Blocking the Sunshine

Let’s give Mary Pruitt some credit. The Nashville state representative learns from her mistakes. Just two years after a television station exposed how she misused her campaign funds to maintain a private residence, Pruitt took a step back, reflected on her conduct and…tried to gut a promising open records bill by making it harder for reporters to shine a light on politicians like her. Last week, though, Pruitt’s legislation, like a snake on a busy interstate, slithered, withered and got flattened in subcommittee, giving everyone from political reporters to curious voters a better chance to keep up with the state’s roster of venal lawmakers.

In July 2006, WTVF-Channel 5’s Phil Williams reported that Pruitt used over $11,000 in campaign money to pay herself rent on an abandoned-looking house she owns in East Nashville. That would be perfectly legal if the lawmaker were using the property as a campaign office, but Williams talked to neighbors who said that they never saw anyone visit the house. It didn’t help Pruitt’s case either that this hot spot of political activity was boarded up. Then, for the clincher that seems to define every good Williams’ exposé, the gray-haired gumshoe looked up Pruitt’s utility bills for this supposed campaign office and discovered that there had been no electricity running through it for nine months.

Since Pruitt is probably not Amish, she couldn’t have been using her primitive abode as a campaign office. For her, it was most likely an investment that she bankrolled with her constituent’s hard-earned campaign money. In an interview with Williams, a surprised and exasperated Pruitt had no plausible explanation for her creative spending and instead claimed that she was being targeted because she was black. It came off as a desperate, if entertaining, plea, especially considering that Williams was the reporter who nailed former state Rep. Jerry Cooper, who is as white as Bill Engvall, for stealing from his campaign fund.

But if Pruitt did a laughable job of defending herself on television, she cut a far more cunning figure behind the scenes in the back rooms of the state Capitol. This spring, Pruitt tacked on an amendment to a new open records law that would have required public officials to be notified when they were the subjects of public information requests. Pruitt didn’t explain the reasoning behind her legislation and refused to talk with Desperately, but it doesn’t take a Freudian psychologist to uncover the roots of her fury. Had her amendment been in place at the time Williams was studying her NES bills, the wily state representative would have been tipped to the reporter’s looming exposé and perhaps could have contrived some explanation for how a boarded-up house could serve as her own personal war room.

“The story could have been done, but would it have been the same story? Probably not,” Williams says. “Sometimes in dealing with public officials, you want their spur-of-the-moment, on-the-spot reaction to see if they really do have a legitimate defense. If they have the benefit of time, they can concoct seemingly plausible stories.”

Though Pruitt’s amendment failed, it received the support of nearly all of the Democratic representatives in a House budget subcommittee, while the Republicans largely voted against it. Having been in power for an eternity, state House Democrats often act like arrogant, petulant children and, here, they clearly wanted to stick it to a press corps that, every now and then, challenges their authority. Fortunately, the House Republicans, who are avid fans of open government when it’s convenient, hate the Democrats so much that they tabled Pruitt’s amendment. As of press time, the open records bill, which would put formal pressure on public officials to comply with the law, looked like it would pass.

Still, it’s not as strong as it could have been. Another Democrat, state Rep. Ulysses Jones, effectively watered down the legislation, going so far as to strip away a requirement that would allow people outside of Tennessee equal access to public information about our state. Then again, Jones is from Memphis, the epicenter of the Tennessee Waltz FBI sting. We don’t blame him for wanting to stay out of the sunshine.

Indian efficienciesThe tip was delivered grumpily and mysteriously from an anonymous staffer at 1100 Broadway: The Tennessean is outsourcing three ad design positions to India. We didn’t know what to think—it seemed too odd to be true—but sure enough our cagey deep throat was onto something.