NASHVILLE - Officials in a Tennessee county have destroyed public records that were being sought by a newspaper. Chattanooga Times Free Press reporter Sarah Grace Taylor was trying to see whether the Hamilton County attorney’s office was denying public records requests without a good reason, she said. To that end, she asked in August to see all incoming records requests for the past year along with the office’s responses. Initially, Beltramo responded to Taylor’s request by asking her to pay $717 for about 1,500 pages of records, Taylor said. The county destroyed records requests that came in by email and its email responses, Beltramo said in a phone interview, but a majority of the requests are submitted via a public records form that the county did keep.

Source: thestar February 03, 2020 19:30 UTC