Recent editorials from Tennessee newspapers:
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May 27
The Bristol Herald Courier on accessing public records in Tennessee:
Just how open to the public are supposedly “open records” of government agencies in Tennessee?
That depends on the agency, the policies it has adopted (or neglected to adopt, even though required to by a 2016 state law), and those in the agencies who administer open-records requests, according to a recent audit by the private Tennessee Coalition for Open Government.
The audit, in which the Bristol Herald Courier participated along with many other media outlets in Tennessee, “found that some agencies had adopted rules that were so rigid that they threatened to slow down or thwart the process of getting records,” according to an Associated Press report on the audit.
“It makes people feel like they don’t have a right to public records when they have to jump through all these unreasonable hoops,” Deborah Fisher, executive director of the open government coalition, told the AP.
Under the 2016 Tennessee law, every government entity in the state was required to write its own policy for handling public-records requests. But the TCOG audit of city, county, state and school governing bodies found varying policies. And 15 percent of the 306 agencies contacted did not even respond to the survey.
But for us, perhaps the most-troubling finding of the audit was that of the 259 open-records policies TCOG examined, 48 percent of those agencies specifically do not allow people examining public records to take cellphone photos of those records. Instead, most have established policies that require journalists and the public to pay for official copies of the records. Only 5 percent have policies that specifically allow people to photograph the records on their own.
In this age of new technology, nearly everyone has a high-quality digital camera built into the smartphones we carry, which would allow us to photograph public records in detail, sparing the public agencies the bother of having to make copies, and keeping news organizations or the public from having to pay for them.
What’s clear, though, is that Tennessee law does not prohibit the public from taking photos of documents. And even the “model policy” for open-records requests provided to government agencies by the Tennessee Office of Open Records Council has a paragraph that is written in a way that agencies could choose to allow or disallow photographing of records.
“I think (the policy of banning photographing of records) comes from a culture that if you want public records, you’ll have to pay for them,” Fisher told the Herald Courier. “More than anything, it’s a lack of recognition that it’s good for journalists and citizens to be able to access information. It’s good for people to know about government. Policies like that where they put up hurdles misses the whole point of the open-records act.”
Fisher added that she believes the no-photographing policy “is silly,” and that the whole reason is “in my belief, they want you to pay fees. There is no other logical reason.”
In fact, some agencies say that the only way to recoup their costs for handling open-records requests is to charge people for copies of the documents they want. But critics of that argument note that those records were created by taxpayer dollars, and that it should not cost people more money to access them.
“You can still go in and look at the record and manually write down things,” Fisher told the Herald Courier. “They’re saying taking a picture would be prohibited. . It just thwarts the entire purpose of getting access to the records.
“People are trying to do things economically,” she said. “It seems like it would make sense to allow them to take a picture. This is the most-disappointing thing I’ve seen, and I’m hoping everybody comes to their senses. Agencies that adopted this policy are thumbing their noses at the public.”
It’s not all doom and gloom, though, Fisher added.
“The truth is that some government entities are really good about (handling open records requests and allowing people to take photos). We should be modeling the policies after them. In some cases, I wonder if the governing bodies that approved these policies even knew they were adopting a ban on photography.”
There truly is no reason any government agency should put up such barriers to the news media and the public who are trying to monitor the work those agencies do.
Open-records and open-meetings laws are all about keeping government transparent and accountable.
The people whose tax dollars are paying for the services these agencies provide have a vested interest and a right to know exactly what’s going on. It’s that simple.
Online: http://www.heraldcourier.com
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May 27
The Chattanooga Times on women in politics:
And still the women keep winning.
Stacy Abrams, the history-making African-American female Democratic nominee for Georgia governor, is just one example.
Many more women are running for elected office, especially this year - the year in the echoes of Donald Trump’s “hot mic” tape in which he boasts about grabbing women to kiss them and grope their private body parts. This year when the #metoo movement is still gaining steam.
In 1970, there was just one female Senate candidate. Today, there are 49 to 54 women running, depending on whether and which third-party candidates you include, according to a new count by CNN. There were 394 women running for the House and 56 in governor’s races (including third-party candidates), as of last May 23.
