NASHVILLE (AP) – The state Office of Open Records Counsel is holding a series of hearings this week about a proposal to make taxpayers pay to inspect public records in Tennessee.
Under current law government officials can charge for photocopies of public records, but viewing them is free. Records custodians often prohibit citizens from taking pictures or scanning records themselves.
A bill seeking to impose new fees for records searches stalled in the Legislature this year, but sponsors asked the open records office to review potential changes and make recommendations to lawmakers before they return in January.
Whit Adamson, president of the Tennessee Association of Broadcasters, in an e-mail likened the proposal to a new tax "which is simply new revenue from something we are already paying government to do."
Republican Knox County Mayor Tim Burchett also criticized the effort to impose new fees.
"Accountability begins with access, and true accountability means reducing, not increasing, obstacles to access public records," he said. "Charging taxpayers for exercising their right to merely inspect the very documents their taxes pay to produce is a ridiculous step backward, out of the sunshine and into the shadows."
Republican Gov. Bill Haslam said that while he's unfamiliar with specific proposals, he considers the time involved in producing public records "part of the cost of being a democracy."
But Haslam said he wants to ensure that there is a measure of "reasonableness" to requests. For example, when he ran for governor in 2010, he said several other campaigns made extensive records requests related to his time as Knoxville mayor.
"The city of Knoxville was spending a lot of money basically for somebody else's political purposes," Haslam said.
Haslam in 2012 concluded an eight-month review of how the executive branch responds to public records requests by deciding not to make any major changes. The governor had said his initial fears about the potential abuse of open records laws had been allayed, and he instructed his Cabinet to expedite records production to the public and the media, and to try to keep costs as low as possible.
Haslam's decision followed an announcement from Comptroller Justin Wilson that his office would no longer charge for any records fees of less than $25. Wilson said the new rule is motivated in part because it can cost his office more money to process a payment than the actual cost charged for a records request.
The Office of Open Records Counsel is housed within the Comptroller's office.
Here are the times and locations of this week's public hearings:
• Knoxville: Tuesday, 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. EDT. Location: 12 Oaks Executive Park, 5401 Kingston Pike, Building 2, Suite 350.
• Nashville: Wednesday, 10 a.m. to noon CDT. Location: James K. Polk State Office Building, 505 Deaderick St., 16th Floor, Video Conference Room.
• Jackson: Thursday, 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. CDT. Location: Lowell Thomas State Office Building, 225 Martin Luther King Drive, Tower B, Conference Room 1.