And then there's this.

The notion of the vexatious open records requester is so widely known that the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has nifty ID tags that jokingly read: "Hi. My name is: Vexsome Records Requester".

This article below features a Massachusetts "gadfly" whose "hobby" of filing open records requests and open meetings complaints, some say, "has morphed into an obsession."

Ronald Alexander has filed 227 open records requests against two Massachusetts' public agencies in a four year period, along with many others requests to many other agencies, and 603 open meetings complaints.

His track record for success in open records appeals is actually very good. But, pushed to its limit, the Massachusetts attorney general's office recently agreed to review only 15 of his 603 open meetings complaints when mediation between Alexander and a local school district failed.

Those 15 complaints alleged 29 separate violations of Massachusetts' open meetings law, and the attorney general substantiated 14 violations.

To his credit, Alexander shares the skills he has acquired through the years with less experienced public records requesters.

To some he is a hero, to others a villain.

Kentucky has, or has had, its own Ronald Alexanders — self-appointed "watchdogs" to whom public agencies assign less flattering names. They, too, have their supporters and detractors.

But no one can doubt that public agencies which have come under their scrutiny have had to better educate themselves about Kentucky's open government laws, and have had to at least attempt to improve compliance, or risk adverse rulings by the attorney general or adverse rulings and penalization by the courts.

Kentucky's open records law speaks directly to this issue. KRS 61.872(6) states that "if an application [for public records] places an unreasonable burden in producing public records or if the custodian has reason to believe that repeated requests are intended to disrupt other essential functions of the public agency, the official custodian may refuse to permit inspection of the public records or mail copies thereof. However, refusal under this section shall be sustained by clear and convincing evidence"

(There is no corresponding provision for burdensome/disruptive complaints in Kentucky's open meetings law.)

The final sentence in KRS 61.872(6) is critical.

In a 2008 opinion, the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled that an agency "refusing to comply with an open records request on this unreasonably burdensome basis faced a high proof threshold since the agency must show the presence of an unreasonable burden 'by clear and convincing evidence."

For these reasons, the attorney general's staff does not now, and has never, casually approved an agency's reliance on this provision in the context of a claim of unreasonable burden.

A rare exception to this general rule occurred last week when the staff affirmed the Commonwealth Office of Technology's position that because complying with a broadly worded request for years of metadata would required years of agency staff time, the request was unreasonably burdensome.

The attorney general's staff is even less inclined to approve a denial based on intent to disrupt essential functions.

And, as noted, in its 44 year history, the courts have examined the issue of unreasonable burden in only one published case. The courts have never examined the issue of intent to disrupt essential functions in a published opinion.

Perhaps this is because, as the attorney general's staff observed in an early open records opinion, "the legislative intent in enacting the open records law was that public employee exercise patience and long suffering in making public records available for inspection."

In the same era, however, the attorney general's staff recognized that "public agencies and employee are the servants of the people as stated in the preamble to the open records law. But they are the servants of all the people and not only of persons who make extreme and unreasonable demands on their time."

It is this tension that must be resolved each time an agency denies an open records request because it is, arguably, unreasonably burdensome or intended to disrupt essential functions.

In my experience, Kentucky has had its share of gadflies, but none can compare with Ronald Alexander. At least our agencies can take some comfort in this.