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« Inspired by Operation Chaos | Main | Birds of a Feather » July 23, 2008After 134 Days...
In other words, the Bredesen administration is continuing to assert that a document related to a government project, created at the government's request and paid for with public dollars, isn't a public record so long as the government leaves it in the hands of a "subcontractor." They're trying to carve a very dangerous loophole in the law. To her credit, Nichols says "as a courtesy we are working with the subcontractor to obtain those videos so they may be available for your review in an effort to be as transparent as possible." It remains to be seen if the Bredesen administration will comply with the portion of my open records request that requires I be allowed to make copies of all or portions of the video as I review it. You can read Nichols' letter, attached as a PDF file. So, why did the Bredesen administration decide today - 134 days after I first requested a copy of the document - to cave in? It's probably because I filed a new open records request for the video a week or so ago, and there is a new state law signed by Bredesen in June and effective July 1 which requires public officials to comply with open records requests in a timely manner. But on the other hand Potter even ignored my second open records request - until today, just a few hours after I emailed Bredesen's spokesperson, Lydia Lenker, and some other administration officials, informing them that Potter was risking a lawsuit by failing to comply with my open records request. Given that her boss signed the new open records legislation into law, you'd think Potter wouldn't have to be threatened with a lawsuit in order to do her job and follow the law. Well, that is unless you know her history. Posted in Tennessee Government News
Comments
I would not release that video until I got my last pay check for constructing the bunker. It might also make a pretty good bargaining chip in change order negotiations. If the state and the contractor have a legal battle over change orders or some other matter, the video might come under protection from public disclosure. I know that when I was making such construction progress records, these records on the federal level were open and open to discovery by legal counsel. You learn very quickly never to write anything that you don't want seen or that you might regret later. One of my fellow workers referred to incompetent workers as "farm boys" and it became a big deal in legal wrangling later, showing prejudice on the part of the observer. Posted by: Danny L. Newton at July 24, 2008 11:30 AMPost a comment
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Lola Potter, the public information officer for the Tennessee Department of Finance & Administration who has stonewalled me on my open-records request for video shot at the governor's mansion underground ballroom blasting site since mid-March, finally caved in today and agreed to let me view the video. In a letter dated today, F&A General Counsel Martha Nichols asserted that the video "may not be subject to the state's open records laws" because it is "maintained by a subcontractor working on the Executive Residence who created the video."