Regional Meeting Dates and Locations Set

As happens every year, the TCCA will be conducting a series of regional dinner meetings across the state. These meetings usually run a couple of hours and provide an opportunity to discuss what happened this year, look forward to the issues of the next legislative session and focus on emerging issues impacting county governments. I hope you can attend one of these meetings in your area. Dinner is provided by the association at each meeting. All meetings begin at 6:30 p.m. local time. Folks usually begin arriving a little earlier to meet, network and socialize. More information will be forthcoming about our meeting agenda, but for now, here are the dates and locations:

August 25 Volunteer State Community College (Rochelle Conference Center), Sumner County
August 27 Paris Landing State Park, Henry County
September 1 Jonesborough Visitors Center, Washington County
September 2 City County Building, Knox County
September 3 Leslie Towne Center, Putnam County
September 8 UT Ag Extension Building, Madison County
September 10 Holiday Inn Mountain View, Bradley County
September 17 Henry Horton State Park, Marshall County

Legislative Session Wrap UP

A lot has happened since the last time I posted. At the close of the legislative session, the pace of activity gets hectic. It is hard to keep things updated here when that happens and I apologize for my being delinquent. The session went well into June, ending after the TSCA Post-Legislative Conference. Thankfully, we had a great conference in Gatlinburg. Even though every issue wasn't wrapped up at that time, we had a good indication of where many issues were going and were able to discuss these matters. We also had interesting presentations related to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and its impact on counties. You should have been receiving the Capitol Update, that reviewed where many of our issues ended up. Look for the upcoming edition of the Tennessee County News for more detail. Also, the County Techinical Assistance Service will be developing their annual Index of Acts that summarizes all legislation passed which affects counties. That will be posted on their website later this summer. I will link to it here when it becomes available.

TCSA Post Legislative Conference

As happens on rare occasions, it looks like this year the TCSA "Post" Legislative Conference will not be "post." Although it is likely the General Assembly will still be meeting in June, we will be meeting as well. There is registration information on our main association website including this form and an agenda available here. If you have not already registered, I encourage you to do so. To the extent possible, we will update you on the latest developments with the state legislature and there will also be updates and information about the federal Recovery Act.

I hope to see you there.

Pat Mitchell Announces Retirement

Many of you have known Pat Mitchell of the Tennessee County Services Association office for years. She has recently announced her pending retirement, effective the end of May. She has been the executive secretary to TCSA for the past 32 years, and has always been an integral part of the county associations. Pat has overseen countless events and meetings, always planning them to perfection and pulling them off without a hitch. I’m sure many of you have benefitted from the magic she works, sorting out registration problems at a hotel, sending you critical information about meetings, or just taking care of business in general. She will be greatly missed and difficult to replace. I hope you will join me in wishing her the very best in her retirement. She will be missed by all of us as well as countless county officials, both past and present, from all across the state.

Lack of Posts

As the legislature has stepped into high gear, it has become more challenging to have time to post updates on this site. Committee calendars are filling up with both bills and budget hearings. I will encourage you once again to frequent the CTAS website where there are regular Recovery Act updates. Many of these funding sources have short deadlines for application. I also encourage you to plan for attending the Post-Legislative Conference June 2 and 3 in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Contact our office if you need registration information. There is a legitimate risk that the "post" legislative conference may not be "post." The Legislative Session may be continuing into June which may cause us to adjust conference schedules. Regardless, the conference will go on and information will be presented about what has happened this year.

Internet Forums for Governing Bodies

Last year, legislation passed that created a pilot project in Knox County to allow an internet forum for county commissioners to communicate with each other. This was in response to lawsuits and injunctions related to alleged violations of the open meetings act. The internet forum, which is open to public view, gives the commissioners a place to publically share information about issues before the county commission without circumventing the state's open meeting laws.

A bill is now on its way to the Governor for his signature that would extend this pilot project to cities, counties and school boards statewide. The bill is HB 533/SB832 by Rep. Dunn and Sen. McNally. The bill originally simply extended a sunset provision on the Knox County pilot project.

Essentially, as it passed, the bill allows governing bodies of cities, counties and school districts to set up a forum over the internet for sharing of information between members. There are several conditions that must be met and before using the site and you must file a plan with the office of open records on how you intend to comply with the conditions. The conditions are: 1) There must be public notice of an intent to use such a website; 2) The county must provide public access to the communications; 3) There must be control of who can communicate through the forum; 4) The posts must be archived for at least one year; and 5) Computers must be provided for public access at the public library, the courthouse or other public building so that someone without a computer or internet access can still have access to the forum.

Communication over this site cannot substitute for a meeting of the governing body, so this is not a form of teleconferencing or internet conferencing. But information shared between members of the governing body on the website will not be considered a violation of the open meetings act. I plan to get in touch with the Office of Open Records soon to see if they will be putting out any guidance on the law and what they want to see in plans filed with their office. When I get that, I’ll try and get it distributed to the counties. In the meantime, you may want to consider whether this could be a useful mechanism for your members of your county commission to become better informed about issues before they come before up in the meeting for consideration.

Comprehensive Recovery Act Overview

For those of you looking for more detail on all the funds in the Recovery Act, I can recommend a document produced by the Patton-Boggs consulting firm. It is available on their website www.pattonboggs.com. This overview is at the Federal level and does not provide any Tennessee specific information, but it does go department by department through the act and explains all the different programs funded, tells the level of funds available, the purpose for which the funds may be used, eligible applicants, deadlines, allocation method and any special criteria involved.

CTAS continues to provide regular updates on the recovery portion of their website as more information about specific programs in Tennessee becomes clearer. From my discussion with administration officials, there is hope that many of the details of how the Recovery Act funds may be distributed and spent should be available over the next few days. Continue to check the state site and the CTAS site for more information.