Amye Bensenhaver: When it comes to an open legislature, Kentucky leads in the race to the bottom

Mississippians final week continued to lament the Mississippi Ethics Fee’s latest opinion that the state legislature shouldn’t be topic to the Mississippi open conferences legislation.



Right here, Kentucky leads Mississippi within the race to the underside.



”In what universe is a legislature — probably the most high-profile public physique in any state — not public? Oh, Mississippi.”



The Mississippi Ethics Fee stopped wanting issuing a remaining order within the dispute — which arose when the Mississippi Free Press questioned whether or not Home Speaker Philip Gunn violates the state’s open conferences legal guidelines when he holds conferences of the Republican Caucus behind closed doorways. Commissioners provided assurances at this week’s particular assembly, “The Legislature shouldn’t be going to shut its doorways no matter what we do at the moment.”



Many years in the past Kentucky’s legislative caucuses efficiently maneuvered their means out of the open conferences legislation — following hostile 1993 Lawyer Common’s open conferences choices — by adopting Home and Senate resolutions recognizing their majority and minority caucuses as “[c]ommittees of the Common Meeting aside from standing committees” exempted from the open conferences legislation beneath KRS 61.810(1)(i).



Not happy with closed caucus conferences, in 2017 the Home of Representatives illegally performed a closed assembly of the complete Home, except for Consultant Jim Wayne whose refusal to attend was premised on the plain open conferences violation. A authorized problem ensued, and in 2018 the Franklin Circuit Courtroom rejected the Home’s spurious argument that the closed assembly of the complete Home — minus one — was a majority caucus assembly to which the minority caucus was invited.



The 2019 Common Session of the Common Meeting commenced with the query: “When did the legislature abandon any pretense of compliance with the open conferences legal guidelines and when did Kentuckians abandon any expectation of compliance?”



Later that 12 months, lawmakers proposed laws aimed toward limiting public entry to its data that may culminate in 2021’s statutory exclusion of the Common Meeting and Legislative Analysis Committees from the open data legislation.


Amye Bensenhaver


The 2021 laws tightened the noose on public accountability by excluding legislative data from the open data legal guidelines for all functions. They established a narrowly drawn statutory scheme for legislative data entry, and divested the courts of jurisdiction to evaluate denial of entry to legislative data.



(The Lawyer Common was divested of his statutory authority to evaluate open data appeals involving data of the Common Meeting in 2003.)



In 2021, the Kentucky Open Authorities Coalition wrote:



“There is just one factor extra disturbing than the truth of lawmakers run amuck. That’s the actuality of lawmakers run amuck who’re accountable by neither their conferences nor their data to the folks they serve.



To the query posed this week by dispirited Mississippians, “In what universe is a legislature — probably the most high-profile public physique in any state — not public,” we reply:



Oh, Kentucky.

Amye Bensenhaver is a retired Kentucky assistant legal professional common who authored open data and open conferences choices for 25 years. She is co-founder and co-director of the Kentucky Open Authorities Coalition..