Blue Collar Muse

Hat tip to Randy Neal at KnoxViews via Michael Silence.

The biggest enemy of the People’s right to know what Government is doing is not an apathetic citizenry. It is Government itself! That truth is one of the key reasons I stand for smaller Government with much less power and authority. The self preservation and non-citizen-representing character of Government is nowhere better illustrated than here in Tennessee.

Randy Neal reports “…the recently enacted TN Open Records Act … also established an Advisory Committee on Open Government …” He’s quoting a member of that committee, Dorothy Bowles, “… [a] U.T. Professor and member of the East Tennessee Society of Professional Journalists.”

Ms. Bowles reveals the Advisory Committee released “…a proposal that was only this week distributed by the legal counsel’s office.” Because Government takes the responsibility of fully serving and representing the citizens of Tennessee, the Advisory Committee has scheduled a hearing on this proposal, which makes it much more difficult for citizens and journalists to access Government records, for Friday - just two days from now. Further, the deadline for written comments on the proposal is Thursday - tomorrow - at Noon. Written comments can be submitted by email to open.records@state.tn.us

This is how Government serves the citizen? Not only does it make it harder for citizens to hold Government accountable by making it easier for Government to shirk being responsible to taxpayers and citizens, it does so under the cover of night, bureaucracy, no publicity and no time for anyone but other Government employees to examine and debate the matter.

Any Committee member who can be shown to have voted for this action to take place on this timetable and in this fashion should be stripped of his Committee assignment, be forced to defend his ignorant actions and be barred from ever again engaging in “public service”. He obviously has no clue what it means.

First, write to the email address I included above and express your opposition to the proposals before the committee. Tell them it should be less expensive to get information on what Government is doing, not more. Then, write to the Committee and express your extreme displeasure with the manner in which they have failed to carry out their responsibility to the citizens of Tennessee. Finally, write to Randy (rneal@rviews.com) and Michael (silence@knews.com) and tell them thanks for getting this out.

Government, 1st runner up in “The Root of all Evil” competition!

Blue Collar Muse

UPDATE :  Here is my letter to the committee

Dear Committee,

Please consider this my communication to you of my most strenuous opposition to any increase in fees to citizens seeking to exercise their responsibility to oversee the Government via Open Records requests. In fact, please consider this my request for you to eliminate all fees associated with such requests. It is my opinion that such fees are less the reasonable charges for providing vital information which Government would have us believe and more a Government controlled tool which it uses to prevent those same citizens from doing so.

Your reprehensible behavior in the matter of the hearing on Friday, September 5th is evidence in support of my contention. The proposal was made just this week, according to my information. A week, I might add, cut short by a day in observance of a holiday. With only token publicity, likely no more than the bare minimum demanded by law, you schedule the hearing for a couple of days in the future which necessitates the cutoff for written comments to be set even earlier than that!

Your actions would indicate not only do you not want people involved with Government in the future, you aren’t particularly keen on their involvement in the present either!

In addition, I respectfully request that you defer the hearing for a month, at a minimum, to permit all those interested in participating in this discussion plenty of time to do so.

Regards,

Ken Marrero
Hermitage, TN

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