For 17 years, state employee Charles Burroughs ran a golf tournament held in conjunction with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation’s annual environmental conference. He used his state email account to solicit sponsorships for the event from companies regulated by his employer, set up a (now suspended) website for golfers to register for the tournament, and paid expenses from a bank account established solely for this event. However, the TDEC refused a public records request for emails regarding the tournament, maintaining the event was a private affair.

Earlier, we put out the call for help diving through the many pages of Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement Director Scott Angelle’s call records. Angelle gave out his cellphone number to a conference of oil and gas industry executives - an industry he is tasked with overseeing - so we were curious to see who was calling. Here are the results.

As e-scooter companies chose to ask for forgiveness, not permission while setting up shop across the country, cities worked quickly to pass regulations. MuckRock surveyed the different approaches they took.

A month before Comcast announced its planned $45 billion merger with fellow cable giant Time Warner, the company’s vice president of legislative affairs invited one of the government’s top antitrust lawyers to a private party for the Sochi Olympics opening ceremony.

The lawyer, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Renata Hesse, regrettably declined the invitation, placing the blame on those “rules folks.”