County stops destroying file requests

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — A Tennessee county has paused a policy to destroy public records requests after a newspaper highlighted the practice.

The Chattanooga Times Free Press reported that Hamilton County officials on Friday suspended the policy after public pressure from the County Commission and a proposed bill from members of the Tennessee Legislature.

The move came less than a week after a report from the newspaper detailed the establishment of a policy in October allowing the Hamilton County Attorney’s Office to destroy public record requests and responses to them after 30 days.

The policy resulted in the destruction of an unknown number of records requested by the newspaper two months earlier, the Times Free Press reported. The policy has been paused by the county mayor.

“I believe in transparency and I support the public knowing, obviously, and anything we can do to make public documentation available, we’re going to do it,” Mayor Jim Coppinger said. “We are working to figure out how exactly we can be more involved and form better policy to support those goals.”

Representatives of the paper, the county mayor’s office and county attorney’s office have met to discuss the retrieval of destroyed records.

The mayor is instructing departments to not destroy public records requests and the responses after 30 days, Assistant Administrator of Finance Lee Brouner wrote in an email Friday.

Requests and responses should be retained “until further study and consideration of the appropriate retention period for such requests,” Brouner wrote.

Coppinger said he is working to improve the county’s overall records policy. “What we did today was basically try to prevent the confusion of mistakes that have happened from happening again,” he said.