April 16, 2008

Not-So-Open Records Update

It has now been 36 days since I made a rather routine open-records request to the Bredesen administration, and specifically Department of Finance & Administration public information officer Lola Potter, for video taken of blasting (for that underground ballroom) at the governor's mansion construction site.

Six days ago, after again restating to Ms. Potter my insistence that she make the video available and allow me to copy all or parts of it as I wish, I was cc'ed on an email to Ms. Potter from Janet Kleinfelter. This is what it said:

I will call you later this afternoon and update you on my conversation with Steve Elkins and let you know what he and I decided to do.

Janet Kleinfelter is one of Tennessee's Assistant Attorneys General. She also is not a big fan of open records. As the Associated Press Tennessee bureau's Erik Schelzig reported in August 2006, Kleinfelter is a big advocate for less government openness.

State Lawyer Discourages Large Open Records Requests
One of Tennessee's top attorneys handling open records cases said on Tuesday she would discourage reporters from requesting too many records because they can interfere with government operations.

Speaking to lawmakers and legislative staffers at the annual meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures, Assistant Attorney General Janet Kleinfelter said reporters must seek a "balance" in their records request. "When you get a lot of really hard pushes from the press, I've seen the legislatures freeze, and they no longer try to be creative and think outside the box."

Kleinfelter qualified her comments as relating to requests that involve "volumes and volumes of information" rather than regular requests.

But "when a lot of push comes for those public records, the response is to stop doing things in writing," she said. "Everything gets done orally." And that can cause a problem when lawyers try to reconstruct the process if lawsuits are filed later, she said.

Lawmakers and policy makers also get worried about making "out of the box" suggestions on difficult topics because they fear their ideas will be printed in the newspaper the next day, Kleinfelter said.

Frank Gibson, executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, said Kleinfelter's stance "shows an attitude that the information belongs to the government, and that nobody is entitled to see it but people in government."

Now that we know that Assistant AG Kleinfelter is not the biggest friend of open government, let's move on to the next question.

Who is Steve Elkins?

Steve Elkins was appointed by Gov. Bredesen as Legal Counsel to the Governor in December 2006, replacing Bob Cooper, who was appointed Attorney General - Cooper is Kleinfelter's boss.

Elkins previously served as Deputy Legal Counsel in the Governor's Office.Before joining the administration, Elkins served as research director and comptroller for Governor Bredesen's successful 2002 campaign. Before that, he served as deputy legal counsel for the Tennessee Democratic Coordinated Campaign.

In other words, he's a partisan Democrat.

As you might have guessed, given where I work, I want the blasting video for possible use in this year's campaign to elect more Republicans to the state legislature - given the statewide unpopularity of the underground ballroom and its $8 million cost to taxpayers, and given the reticence of most Democrat incumbents to criticize the ballroom.

I'm guessing that neither Lola Potter nor Steve Elkins nor Janet Kleinfelter - nor the governor nor his press secretary nor Ms. Potter's boss, F&A Commissioner David Goetz - want me to have the video. Which would explain why Ms. Potter has resolutely refused to let me view and copy the video, and demanded $200 for a copy (on a DVD, no doubt with digital rights management" restrictions to prevent copying or editing).

And so I responded to Ms. Kleinfelter's email early Wednesday morning, after six more days of hearing nothing from Ms. Potter or Ms. Kleinfelter about how they will comply with the state's open records law and make the video available to me to view and copy:

Janet,

Thanks for cc'ing me on this six days ago. Why has it taken another six days for y'all to discuss whether or not to follow the law?

The video is a state document.

I am entitled to view it, and to copy it if I wish.

I expect you to facilitate that happening, and sooner than later.

Developing...