On April 15, we posted this article explaining why the old story linked below was relevant to a new story about the Legislative Research Commission's failure to appoint a nonpartisan director after deciding not to renew the contract of the man pictured, David Byerman.
In the period after Byerman's departure, the nonpartisan position was filled by two interim directors, the very partisan chiefs of staff for the Senate and House leaders.
We described the issues associated with access to records of the General Assembly and the Legislative Research Commission under the statute, KRS 7.119, vesting exclusive authority in the nonpartisan director to act as records custodian for the agencies.
Since KRS 7.119 also eliminates the right to appeal the director's denial of an open records request for records of the General Assembly or the LRC to the Kentucky Attorney General -- leaving the requester with the single option of incurring the cost and delays of an appeal of the denial to the courts -- we emphasized the importance of the nonpartisan role of the director in fairly and uniformly disclosing records of these public agencies.
We soon learned that efforts were quietly underway to locate a permanent, presumably nonpartisan director.
On May 15, Kentucky Today http://kentuckytoday.com/stories/legislative-leaders-select-new-lrc-dir… and Forward Kentucky https://forwardky.com/gop-installs-partisan-staffer-as-head-of-lrc-incl… announced the appointment of Jay D. Hartz, the Deputy Chief of Staff to Senate President Robert Stivers, as the permanent director of the Legislative Research Commission.
Its difficult to imagine under what construction of the term "nonpartisan" Hartz possibly falls. Time will tell whether he handles his responsibilities as records custodian, as well as his many other responsibilities, in a truly nonpartisan way.
But Forward Kentucky is correct in pointing out that although this may not be a pressing public issue for the Commonwealth, it is one the merits attention. Bruce Maples writes:
"More and more voters are realizing that what happens behind the scenes in Frankfort has a direct effect on their lives, and they are paying closer and closer attention."
The Courier Journal wrote about the nationwide search for a nonpartisan director several years ago, and the level of interest -- and mistrust -- has not subsided since that time. https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/politics-blog/2015/…
It may indeed be, as one reporter referred to it, "insider baseball," but its the "insider" aspect of the appointment that we must be concerned with.
We can hope that LRC's track record for disclosing public records since Byerman's departure will improve. But like a high ranking Democratic member of the House of Representatives noted, "We're going to be watching."
