1238 days after filing a request for records relating to ethics complaints against City of Taylorsville officials, open records requester Lawrence Trageser has the records he requested.

https://www.facebook.com/419650175248377/posts/439000163313378/?extid=F…

He also has a major Court of Appeals' victory in a dubious lawsuit for compensatory and punitive damages the city filed against him for publication of the records. The court's published opinion admonished the city for filing the lawsuit, declaring that "the government can use the Open Records Act as a shield; [but] it cannot use it as a sword."

https://www.facebook.com/419650175248377/posts/702772536936138/?extid=C…

https://www.facebook.com/419650175248377/posts/590519424828117/?extid=w…

And, as authorized by statute, Trageser will soon have $30,950 in statutory penalties coming his way. This figure is based on a $25 per day award "for each day he has been denied the right to inspect or copy the public records at issue in this case, beginning on February 14, 2017 and continuing until" June 6, 2020, when the city finally released the records.

https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/law/statutes/statute.aspx?id=23066

His attorney, Jeremy S. Rogers, will receive $23,468 in attorney's fees for representing Trageser in circuit court and on appeal.

The cost to the city will, in the final analysis, exceed $54,000 for its vain attempt to silence a local critic and perennial thorn in its side.

This penalty "is a substantial one." But, as the Kentucky Supreme Court reminds us, "Substantial, too, is the legal obligation the [agency] owed the public and the effort it expended in attempting to escape it"— in this case going so far as to sue Trageser. "While it will ultimately be the public that bears the expense of this penalty," the Court concluded, "we maintain that the nominal punishment of an egregious harm to the public's right to know would come at an even greater price."

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ky-court-of-appeals/1726554.html

Stated less eloquently, the award of penalties and attorneys' fees acts as a deterrent to other agencies contemplating similar abusive conduct to impede the public's right to know.