“IS THAT LEGAL?”
by Sharon Rondeau
(Feb. 14, 2016) — On December 18, 2015, The Post & Email submitted an Open Records Act request via facsimile to the Lincoln County, TN Circuit Court clerk’s office directed, as instructed on the phone, to an employee named “Tennille.”
We requested grand jury appointing orders from 1985, 1986, 1988 and 1990 on behalf of an inmate.
By late January we received no response and placed a second call to the clerk’s office on Wednesday, January 27. We spoke with the elected Circuit Court Clerk, Lisa Corder Simmons, who stated that she did not know whether or not our fax of December 18 had been received and suggested that we resend it. We did so directly afterward with the new date but the same document request.
Simmons ran unopposed in the August 7 election and is a longstanding county government employee, including within the clerk’s office. The county seat and clerk’s office are located in Fayetteville.
During the follow-up call, we additionally asked Simmons if she would be able to provide us with the status of a case involving a Tennessee inmate who was expecting an imminent ruling from a judge. To our surprise, Simmons responded that she would “need to see a check for $10.00 for ‘each name'” included in our inquiry. “If you give me two names, it’s $20.00,” she said.
Neither civil nor criminal cases in Lincoln County are available online.
“Is that legal?” we asked, adding that it would seem that checking on the status of an active case should be part of the responsibilities for which she is paid by county taxpayers. Corder stated, “This is the way it’s been since I’ve been here.” We asked her how long she had worked there, to which she responded, “Quite a long time.”
Simmons’s mother, Gail Corder, is Lincoln County Juvenile Court Clerk.
After the call ended, The Post & Email contacted Lincoln County Mayor Bill Newman‘s office and spoke with his secretary, relating the information Corder had provided about fees charged to check on the status of cases. When we asked the secretary if the mayor were aware of the practice and if it were legal, she responded that she did not have the answer and referred us to the county attorney, Ed Simms.
We placed a call to Simms’ office at 931-433-1044, setting off more than a week of calls back and forth until we finally spoke directly with him early on Friday, February 5.
On Friday, January 29, we had heard nothing from the clerk’s office to which we placed another call, reaching Tennille, who then handed the phone to Simmons. “You’re from ‘The Post,'” Simmons recalled, which we affirmed as “The Post & Email.”
We asked about the Open Records request, in response to which Simmons informed us that the documents we sought are stored in a building “across town” and would require considerable time to locate. She stated that the search would have to be performed after-hours and would involve overtime pay since she could not spare a clerk during the day. The estimate of what it would cost was quoted vaguely in the “hundreds” of dollars.
“I’m sure we have it; I just don’t know where it is,” Simmons explained.
We acknowledged that the cost would be prohibitive and we would therefore abandon the request.
“You’re the one who told me that it costs $10.00 to look up a case, correct?” to which she responded, “Yes, ma’am, or we have public access here in our office.”
“If I sent a resident there and he asked to look, would would you charge him money to do that?” we asked, to which she responded, “No, ma’am, but if he wanted copies of things, it’s $.50 a copy.”
“But there wouldn’t be a cost for him to look?” we persisted.
“No, ma’am; he can’t go to our archives or anything like that; he can look and search in the computer, and all of our stuff goes back to 1995.”
“Are you sure that the $10.00 per name is legal?” we asked.
“That is what has been done in the past, so I really don’t know. I will check on that, though; I will,” Simmons responded.
“I never heard of any court anywhere in this country doing that,” we said. “I’ve made some calls and am waiting for some answers. It would seem to me that that’s part of your job.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Simmons said repeatedly at that point, perhaps a bit impatiently.
Simmons then asked if we still wanted an estimate for the costs to locate the documents we requested, to which we said, “No, but I’d still like you to send me the email you were working on for my records; that would be very helpful for my records.” Simmons then said, “I was just beginning to start on it; I was just sitting down here fixing to work on it.”
We did not receive anything from her.
When we eventually spoke with Lincoln County attorney Ed Simms, we explained that our inquiry to Simmons’s office was twofold: a written Open Records Act request for documents which were dated and the status of an active case.
Simms responded that the process was to submit our request in writing, which we explained we had done. We also acknowledged that seeking older documents would require considerable time, as stated by Simmons, for which we could not afford to pay and that we abandoned that part of the request.
Simms then stated that the Tennessee Open Records Act is “one of the most liberal in the country” in allowing the public’s access to documents. However, after asking if we were resident in Tennessee and we responded in the negative, he said that the law provides access to documents only for residents of the state. Despite that, however, he continued to encourage us to submit a written request.
We stated that our first written request had been ignored for five weeks, to which Simms made no response.
Regarding the second part of our inquiry, Simms appeared to justify Corder’s charging of fees to look up cases when he said, “That pays for her time,” invoking the Open Records Act’s provision that fees may be charged for documents. “That would seem to be a very liberal interpretation of the law,” we replied, referring to payment for the several minutes it might take someone to check the status of a current case.
Simms made no comment. When we asked him, “Where does that money go?” he responded, “I’m sure it goes into the county treasury.”
He did not offer to check with Simmons to obtain her side of the story or clarification of the legality of the $10.00-per-name fee.
When we stated that we had looked online ourselves to find the case in question but could not locate it, Simms did not indicate anything to the contrary.
Simms told us that he is a “private attorney” who has also been designated as the county attorney.
When The Post & Email mentioned to Simms that we know of a number of Tennessee residents who have been denied copies of documents and audio-recordings despite submitting written requests under the Open Records Act and amid systemic corruption, he responded, “I’ve never heard of anything like that.”
As the conversation quickly became circular, we thanked him for his time and ended the call.