More than seven months after Audrey Elizabeth Hale’s murderous rampage at Nashville’s Covenant Presbyterian School, Governor Bill Lee says he remains “frustrated” by the lack of transparency from law enforcement officials.
But what has the governor actually done to help transparency along?
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Tennessee Coalition for Open Government’s Executive Director Deborah Fisher joined all-star panelist and author Carol Swain in-studio on Thursday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy to discuss the provisions in current law that would make the Covenant Killer Manifesto available for review by Tennessee lawmakers.
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While the Covenant School killer’s parents consider their daughter’s deadly manifesto “intellectual property” and suggest anyone who publishes the documents could face legal damages, records experts say the threat is more legal posturing in a nationally watched public records lawsuit.
But the latest legal twist in the court battle over Audrey Elizabeth Hale’s journals, written notes, memoirs and related writings is an attempt to take a “wrecking ball” to Tennessee’s public records law, one open government expert told The Tennessee Star.
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Asking the court to “shield” Covenant Presbyterian School students from a “lifetime of abuse and harassment by the shooter from beyond the grave,” a new court filing lays out why parents of the children don’t want the Covenant killer’s manifesto and other writings made public.
Davidson County Chancellor I’Ashea Myles last week ruled that the Covenant Presbyterian Church, its private elementary school and the parents of the schoolchildren may intervene in a lawsuit seeking the manifesto and related writings of mass shooter Audrey Elizabeth Hale.
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In a shift from what has widely been called a “manifesto,” the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) Friday told The Tennessee Star that it will release “dated journals” left behind by the mass shooter who killed six people at The Covenant School in Nashville one month ago.
“The writings are essentially dated journals,” Don Aaron, an MNPD spokesman, told The Tennessee Star. “While the word manifesto was used on the first day, we have since referred to these as ‘writings’ or ‘journals.'”
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Tennessee Coalition for Open Government’s Executive Director Deborah Fisher, to the newsmaker line to comment upon the recent ruling by Judge Russell Perkins to the Tennessee Republican Party to reinstate Robby Starbuck as a GOP candidate for Tennessee’s Fifth Congressional District.
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Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Tennessee Coalition for Open Government Director Deborah Fisher to the newsmakers line to discuss the status of the McKinsey COVID response open records request and the Tri-state Pact economic development plans.
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Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Tennessee Coalition for Open Government’s Deborah Fisher to the newsmaker line to weigh in on the Nashville Post lawsuit and to outline deliberative process privilege.
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Thursday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Tennessee Coalition for Open Government’s Executive Director Deborah Fisher in studio to talk about their mission.
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Thursday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Tennessee Coalition for Open Government’s Deborah Fisher to the studio who outlined the issues of clawback provisions related to large corporation deals.
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The Tennessee Coalition for Open Government has criticized how Ridgetop’s mayor and aldermen had little to no transparency when alerting the public that they might vote to do away with the city’s police department. As The Tennessee Star reported this month, Ridgetop City Council members voted to do away with the city’s police force because of what some people say is the mayor’s hurt ego and his vendetta against the now-former police chief. As The Star reported in March, then-Police Chief Bryan Morris said Mayor Tony Reasoner and Vice Mayor McCaw Johnson were out to cripple his department. TCOG Executive Director Deborah Fisher said on the organization’s website that the public notice given for this particular board of aldermen meeting was vague. “Saying only in the public notice for the June 10 meeting that the meeting was “on the budget and police department” seems to leave out the fairly significant nugget that the board would be voting that night on dissolving it. And there is some question why the notice was not on the website,” Fisher wrote. “Put yourself in the seat of the Ridgetop mayor and aldermen. If you were having a meeting in which you might vote on eliminating the…
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NASHVILLE, Tennessee – A bill that would have shed light on taxpayer funded payments by Tennessee state and local governments to private entities was killed at its first stop in the House Public Service & Employees Subcommittee. By an obvious voice vote on HB 0370, Chairman Bob Ramsey (R-Maryville) ruled that the Nays prevailed. In his introduction of the bill, Representative Martin Daniel (R-Knoxville) told the subcommittee members, “The intent of this bill is to require disclosure – to shine a light, if you will – on what our government entities are paying for goods and services.” Representative Daniel told the committee, “I would submit that transparency and accountability in government instills public trust in government.” “However, vague and broad exceptions to the (Tennessee) Public Records Act concerning what a private entity might deem to be trade secrets or confidential information can obscure information concerning benefits that are conveyed by government entities to these privately-owned recipients,” continued Daniel. To clarify, Daniel emphatically stated, “This bill would not act on or touch such information” that may actually be confidential and disclosed by the private entity in connection with receiving government payments, benefits or properties. “It is we,” Daniel fervently stated, emphasizing…
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If government officials accuse you of filing one too many public records requests, then they could use the courts to penalize you under a proposed bill at this year’s Tennessee General Assembly. State Rep. William Lamberth (R-Cottontown) introduced the bill this session. As written, a government official could seek an injunction to keep people “from making records requests that constitute harassment.” If an injunction goes through, then the person requesting government records could make no further requests for one year, according to the bill. That person, though, could ask a court to reverse the decision – but only if he or she shows “the public records request does not constitute harassment.” “Harassment” means three or more public records requests within a period of one year that are made in a manner that would cause a reasonable person, including a records custodian or any staff of the public entity in control of the public records, to be seriously abused, intimidated, threatened, or harassed,” according to the bill, as currently written. “For which the conduct in fact seriously abuses, intimidates, threatens, or harasses the person; and that are not made in good faith or for any legitimate purpose, or are made maliciously.”…
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