more than just the entity who wants the exception approved.

Doug Pierce, an attorney and former TCOG president, also urged the committee to propose a sunset provision to unwieldy list of records exemptions — "otherwise you'll never have a handle on it."

"You'll be wishing for the good ol' days when you only had 1,000 exemptions," Pierce said.

The committee will meet again Sept. 13, at which time it will allow all 14 member organizations of the Advisory Committee on Open Government — including groups like the Tennessee Press Association, Tennessee Hospital Association and Tennessee Municipal League — to briefly provide their opinion and concerns on the reevaluation process.

Members of the ad hoc committee include Sens. Todd Gardnehire, Mike Bell, Kerry Roberts and Jeff Yarbro, along with Reps. Jason Zachary, Raumesh Akbari, Jeremy Faison and Bob Ramsey.

Reach Natalie Allison at nallison@tennessean.com. Follow her on Twitter at @natalie_allison.