State Lawyer Discourages Large Open Records Requests

August 15, 2006
By ERIK SCHELZIG
Associated Press Writer

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) _ 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."

Kleinfelter also defended the state's policy on keeping sexual harassment records secret in what appears to be a conflict with Gov. Phil Bredesen's position on the issue.

"For a lot of good reasons, that information should be kept confidential _ not just for the sake of the victim," Kleinfelter said. "Often you're dealing with a victim who is vulnerable, mentally and emotionally.

"But you can also have the situation where you have a meritless claim of sexual harassment, and then you have the problem of whether you've tarnished someone's reputation," she said.

Bredesen announced earlier this year that he wants to open records involving sexual harassment complaints by state employees _ as long as the news media agrees to keep victims' names private.

The issue came to a head last year when The Tennessean newspaper reported that notes taken by a Department of Personnel lawyer were shredded after she investigated a claim of sexual harassment against Robert "Mack" Cooper, formerly Bredesen's top lobbyist.

Bredesen has since ordered a halt to the practice of shredding harassment investigation documents. In a review last year of 602 workplace harassment case files across all levels of state government, The Associated Press reported that documents were shredded only in high-profile cases.

Kleinfelter said there's no need to be flexible on some records requests.

"Some records don't ever need to be made public," she said. "Sometimes they always need to be kept confidential."