Gerth: Kentucky's Republican Senate did something good. Now Stivers wants to screw it up

The criticism I most often get from Republicans is that I rarely say nice things about them or write about when they do something good.

But I’m here to atone for my past trespasses.

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been, er, … well, it’s been a while since my last confession. And really, I haven’t sinned. Every time I’ve criticized Republicans, they’ve deserved it, but, here goes…

The 2024 General Assembly ended on a good note when Republicans in the Kentucky Senate chose to let House Bill 509 — a measure that would have destroyed Kentucky’s Open Records Act — die without a vote on the floor.

The measure would have created a blueprint for elected officials and bureaucrats wanting to skirt Kentucky’s open records law simply by communicating through text messaging on their personal cell phones instead of using other forms of communication like email or texting on government-provided cells.

The state House pushed for the measure and our Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, had suggested he would sign it into law because he said the bill would actually make more records available.

He wasn’t telling the truth.

The bill would have, in fact, done horrific damage to Kentucky’s Open Records law, which is celebrating its 50^th birthday this year and has worked well over that half-century.

Here’s what the bill would have done:

It would have required that government agencies provide email accounts or at the very least designate official email accounts for employees and government officials. And if the government agencies did that, government-related messages sent on a personal email account or personal cell phone wouldn’t be subject to the open records law.

Reporters have used the state open records law to find out what state and local government officials are doing behind the scenes and report it to you, just like Courier Journal reporters Eleanor McCrary and Josh Wood did recently when they wrote about Rachel Greenberg’s role in the administration of Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg.

Over the past 50 years, reporters at newspapers, broadcast news organizations and online publications have used the law to report on sketchy actions by governors, mayors, city council members, county judge-executives and fiscal courts.

People bidding to be government contractors have used the law to ferret out questionable dealings between businesses they competed against and government officials.

And if you had questions about your elected officials and the policies they were pushing, you could use the open records law to get a glimpse of why they did this or didn’t do that. You don’t need to be a journalist to seek records under the law.

The House passed the measure because of some made-up concern that government officials and employees risked having some busybody snooping through their personal text messages under the guise of an open records request.

It doesn’t work that way and has never worked that way.

If you sought text messages relating to Gov. Andy Beshear’s efforts to raise money for tornado victims in Western Kentucky a couple of years ago, Beshear’s general council would simply ask Beshear to turn over any texts he may have sent about the fundraising effort.

That’s it.

No one would have seized Beshear’s iPhone and read the “I love you, Snookums” messages he sent to his wife. Nobody would ever read the messages where he flies off the handle with one of his kids and uses the harshest curse words he uses — “Dagnabbit, Will. Finish your homework,” and “Doggone it, Lila. You were supposed to feed Winnie before you went to school.”

I’m still not sure what the House Republicans or Beshear were trying to do here since having someone rifling through personal text messages was never a real concern.

The state open records law already exempts email and text messages that are purely personal from the open records law, and state Rep. John Hodgson has acknowledged he knows of no instances in which personal information was released under the law.

Now, the problem here is that it looks like the Republicans are poised to undo the good they did this year by reviving HB 509 next year, and the next year and the next, until they can pass the bill.

Which will cause me to write mean things about them and criticize them for choosing secrecy over transparency and trying to hide things from you, the taxpayer.

President Robert Stivers said he still favors the measure and expects the legislature to work on the bill in the interim and pass it during some future legislative session.

So, here’s what the legislature should do:

It should pass a bill that requires the government give email accounts to all employees who need them and require that they use them for government business, but it shouldn’t include the provision that says government business conducted on personal email accounts or on personal phones is exempt from the open records law.

This will not only ensure that the public still has the right to inspect public records, it will keep me from having to write a column saying I was wrong when I praised the Republican Senate for killing a bill that would do immeasurable harm to government transparency in Kentucky.

Joseph Gerth can be reached at 502-582-4702 or by email at jgerth@courierjournal.com.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Kentucky's Republican Senate did something right by killing HB 509