Chattanooga recycling advocate Frank DePinto has delivered a strong message to city officials, requesting landfill information that Mayor Ron Littlefield’s spokesman said already was provided.

“Don’t throw me a bunch of irrelevant statistics,” Mr. DePinto stated in a Sunday e-mail to Marie Chenery, special assistant to Dan Johnson, Mr. Littlefield’s chief of staff.

In a hand-delivered request Monday, Mr. DePinto asked for numbers on how many tons of garbage per year Chattanooga has sent to landfills over the past 10 years. He also wanted to know how many garbage trucks drive to the Birchwood landfill each week and how much methane gas the landfill generates.

The city offered to send him what Mr. DePinto said could be hundreds of pages of information about city landfills rather than the single page of summary information he requested, he said.

The city charges $1 per page for copies of records.

Richard Beeland, Mr. Littlefield’s spokesman, said the city has complied with the state’s open records law.

“We have supplied the information to Mr. DePinto,” he said. “We’re doing everything we have to do.”

Mr. DePinto said he wants the information as a means to gauge the city’s carbon and methane gas footprints.

Frank Gibson, executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, said state law says government agencies must give up summary records but only if they’re already available.

“You can’t require a government agency to create a new record,” he said.

Mr. Gibson said the agency is required, however, to provide raw data if no summary is available.

Earlier this month, Gov. Phil Bredesen signed into law a bill that requires government agencies in Tennessee to comply with records requests within seven days. There had been no specific time limit.

LAW HIGHLIGHTS

Some highlights of Tennessee’s new open records law that goes into effect July 1:

* Agencies must respond to requests within seven days or explain why they need more time.

* Agencies can charge for the costs of gathering public information, but not for the first five hours.

* The new open records office must develop a schedule of fees for information.

* The open records office must develop a policy for extra charges to groups that make “frequent and multiple” public records requests.

Comments