State Needs Ombudsman To Help Open Up Public Records

By BETH RUCKER
Associated Press Writer

2-08-2007

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) _ Gov. Phil Bredesen said Thursday the state needs an open government ombudsman who can help people who are refused access to public records and he will include money for the position in next year's budget.

Bredesen said the ombudsman would be part of state Comptroller John Morgan's office, which is responsible for auditing local governments.

"The bulk of the problems which are not easily resolved happen with local governments. This is for people who don't have the ability to write large checks to lawyers," he said at a legislative planning session sponsored by The Associated Press and the Tennessee Press Association.

Bredesen spokeswoman Lydia Lenker said the amount of money needed to create the ombudsman position was still being worked out along with other details of the budget proposal to be presented to the Legislature in the next two weeks.

The governor said the ombudsman should probably have a legal background and be "fairly well paid."

Bredesen said the idea for creating an ombudsman was sparked last year when members of the news media told him that people needed a way to complain about problems getting access to public records.

The 1957 Public Records Act says all state, county and municipal records are to be available for inspection by anyone unless the record is specifically exempt.

Hundreds of exemptions are scattered throughout state code, including medical records, sensitive military documents and investigative records of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.

Without the aid of an ombudsman, the public's only way to compel a government official to release open records is to file a civil lawsuit.

A 2004 audit by reporters, college students and volunteers found that government agencies in Tennessee denied access to public records about a third of the time.

Frank Gibson, executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, said often government officials simply don't know the law.

For example, in the 2004 audit, about 40 percent of Tennessee sheriffs said an arrest report is not a public record _ even though the law specifies it should be open to the public.

The open government group counted 115 alleged open meeting violations between January 2003 and October 2005, including an average of one a week for the first 10 months of last year.

"There's never been a place for the public to call to get help on these issues," Gibson said. "If they were denied a record or kept out of a meeting that they felt was open, they had to hire a lawyer. This is an improvement over that."

The coalition was created in 2003 to protect and improve Tennessee's public access laws. Members include the Tennessee Press Association, the state's major daily newspapers, the Tennessee Association of Broadcasters, The Associated Press and Common Cause of Tennessee.

Tennessee County Commissioners Association Executive Director Doug Goddard was unavailable for comment Thursday afternoon.

Gibson, whose organization has pushed for a state ombudsman, said the position should be independent of the state's executive, legislative and judicial branches.

The comptroller is a state constitutional office elected by the Legislature every two years.

Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey, R-Blountville, said he could not comment on the proposal without more details. The legislature must approve the ombudsman position as part of the annual state budgeting process.

Any written complaints made to the ombudsman should be available to the public under the open records law, Bredesen said.

"I certainly think if you're the ombudsman for open records you ought to have open records," he said.

Morgan, the state comptroller, said he envisioned the ombudsman focusing on problems with records access at the local level.

"The governor has proposed this as a means to address some of the concerns about public access to local records, and the comptroller's office is happy to try to make a positive contribution in this effort," he said.

Bredesen's decision came without the benefit of a report from a panel appointed to study overhauling the state's open government laws. The study group was supposed to make a final report this month, but voted late last year to delay its recommendations until 2008.

The decision also comes shortly after The Knoxville News Sentinel filed a lawsuit against the Knox County Commission and 20 current and former commissioners to void the appointments that filled official positions vacated under a newly enforced term limit law. The newspaper claims the discussion of the appointments were done in violation of the open meetings law.

Some open government advocates had suggested putting the ombudsman under the state Ethics Commission, which was recently created in response to the "Tennessee Waltz" public corruption scandal. But the governor said the new agency was not ready for that responsibility.

Unlike complaints to the open government ombudsman, complaints about ethical conduct would not become public immediately.

Bruce Androphy, executive director of the Ethics Commission, said state law requires ethics complaints to be kept confidential pending an initial investigation.

"On one hand if you're going to clear somebody, you want to make sure the facts are pretty good," he said. "On the other hand, if you're going to charge somebody with an ethics violation, which ... in today's world and today's environment, it's really a career-buster for many people, you want to make sure you have sufficient facts to do that." 

On the Net:

Tennessee Coalition for Open Government: http://www.tcog.info/

Tennessee Ethics Commission: http://www.state.tn.us/sos/tec/