Certainly more state primary elections will winnow those numbers and fewer women will appear on ballots in November.
But still: This year boasts a record share - 22 percent - of female candidates for Senate seats, a peak not seen since 1994, when the share was 19 percent.
Elle Magazine writes, “It’s too early to call it the ’year of the woman’ but if these first weeks of the 2018 primaries have told us anything, it’s that women’s electability is surging, and it could become a national trend.”
Recently in Pennsylvania’s primary, eight women won their House races.
But let’s talk just Democrats.
Already, women have some new “firsts” goals: Come November we could see the first black female governor in the United States, the first lesbian serving in Congress from Texas, the first Democratic woman representing Kentucky in the House.
Sure the odds are tough, but what else is new? All of these scenarios moved closer to reality last week following a round of primary elections in those red states.
Look at Georgia, and not just with the crucial win of Abrams over another female primary contender. There were solid female candidates all over Georgia’s Democratic primary ballot. In a state where no woman currently holds statewide elected office, Georgia had two Democratic women running for governor, two running for lieutenant governor, one running for secretary of state, two running for insurance commissioner, and two running for Georgia’s highly visible and controversial Public Service Commission. Three out of six Democratic candidates for the 7th congressional district were women, and one is now in a July run-off race. There’s also a woman in a run-off for the 6th District.
In Georgia’s 180-member House of Representatives, 34 Democratic women signed up to compete for seats previously held by Republicans. This is on the heels of Georgians electing the first two Latina and the first Vietnamese female state representatives, joining other African-American and white women elected to the state legislature in 2016 and 2017.
Georgia Republicans usually out-vote Georgia Democrats in primaries by about 290,000 votes. This year, it was 54,000.
Democrats are said to have struggled to find a voice in recent elections. We’re not so sure.
Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016. And Donald Trump has done much to help Americans realize that pocketbook issues are not just for rich people, D.C. swamp politics or tribalism.
But there’s still much work to do, and perhaps nowhere more so than Tennessee - one of the bottom five states for percentages of female candidates running for Senate since 1994. (This year two women are seeking high office in the Volunteer State, but both are Republican Trump cutouts.)
Let’s not take the good old boys’ networks for granted, Democrats.
As Stacy Abrams said after she won the nomination in Georgia:
“In the book of Esther, there’s a verse that reminds us - we were born for such a time as this.”
Online: http://www.timesfreepress.com
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May 27
The Johnson City Press on improving health care in rural communities:
There is no quick fix for what is becoming a crisis in our health care system. U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander recently said the gap between Americans who need health care and those who provide care continues to widen.
“Simply put, we may have too many people and too few medical professionals,” said Alexander, who serves as chairman the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
The Tennessee Republican said a number of things are converging to create the problem, with one of them being the nation’s population is aging at a time when the number of Americans needing medical care is growing. The need for additional caregivers is also coming at a time when a number of current health providers are reaching retirement age.
As Press staff writer Hannah Swayze reported recently, a shortage of health care providers could have a significant impact on rural Tennessee, where the National Rural Health Association says there are only 39 primary care doctors for every 100,000 residents. Meanwhile, local hospitals, nursing homes and extended care facilities are having a hard time finding and keeping experienced nurses on their staffs.
Recently, Ballad CEO Alan Levine tweeted that his health system had hired 255 new nursing graduates to help fill 350 open positions. Ballad issued a statement noting the new hires are something to “celebrate given the increasing shortage of nurses and intense competition for nurses.”
Indeed, hiring competent health care providers should be applauded. We should also note educating such caregivers is a very important mission, and one East Tennessee State University takes very seriously. In fact, the James H. Quillen College of Medicine was created to educate primary care physicians to practice in rural and underserved communities.
Dr. Reid Blackwelder, chairman of Family Medicine at ETSU, told the Press recently there are two things that can be done to improve health care in rural communities - train more primary care doctors to work in those areas and make it less expensive for residents to see those doctors.
ETSU is doing its best to accomplish the first. We are waiting for lawmakers in Nashville and Washington, D.C., to step up to the plate and do something about controlling the costs of health care.
Online: http://www.johnsoncitypress.com
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