| Editorial: The Sharp Edge |
By: Tracy Sharp, Managing Editor
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Posted: Friday, March 6, 2009 9:04 am
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I sit here this morning scratching my head over a local community's insistence on adopting a policy regarding filing paperwork for access to public records.
Welcome to the world of bureacracy at it's finest. Why are we even having this debate? It's an issue that is most likely going to be problematic in the future.
The policy was adopted Monday night in Dresden and basically says that taxpayers must fill out several pages of useless paperwork to get to public records.
Did I mention the word public? Why, yes I did.
We the taxpayers are the owners of these records, not a local government or municipality. Elected officials are not monarchs. Not only do you have to fill out a request form to give to the "records custodian" of any public office, labor charges can be assessed.
Yes, labor charges to people who are already paid with tax dollars.
The resolution requests record forms and identification. I have no problem with that stipulation nor do I have a problem paying for the paper costs for a given document, what I do take issue with is waiting times and the flexibility to give government the right to say no.
Government is the steward of maintaining and managing our records, but as I said before, it should not be given complete control.
I personally don't care if this policy was recommended by a task force created by Gov. Phil Bredesen as city attorney Jeff Washburn stated in the meeting. This was an "opt-in" law. That means it is just a recommendation but local legislators across this state are jumping on it like bees to honey.
Why is this a bad policy?
Let me explain first of all that it's not about news access, this resolution is about you, the taxpayer, not having the ability to see your records in a timely manner. It creates unnecessary paperwork for city and county workers.
Not only will you have to wait up to seven days to get your records, this resolution states that a city or county (under the new fancy term "records custodian") can deny records. So who makes the call?
Well, it's not the taxpayer I can assure you.
So, let me see. We are putting an extra burden on employees with senseless paperwork. We may or may not get to have a copy of our paperwork that is part of public record.
I didn't stutter. We may NOT get to see our public records.
Let's take a worst case scenario, shall we.
Let's say a local city wants to annex your land. You go and request information regarding the annexation and you are told to fill out the paperwork. You wait. It's denied.
This procedure has to give you a reason. I'd like the guidelines on that please or are we as citizens going to have to fill out the paperwork with the labor costs that we are already paying to find out why we were denied?
So, you, the taxpayer, have your request denied for whatever reason.
Then YOU have to hire an attorney and move into civil litigation to get access to your records.
What then?
I'm crying foul because this resolution is open-ended and is just itching to be abused.
I realize that I'm going overboard here, but it's something we all need to be aware of because this is our government. We elected men and women to represent our best interests.
Not theirs.
I commend Commissioner Kevin McAlpin at the January session of the Weakley County Commission for questioning the resolution on the county level, and Dresden alderman Jake Bynum for stepping up to the plate and voting no at Monday night's Dresden City Board meeting. It's nice to see two elected leaders working in the best interest of the public.
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