NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — We all work hard for our paychecks, so for a lot of us, it's important to know how our tax money is spent. But the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development wants to pick which documents and expenses you see, and which ones you don't.
State leaders say doing so can help them land a Super Bowl for Nashville.
"I’m excited about the possibility of a Super Bowl," said Gov. Lee at the new Nissan Stadium groundbreaking.
"This could help us get the Super Bowl," said Rep. Andrew Farmer, a Republican from Sevierville, on the House floor last week.
But in order to land the Super Bowl, there's a lot of wheeling, dealing and negotiating that happen behind the scenes with all of the stakeholders — Nashville, the state of Tennessee and the NFL. In fact, when Minneapolis hosted their most recent Super Bowl, the Minneapolis Star Tribuneobtained details of all the requests from the NFL which included free golf outings, parking, luxury accommodations, even free billboards around town advertising the Super Bowl.
To land that big contract, and others like it, state leaders want to make a big rule change.
Tennessee's Commissioner for the Department of Tourism Development, Mark Ezell, is asking Tennessee lawmakers to give him and Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti the authority to declare which of his office's documents should be made available to the public and which ones they can seal for up to 10 years.
Deborah Fisher, Executive Director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, is fine with confidential negotiation information being under seal, but once the deal is done, she thinks the information should be made public.
"The public has a right to know how public tax money is spent," said Fisher. "It’s a long time after an event happens."
She's worried about a loophole in the proposed bill that could ensure that some documents are never released.
"If something has only a six year retention requirement, it can be destroyed before the ten years are up, so nobody would ever know," she said.
Lawmakers had questions about that too. Rep. Ed Butler brought up Fisher's point in a committee meeting back in February on the bill.
"I wouldn’t want the records to be destroyed in the normal course of business as he said, and then not be available to the public when the time comes," said Rep. Butler, a Republican from Rickman.
"We wouldn’t either," replied Commissioner Ezell. "What we would tell you is, we wouldn’t be trying to protect something if the negotiation process had been disclosed and done."
Commissioner Ezell may claim that would never be their intention, but Fisher says the bill is a slippery slope.
"It’s just this open check to close anything he wants," she said.
Fisher isn't sure if getting the big game using these new powers is worth such a big risk.
"It opens the door for bad things to happen — cronyism, corruption," she said.
While other states like Texas and Florida have public record exemptions for tourism, that exemption ends as soon as the deal is negotiated.
"I don’t know any state that has an exemption that would allow that kind of thing to be confidential, like what is being suggested in this bill," said Fisher.
The bill has already passed the full House and now moves onto the Tennessee Senate.
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