Todd Gardenhire – Memphis Flyer

Tennessee Bureau of Investigation/Facebook

Should the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation be able to keep its case files forever secret from the public?

Should Google be able to keep secret how much money it will get from a local government?

Those were but two questions reviewed Thursday morning during the second meeting of a group of state lawmakers trying to get their hands around the 563 current exemptions to Tennessee’s Open Record Act.

Jack McElroy, executive editor of the Knoxville News-Sentinel, told the group public records are vital to a newspaper’s watchdog function. Knoxville News-Sentinel

Jack McElroy

“Records are critical for us to fulfill our responsibilities set out in the First Amendment, for being the eyes and the ears of the citizens, and holding government accountable,” said McElroy, who is also co-chairman of the Tennessee Press Association’s (TPA) government affairs committee.

McElroy pointed to two real-world examples of how open records exemptions affect public knowledge.

In 2015, Google scored a 23-year financial agreement with the city of Clarksville’s Industrial Development Board. They also scored, through a three-page nondisclosure agreement, the rights to hide just how much the deal would cost taxpayers and the number of employees the project would create.

Google got the dodge by calling the information “trade secret,” said McElroy. Senator Todd Gardenhire (R-Chattanooga) asked the editor if he could define ”trade secrets.”
Tennessee General Assembly

Senator Todd Gardenhire

“No, sir,” McElroy said, drawing laughter from the crowd. “It took Google…pages to define it. I can’t do it. But I’ll leave this document with you.”

Gardenhire retorted, “I guess it’s like the definition of pornography. You’ll know it when you see it, right?”

McElroy also took on the TBI’s “forever exemption.” He said it was one of the two original exemptions to the open records law when it when it was first passed in 1957.
[pullquote-1] Senator Mike Bell (R-Riceville) asked if anyone in the room knew why TBI got such an exemption and said, “it seems like a strange exception to me.” McElroy said he wasn’t really sure why but he had been told that perhaps it was because TBI investigates government corruption.

McElroy said that it was only because a judge ordered a small piece of a TBI investigation to be opened that the public found out that a Criminal Court judge in Knoxville had been high on opioids on the bench and had bought drugs from the people in his court. Tennessee General Assembly

Senator Mike Bell

The judge pled guilty to criminal misconduct and was placed on diversion. But Knoxville News-Sentinel repeaters could not find out more, in order to be able to hold other public officials accountable for what McElroy described as a years-long situation.

“We would have liked to see how the TBI talked to and how far into the question of, ‘Who knew what, when?’ but it was unavailable because of the forever exception,” McElroy said. “It is something that Tennesseans and those in Knox County will never know, in this particular case.”

No TBI official was present during Thursday’s hearing. Though, committee members were told that someone from the agency would be at the next hearing.

Janet Kleinfelter, senior counsel with the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office, urged the group to be cautious when examining and especially in ending some of the exceptions.

“We would strongly suggest before you begin and during this process that you talk with the agency, the commissioner, the department, the board, and the local government affected by the exception,” Kleinfelter said. “The exceptions enacted since I’ve been doing this — 20 plus years — come, usually, with a very good reason adopted by legislature.”

On Wednesday, McElroy published an opinion piece on the topic for the News-Sentinel.

“Asshole.” “Kiss my butt.” “I could care less.” “Don’t flatter yourself.”

These are comments lawmakers and a government attorney recently said or wrote directly to taxpayers.

• Tennessee state Sen. Todd Gardenhire, who infamously called a Tennessee taxpayer an “asshole” last year during the Insure Tennessee debate, had terse words last week for Memphian Steve Levine.

Sen. Todd Gardenshire

During a debate on Gardenhire’s bill that would prohibit the use of state gas tax funds for bike lanes, a fellow lawmaker told Gardenhire that he’d received numerous emails about the bill. Gardenhire joked that that was “what the delete button” was for.

Levine wrote Gardenhire an email calling his sentiment “glib” and a “slap in the face” to his constituents. Gardenhire responded, noting “The day you start receiving 350 to 400 emails a day, call me so I can sit and watch you read every one of them.” Levine wrote him back to say “I don’t feel sorry for you” because responding to constituents is “part of the job” and that he was glad that his email somehow rose above the others.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Gardenhire wrote from his official state email address. “Not only will I delete this email after I send it, but you will be blocked. You made my day.”

Gardenhire had not responded for comment by press time.

“It was absolutely an inappropriate response coming from an elected official,” Levine said. “My opinion and hope is that someone in a public service position would accept that others will disagree and that correspondence is part of the job.”

• Memphis City Council attorney Allan Wade apparently did not mince words with a Memphis taxpayer three weeks ago, as the Greensward-Memphis Zoo parking debate raged at Memphis City Hall.

Kathy Ake wrote a post on Nextdoor titled “me and Allan Wade” in which she told Wade “you should be ashamed” for allegedly colluding with Memphis Zoo leadership. Ake confirmed the incident with the Flyer.

“He stopped, backed up and said ‘Are you talking to me?'” Ake wrote. “I said yes. He looked at me and said ‘You should kiss my butt.'”

Ake said she has heard nothing from city council members or Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland since the incident.

Wade would not confirm that the situation happened.

“I have no comment on any private conversations that I may or may not have had with someone ‘who made a comment to me’ outside of the public meeting context,” Wade said in an email to the Flyer. “I hear a lot of ‘comments’ that cannot be repeated in polite company.”

• Last week, a Mississippi state legislator told a taxpayer she should move out of the state.

According to a story from Jackson’s The Clarion-Ledger, freshman Rep. Karl Oliver told a resident in an email that she and he have “different political views,” and he noted that she wasn’t a Mississippi native.

“I appreciate you going to the trouble to share [your opinion] with me, but quite frankly, and with all due respect, I could care less,” Oliver said in an email. “I would, however, recommend that there are a rather large number of like-minded citizens in Illinois that would love to see you return.”