Home » News » Tenn. newspaper wins case for public hospital’s salary info

By Dennis Hetzel, published on May 4, 2023

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It took nearly two years and a lawsuit to force a publicly owned hospital in Tennessee to disclose the salary information of its senior administrators, according to a news release from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Cookeville Regional Medical Center Authority released the information to the Herald-Citizen newspaper recently, a few weeks after the paper filed a lawsuit with support from the RCFP.

The Herald-Citizen first sought the records in 2021 after the hospital hired the town’s part-time mayor as its chief strategy officer, a new position that the hospital never publicly advertised, according to the RCFP. The mayor had a role in approving the hospital’s budget as a member of the city council.

“It’s a community-owned hospital, so the public obviously has an interest in what happens there,” said Herald-Citizen Editor Lindsay Pride in the RCFP release.

According to the RCFP’s Open Government Guide, salary information for employees of Tennessee’s public entities are open, public records.

Related

Pride v. Cookeville Regional Medical Center Authority – Reporters Committee

Open Government Guide for Journalists – Reporters Committee (rcfp.org)

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