Ethics Commission makes sworn complaints public, dismisses several complaints and defers show-cause decision on complaints against state senator

General Counsel Topping told the Tennessee Ethics Commission that recent statutory changes require sworn complaints to be public records from the moment they are filed and give the commission broader authority to investigate complaints internally. Topping said the change was intended to make the process more transparent and to reduce situations in which complainants publicize allegations that the commission previously could not acknowledge.

"What we have asked and what the legislature has done, is that these matters are no longer going to be confidential. From the very moment that they are filed, the complaint itself will be public record as well as any other records that that come in along with the complaint," Topping said during the meeting.

Topping and Executive Director Bill Young explained that, as an initial procedural matter, the commission was conducting preliminary jurisdictional hearings to decide whether their office may proceed on each sworn complaint. They emphasized that these preliminary hearings were not show-cause hearings and that testimony and fuller evidentiary procedures would occur only if the commission found…