Another (unidentified) public agency plays the "delay and hope they go away" game.

Joe Sonka, Insider Louisville, is rightfully indignant with this response. Kentucky's open records law requires production of requested records on the third business day after receipt of the request.

If the requested record (Sonka asked for a single record) is "in active use, in storage or not otherwise available," and the agency provides a written "detailed explanation" of the cause for delay on the third day after receipt of the request, it can temporarily postpone production beyond three business days.

But the agency must identify in its written explanation for delay "the place, time, and *earliest* date on which the public record will be available."

If the earliest date this agency can produce a single record is in November, it's priorities are clearly skewed. It is violating the open records law by failing to provide timely access to public records.

Sonka can appeal, of course, but this is a wholly gratuitous exercise. If he appeals, the agency is likely to produce the record before the attorney general issues an open records decision — and in so doing implicitly confirm that it is acting in bad faith in postponing production — in order to "moot" the issue on appeal.

The attorney general will decline to issue a decision. The agency's apparent bad faith delay will go "unpunished." Sonka will have his record before November but nowhere close to the three business days deadline for production of public records *required by state law*.

This is bad government!