So tonight we watched the mayor of Chattanooga talk about his decision to not "reopen" the city despite the county and state moving to do so on May 1.

He gave his first comments on the matter to Don Lemon on CNN at 10:30 p.m. after no commenting me and other local (1/
reporters today and announcing this all during a Facebook video instead of a format where reporters can ask questions.

This comes the same day I wrote about a mysterious ordinance that popped up on city council's agenda without a sponsor and the city attorney ghosted my (2/
questions about its origin.

This is also the same day that a reader got so mad at the same mayor for not providing more details on what numbers and modeling are being used to make these decisions that he told me we should run a story of who dodges what questions. (3/
Then the county attorney blew me off in person when I asked about when I'd get a response to a weeks old email about an overdue records request.

I include "so and so declined to comment" when it happens, obvs, but accessibility was so bad today and this reader felt so in (4/
the dark about it-- and frankly so did I-- that I've now resolved to share publicly a list of every unanswered question I ask an official throughout the week every week.

Non-answer answers will be included too. (5/)
Transparency and accessibility are more important right now than usual, not less, and I'm going make sure that everyone knows who is and is not playing ball.

See ya Friday. 🤙
Y'all I'm not kidding that this was all in one day. This is literally what the job looks like and what the information flow around here is like and we're just not going to be able to do it like this anymore.
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