Researchers say the City of Knoxville used outside firm to avoid open records laws in police chief hiring

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT) - Every year, The Beacon Center, an independent research firm, releases what they call the “Pork Report,” aimed at highlighting how local governments across Tennessee use tax dollars. This year, the City of Knoxville made waves for how it handle the hiring of Knoxville Police Department Chief Paul Noel.

All information about Noel, and his fellow candidates, was kept under wraps during the hiring process. Usually, government entities like the City of Knoxville are subject to open records laws that allow citizens to request information, like details on prospective police chief hires. Outside, private firms are not included in those laws, however.

In the report, Beacon claims one of the city’s lawyers — the Knoxville News Sentinel is taking the city to court over the matter — admitted that the city hired the outside firm at a cost of $43,000 to avoid being subject to open records requests. On top of that, Beacon says the city is paying another $67,000 in legal fees to fight the lawsuit.

“This ended up being potentially the most offensive entry in this year’s Pork Report,” Mark Cunningham with The Beacon Center told WVLT News. “It kind of mixed the disdain for transparency with an indifference towards tax-payers.”

He claims the biggest issue here, beyond a waste of tax dollars, is the lack of transparency. “We have this idea that we need to trust governments, that they need to be as transparent as possible. This flies in the face of that,” he said.

The City of Knoxville gave WVLT a statement on the report. Its argument is that police chief candidates needed to know that their application would be anonymous.

The City’s aim was to find the best possible candidates for the Chief of Police position. Chief Noel and others told us that they would not have applied had they not been able to do so with confidential anonymity in the initial stages. Mayor Kincannon and City stakeholders share the view that Chief Noel was the right and best hire in April 2022 and that his work here as Chief has been transformative for the City and KPD.

After Chief Noel was hired, the City released to media every single document related to the search, including the names and background of every applicant. Additionally, the City has tried in earnest to resolve the KnoxNews lawsuit, which we believe became moot with the release of records that were far beyond what KnoxNews originally requested.

KnoxNews continuing its lawsuit diverts its resources that could better serve its readers journalistically through more and deeper community reporting, rather than spending money on lawyers’ fees over records that have already been released. And the City having to defend itself in court on what should be a closed matter - an administrative hiring from two years ago - certainly is a waste of taxpayer dollars. The only winners in all of this, at this stage, now that all the records have been voluntarily released by the City, are the attorneys who are billing at rates of hundreds of dollars an hour to both KnoxNews and the City.

That’s not enough for Cunningham, though. He said hiring a chief of police, which the city refers to as an “administrative hire,” is important for Knoxvillians to know about.

“Listen, if you’re applying for a job to work for the government, be the chief of police — which is a huge deal — I think that the public is open to seeing who you are and what you’ve done before,” Cunningham said.

Knox News Executive Editor Joel Christopher told WVLT News that they share his sentiment, saying that the city tried to keep the process under wraps.

“Seeking information about how elected officials make critical decisions is a core responsibility of news organizations,” Christopher said. “That responsibility is enshrined in Tennessee law. The mayor’s office knew this and intentionally tried to avoid its legal obligations to the people of Knoxville. We would be failing taxpayers if we didn’t pursue this information through all means available.”

Cunningham also took issue with the city’s statement itself, claiming that the city is doubling down on their mistake and racking up even more bills in legal fees at the cost of tax-payers.

“They should say ‘we made a mistake, we should have been open to the public,’” Cunningham said, adding that, beyond skirting public records laws, there’s really no reason for the city to have looked to a third party for Noel’s hiring.

“If there is advantages to using a third party, then why do you have HR people on staff? That is the reason you hired them— to do these roles,” he said.

The city did end up making the hiring records available to news outlets, but that came more than a year after Noel was hired. When asked how often Beacon sees this sort of process, he said it’s unusual.

“If it was more typical, you’d see a lot more lawsuits like the one we’re seeing,” he said, calling for transparency again. “The bigger issue here is: moving forward, are governments going to be held accountable?”