While Tennessee lawmakers do not fall under the state's open records law, the General Assembly's policy has been to make what officials call a good faith effort to comply with requests from the public.
Under those rules, lawmakers have been asked to search their own correspondence and emails for records they consider to be responsive to the request. That's not good enough for one senior Democrat, who has argued it shouldn't be up to each of the 132 lawmakers to decide which documents to release.
The Associated Press recently requested a week's worth of emails and daily schedules from the Republican speakers and the Democratic leaders of both chambers. Each complied with the request, though Harris took the extra step of providing a reporter full access to his legislative email account.
