June 28, 2008

Bredesen Administration Gets to Hide More Documents

A federal appeals court agrees that the Bredesen administration has deliberately destroyed documents it was supposed to turn over to the Tennessee Justice Center related to an ongoing legal case but the court decided to let the Bredesen administration get away with it because the documents were on administration member's home computers.

The Bredesen administration recently asserted (in a different situation) that in responding to open records requests for emails it doesn't have to turn any email that the administration labels "personal," even if sent on a state-owned (meaning: taxpayer-owned) computer.

The Bredesen administration seems to be carving out a giant loophole in the open records law in Tennessee for administration officials - just do their work on home computers, and call every email "personal," and its off limits to scrutiny.

One problem: If the administration hides documents by labeling them as personal or storing them on home computers, the public has no way of knowing that the administration isn't abusing its newly created loophole. And given this administration's history of shredding documents and ignoring open records requests, there's little reason to trust them on it either.