After four years, a protracted legal battle for which taxpayers expended some $118,000 in legal fees (to say nothing of the legal expenses borne by The Herald-Leader), two attorney general's decisions, a circuit court ruling, a Court of Appeals ruling, a Supreme Court ruling declining review, a motion to compel, and a renewed motion to compel, the Lexington Herald-Leader, and the public, at long last has 15,000 pages of records responsive to an open records request submitted to the University of Kentucky in 2016.

https://cases.justia.com/kentucky/court-of-appeals/2018-2017-ca-001423-…

Beats the 9 pages of "responsive records" the University originally produced after receiving an adverse ruling in the Herald-Leader's open records appeal in this case.

The subject of the Herald-Leader's original request? Records relating to an audit of billing practices at an Eastern Kentucky cardiology clinic with which the University was affiliated. The audit prompted UK to reimburse $4.1 million in federal Medicare and Medicaid payments.

Most troubling is the lengths to which the University went, and continues to go, to evade scrutiny in this and other open records cases still pending in the courts.

Were it not for the persistence of open records requesters, both the media *and* private citizens, important stories like this one would remain buried in bureaucratic obfuscation.

It's unclear on what basis the University assigns itself a 90% open records compliance rating. Certainly, we wonder how many of the open records requesters in that 90% were fully satisfied with the University's disposition of their requests and how many were dissatisfied but elected not to appeal.

I know a few who were not.

To be sure, the University of Kentucky is not alone in its vigorous defense of secrecy.

The University of Louisville's open records track record in the era of President James Ramsey was abysmal.

But Kentucky's courts, and the Attorney General in his statutorily assigned role as first line reviewer of open records disputes, continue to vindicate the principles embedded in the open records law and codified in its statement of legislative policy:

Free and open examination of public records is in the public interest even if such examination causes inconvenience or embarrassment to public officials or others.

This was a hard-fought and truly great victory for the public's right to know. The Court of Appeals, in the ongoing legal dispute between UK and its own student newspaper, The Kernel, said it best. The University takes "the indefensible position that records are exempt because it says they are and it must be believed. That position is directly contrary to the goal of transparency under the Open Records Act."

https://www.facebook.com/419650175248377/posts/506564293223631/?d=n

The Herald-Leader, and the public, finally has very good reason to celebrate.