Sunshine Week in Kentucky concludes on an unexpectedly positive note.
Sure, lawmakers set their sights on restoring a “free pass” to law enforcement agencies that issue blanket denials of open records requests for all records in an open criminal investigation — even those that, if disclosed, would in no way harm that investigation.
Of course, we watched as lawmakers continued to place ever greater impediments in the path of meaningful public participation in the legislative process, using force, in some instances, to ensure we were permitted to know only as much as they wanted us to know and when they wanted us to know it.
https://www.lpm.org/news/2025-03-17/kentucky-gop-pushed-through-anti-tr…
https://www.lpm.org/news/2025-03-12/kentucky-lawmakers-debate-systemic-…
But Kentuckians are more effectively asserting their right to hold government accountable. Increasingly, they are equipped “with the power that knowledge gives.”
https://www.loc.gov/resource/mjm.20_0155_0159/?sp=1&st=text
What accounts for the public’s empowerment?
In April, 2024, the Kentucky Open Government Coalition launched the Kentucky Sunshine Law Library in celebration of its fifth year anniversary.
https://kyopengov.org/blog/announcing-sunshine-law-library
https://kyopengov.org/law/introduction
Our goal? “[R]educing barriers and expanding the possibilities for public use of our sunshine laws” by providing a free, searchable, online library of all Kentucky Attorney General open records and open meetings opinions/decisions from 1977 to the present, caselaw, annotations, statutes, and blog posts.
The ability to conduct a search for the existence of a statute, a case, or an Attorney General open records or meetings decision on a particular subject or issue — once only available through a costly subscription to an online legal research service — is now available to anyone with access to the Internet thanks to the efforts of Coalition co-director Scott Horn. For his extraordinary efforts, Horn was awarded the 2024 University of Kentucky Scripps Howard Center James Madison Award.
https://uknow.uky.edu/professional-news/scott-horn-receives-2024-james-…
It worked —and is at least partially responsible for democratizing Kentucky’s open government laws.
Through the library, Kentuckians from all regions, and of all political affiliations and backgrounds, have developed an operational awareness that access to state, and local public agency records, and attendance at public agency meetings, is a right and not a privilege.
They are taking ownership of their records and meetings, and the laws that secure their rights under those laws, in a measurable way.
Most importantly, they can now back it up with black-letter law.
Whether it is the frustrated mother whose past efforts to access records about her child from the school district were repeatedly rebuffed by the district; the former employee of a public university asserting her right of access to any records that relate to her; the doctoral student ejected from a legislative committee meeting at the Capitol Annex; the student newspaper editor denied access to public records for a story about campus safety following multiple rapes occurring in dormitories; the resident of a small community where special meeting notice requirements are entirely ignored; or the grieving mother denied access to the records of a horrific automobile collision in which her son was instantly killed while the driver of the other vehicle awaits trial, Kentuckians have the tools and the temperament to exercise, embrace, and enforce their statutory right to know.
We, in the Kentucky Open Government Coalition, hear it in their voices and recognize it the communications we receive daily. They are increasingly skilled practitioners of laws they were once only vaguely aware of, and to which they had limited to no access.
Of course, the laws were not the exclusive domain of the media in the first half century of their existence, but equipped with the knowledge acquired through the law library, ordinary Kentuckians know when they are being stonewalled and pushback against agency noncompliance. They operate on a much fairer and more equal playing field. Statutes, caselaw, and Attorneys General open records and open meetings decisions, enable them to fight back with the same, or better tools, than their agency opponents.
Some have developed a true fire in the belly for open government laws. They are fascinated by its evolution, it’s mode of analysis, its value in affording insight into how public agencies work, and the importance of preserving it.
They are committed to fighting for these laws.
And no one can legislate that commitment out of existence.
