Judge says Legislature exempt from open records law

The ruling by Davidson County Chancellor Claudia Bonnyman comes two years after the state Court of Appeals ruled that the Legislature is exempt from another of the state’s major open government laws — the so-called Sunshine Law that requires government bodies to meet in public.

Both laws were enacted by the Legislature decades ago and impose broad requirements on other state agencies and departments, along with city and county governments, to make meetings and records available to the public.

“This appears to be the second bad decision rendered by the courts as it pertains to the Legislature,” said Frank Gibson, executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government.

He said it appears to allow the Legislature to “pick and choose” what to make public and creates a “double standard.” It is “a bit hypocritical” for the Legislature to be exempt from laws that it has enacted to apply to other parts of government, Gibson said.

But Connie Frederick, director of the Legislature’s Office of Administration, said she was “tickled” with the Bonnyman ruling and views it as supportive of legislative independence in dealing with its own affairs.

The chancellor’s ruling is “obviously broad enough that one could take everything I have in my office and say it’s closed as a matter of policy,” Frederick said.

But that is not going to happen, Frederick said, because the Legislature has — as a matter of policy and not because of the law — made almost all of its records open to the public.

“We certainly don’t want to do business in the dark,” she said. “That is not our intention.”

The decision grew out of Frederick’s refusal in October to comply with a request from Terry Adams of Nashville for copies of any files pertaining to “sexual harassment or sexual discrimination charges” against state Rep. Chris Crider, R-Milan, along with “counseling referrals or disciplinary actions” taken against him.

Adams’ request came with Crider embroiled in an ultimately successful but hotly contested bid for re-election. Nashville attorney Anne C. Martin filed a lawsuit on his behalf to force Frederick to release the documents. Deputy Attorney General Gina Barham sought dismissal of the lawsuit.

In her opinion, filed on Nov. 9, Bonnyman cited both the state constitution and a 2001 legislative amendment to state law on open records as justifying the General Assembly keeping records secret.

Rick Hollow, attorney for the Tennessee Press Association and the The Knoxville News Sentinel, said the chancellor’s decision, which Martin said was not being appealed, would not serve as a legal precedent outside of Davidson County Chancery Court. Thus, the question of whether the Legislature is covered by the Open Records Law remains unresolved in the state’s court system, he said.

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Information from: The Knoxville News Sentinel, http://www.knoxnews.com