May 7, 2008

"We Will Prevail"

Matte Pulle - surely the odds on favorite to replace the irreplaceable Liz Garrigan as editor of the Nashville Scene - has a hilarious piece in this week's edition of the paper's "Desperately Seeking the News" column that in one fell swoop exposes the Bredesen administration's rather political approach to complying with open records requests, and the governor's wife's rather haughty attitude toward her critics, based on an email the administration deliberately kept from public eyes for four months. Oh, and Pulle notices what we at the Tennessee GOP noticed about the financing of the ballroom addition to the the governor's mansion: its "shifty economics."

[The] questionable financing for the project was one of the reasons the TCPR wanted to review the administration's emails in the first place. Trying to figure out what parts of the project were paid by private donations and what was covered by tax dollars leads you down a long and convoluted road of problem solving. A quick review of other emails the center obtained - Desperately received them right at press time - raises many questions about whether the administration has used some sort of creative shell game to pay for the less controversial aspects of the renovation with public dollars."

P.S. The Bredesen administration also is deliberately delaying the release to me of a single public document related to the ballroom project, which I requested 57 days ago. Given that they know where the document is, the only possible explanation is that the administration has decided that, for political reasons, they don't want to comply with the state's open records laws in this case.