Mt. Juliet Police: How Much They Make

Scoop Media Group regularly requests open records from the cities and counties we cover. In early April, we began requesting records from Wilson County and related local entities to do a comparison on law enforcement salaries in the area. These types of requests are standard, and are completed regularly without issue, as required by state law. We made our standard request for a department roster, containing the ‘NAME, TITLE, AND SALARY’ of all employees. When we made the request to the City of Mt. Juliet, however, we received our first ever denial of this information.

The city of Mt. Juliet first partially denied our request on April 9th, when Tina Guinan, a Human Resources Assistant for the city, returned a list of employees that contained the name and salary, but refused to provide anyone’s job title within the department. We appealed this denial to her, and a few days later received a phone call from Janet Southards, the Human Resources Director, who said she helps manage risk for the city, and would not be able to release the job titles attached to an employee’s name, citing that the city often worked with the federal government, and had to protect officer’s privacy. Instead she sent us a list of job titles and salary ranges, which was not the data set requested.

On April 15th we sent one final email with notice we would be appealing the decision via the court system. On April 16th, after the city reportedly consulted with the TN Open Records Counsel, they reversed their denial, and provided us with a complete list, as required by state law. We have published that list below, as it is public record. We have an upcoming story on the comparisons between departments in the coming days.

Mt. Juliet Police Department Employee Roster