Don’t expose whistleblowers to harm, retaliation

When a crime occurs, police often ask the public to provide information, but they give tipsters the option to remain anonymous.

With good reason, the best information often comes from those closest to the suspects – family, friends or partners in crime. Anonymity offers some protection from retribution and harm.

Tennessee lawmakers would never strip crime tipsters of this protection because some tips are false. Yet, they are about to take away the cloak of anonymity from those who report environmental crimes. This is a dangerous idea that deserves to die. Quickly.

The brains behind this whistleblower-identification measure is none other than Rep. Jason Mumpower, R-Bristol. He said he filed the bill to eliminate repetitive environmental complaints filed by two groups of landowners in his district. He’s either unaware of the potential for broader ramifications or secretly desires to weaken the state’s environmental protection laws.

House Bill 2511, if approved, would forbid investigation of anonymous complaints to the state Department of Environment and Conservation. The only exceptions are cases where there is additional evidence to support the tip or where ignoring the complaint could result in "imminent danger to human health and safety."

That wording gives DEC officials some wiggle room, but a policy that requires state employees to buck the legislature to do their jobs seems problematic. Lawmakers should leave well enough alone, particularly since the state’s environmental investigators don’t seem to favor this change.

Worse, as introduced, the bill doesn’t apply only to DEC complaints. It covers 20 environmental areas, some of which are regulated by other government agencies. If the bill is approved as Mumpower drafted it, citizens could no longer make anonymous complaints about radioactive waste, air and water pollution, toxic waste dumping or issues involving dams.

Complaints about toxic or radioactive waste are the sorts of tips that can come from whistleblowers, who could lose their jobs or perhaps be physically harmed if they were forced to go on the record. Whistleblowers deserve the protection that the law currently gives them.

Mumpower sees it differently. He thinks homeowners (and perhaps corporate executives) ought to know who has lodged an environmental complaint against them. This defies logic. We feel certain that Mumpower wouldn’t want one of his constituents retaliated against for reporting an illegal dumpsite.

Further, it doesn’t appear that anonymous complaints are a burden on the state regulatory agencies. The DEC investigated 3,502 complaints last year; 1,217 (35 percent) were anonymous. The agency couldn’t immediately determine how many of the complaints were valid.

But another state agency, the Division of Water Pollution Control, reported almost no difference in the validity of signed complaints and anonymous ones. About 14 percent of the 1,533 complaints to the agency were unsubstantiated. Of anonymous complaints, 15 percent couldn’t be verified.

A 1 percent difference is no reason to remove an important safeguard for environmental whistleblowers. We urge lawmakers to defeat this bill.