Senate panel makes changes, advances bill to make TN tourism records secret

Many of Tennessee’s future tourism records are one step closer to potentially becoming confidential.

A bill which seeks to allow records from the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development to be exempt from public records laws if the tourism commissioner and attorney general deem them “sensitive” passed nearly unanimously in a Senate committee Tuesday after passing the House in late February.

SB2093, proposed by the Lee administration and sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson, R-Franklin, has faced strong pushback due to its transparency concerns.

A key change to the bill was presented to the Senate State and Local Government Committee, however.

The previous version of the bill stated if documents were deemed “sensitive,” they could be kept secret for up to two five-year periods. This timeframe posed a concern for some lawmakers, who pointed out that state regulations allow many contract records to be destroyed after only six years, effectively eliminating any chance for the public to see what a publicly funded agency is doing.

Now, the bill details that records deemed sensitive can only remain confidential until one of three things has happened: 10 years have passed since they were declared sensitive; state funds were disbursed; or “the conclusion of the event in which the contract or event was negotiated.”

Additionally, the updated bill says any record deemed sensitive cannot be destroyed while it remains confidential, and must be retained for at least five years after the record becomes unsealed.

These rules do not apply to trade secrets, marketing information or capital plans, according to the bill.

“I appreciate the bill,” said Sen. Jeff Yarbro, D-Nashville, who was the lone senator in the committee to question the legislation before ultimately voting for it. “I feel like we’re putting a lot of trust and faith in the attorney general here to make sure that we’re policing this accurately. I think we just need to be cautious of it.”

Jordan Long, director of government relations at Beacon Impact, the outreach wing of the nonprofit public policy research organization Beacon Center, expressed the organization's pleasure at the amended bill.

"We appreciate both Senator Johnson and Senator Stevens for working with Beacon Impact to improve the tourism bill that passed through the Senate State and Local Government Committee (Tuesday)," Long said in an official statement. "Their effort to amend the bill and take our input seriously led to more transparency for taxpayers and a better overall bill."

The bill passed the committee on a 8-1 vote, and has been referred to the Senate calendar.

If the full Senate passes the amended bill, the two chambers will have to work out the differences in the legislation before sending it to Gov. Bill Lee for his signature.

Bill will help 'get the Super Bowl,' according to lawmakers

Proponents of the bill have repeatedly touted it as a solution to attract large tourism deals — like Rep. Andrew Farmer, R-Sevierville, who presented the bill to the House in February and repeatedly said the option of secrecy would help Nashville "get the Super Bowl."

The bill is modeled after a similar exemption for the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development that passed in 1988 and keeps records deemed sensitive secret for five years, with the possibility of an extension for a second five-year term.

This similarity drove much of the concern from lawmakers, including Reps. Justin Jones, D-Nashville and Aftyn Behn, D-Nashville, who cited a costly economic development trip to France and Italy that Lee and other administration officials took last year. Some of the records from that trip were kept secret under the ECD's public records rules, from which this bill is modeled.

Farmer brushed aside these transparency concerns because the bill will allegedly help "bring big things" to Tennessee.

Posh hotels, airfare: Inside Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee's $117K economic development trip to France and Italy

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This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tennessee Senate panel makes changes, advances tourism secrecy bill