Haslam Proposal Wording Examined
A revised version of Gov. Bill Haslam’s proposal to close access to “due diligence” information used in deciding whether companies should get economic development grants makes no specific reference to keeping ownership details open to the public.
A Senate vote on the Republican governor’s bill had been delayed until Thursday morning because of concerns raised by Democratic Sen. Roy Herron of Dresden that keeping ownership details secret could lead to cronyism and corruption.
The Republican speakers of both chambers, Rep. Beth Harwell of Nashville and Sen. Ron Ramsey of Blountville, later agreed that ownership information of companies getting taxpayer money should not be kept secret.
The administration amendment posted on the Legislature’s website Wednesday afternoon removes any reference to ownership, but does not say whether such information would either be kept confidential or in the category of public materials including the names of companies receiving the grants and the amount of state dollars promised to them. The information deemed public in the revised bill is already open to inspection by anyone who requests it.
Herron said his reading of the revision would leave it up to the Department of Economic and Community Development to decide to keep the ownership information under wraps.
“You might call this the secret secrecy amendment,” Herron said. “Because it’s not immediately obvious what they’re doing, but there’s no question about their keeping the ownership interest secret.”
The Haslam administration has promoted the bill as a way for the state to demand more detailed company information in order to make the informed decisions about which prospects deserves grants. The confidentiality provisions are meant to prevent businesses from being scared off by having proprietary information released to the public.
Open government advocates have argued that state law already provides for the closing off proprietary information for a period of five years.
