CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (WDEF)- Hamilton County now has a new public records request system.
Hamilton County Attorney Janie Varnell says her office has entered into an agreement with the Next Request Portal system to speed up public records requests.
Varnell took over the County Attorney role last month from long-time attorney Rheubin Taylor.
She says that previously before implementing this new system, public records requests were done on paper, causing backlogs of requests.
She says this new system will allow her office to instantly look at requests and assign them to the appropriate records custodian, getting them to a requestor on average within two days.
Attorney Varnell said, “Coming into my role as Special Advisor, this was actually the first thing I looked into, was how to figure out how better to do our public records system. I had talked to administrators and directors and they were drowning in the current system. There really wasn’t a ton of oversight from the County Attorney’s office before and they weren’t getting a ton of oversight before.”
This portal is available on the Hamilton County Government’s website.
