Kentucky Open Government Coalition co-directors Jeremy Rogers, Scott Horn, Austin Horn, and Amye Bensenhaver participate in the U.S. Department of State’s International Leadership Program with visitors from
Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, and
Palestinian Territories.
The meeting — which was conducted on February 7 at the Paul Sawyer Library in Frankfort — focused on “Transparency and Accountability in Government—A Regional Project for the Near East and North Africa.”
We were asked to “explore the role of citizens, traditional and new media, academia, and civil society in fostering transparency and accountability in government” — a subject near and dear to our hearts and one which we freely and candidly discussed.
Our visitors included journalists, public servants, judges, prosecutors, attorneys, and data analysts from across the region. Their questions revealed a remarkable grasp of American law. Responding to their questions, we were able to fill in the blanks from our own unique perspectives.
Jeremy shared his vast knowledge as a 1st Amendment and media law expert who has litigated multiple significant open records and meetings cases from 2002 to the present, some with a former partner at Dinsmore & Shohl. These included the University of Louisville Foundation case, the Cabinet for Health and Family Services case, and the Boston Globe-Purdue Pharma case.
Austin explained how the use of public records enabled him to break significant stories for the Lexington Herald-Leader, including an early story of corruption and mismanagement at Kentucky State University and, recently, the story of a “mega development” project in Northern Kentucky — costing $125 million taxpayer dollars — “conceived and essentially approved far from the glare of Frankfort and the state legislature.” Just today, the Herald Leader published a story Austin authored that focused on a lawmaker’s use of the open records law to obtain travel records from the Governor trip to Switzerland.
Scott described the advantages and disadvantages of electronic records access both as the coalition’s most inquisitive practioner of the open records law , the curator of our library, and our resident “resident” for purposes of making complex open records requests for nonresident requesters — most recently for a doctoral student at the University of Zurich. He dedicated a portion of his comments to the open government coalition’s expansive “ Sunshine Law Library” (https://kyopengov.org/law) that he and the coalition’s AI assistant, “Alice,” developed.
And Amye discussed what she discusses best (or, at least, most): the fecklessness of public agencies and officials who seek to evade oversight and accountability; legislative threats to open government in Kentucky; and the peril we face in defending the rights we enjoy under these laws.
(The interpreter, a very pleasant and skilled individual, accepted my apologies for speaking so quickly, and diplomatically ascribed them to my passion for the subject.)
All emerged from the Paul Sawyer Library into a divided and discordant world that, for an hour, seemed surprisingly unified and harmonious in the ideals that unite us.
