A Cincinnati newspaper, The Enquirer, is the third media requester in recent months to receive entirely redacted records—275 pages to be specific.

https://www.facebook.com/419650175248377/posts/476627302883997?s=184659…

As pictured below, Hamilton County released meaningless pages of indecipherable blackness in response to the Enquirer's request for records relating to the county's renegotiations of the Bengal's lease.

This time, however, Hamilton County Commissioners interceded. On July 11, Commissioners directed the county's legal staff to review and reconsider the copious redactions. They questioned how every item of information the records contain could be statutorily protected.

On the same day, The Enquirer filed suit in the Ohio Court of Claims for review of the redactions.

No Finance and Administration Cabinet official intervened on behalf of Courier Journal reporter Tom Loftus after he received 466 pages of entirely redacted records—months after the deadline for production of the records had come and gone.

The Cabinet's obstructionism resulted in the newspaper's decision to file a lawsuit in Franklin Circuit Court to end this flagrant and cynical abuse of the open records law.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.courier-journal.com/amp/3069668002

Most damning of all is the recurring public agency defense that it is acting in the public's interest by maintaining strict secrecy. To quote Chief Justice Palmore, "that hackneyed canard was bruited about and confounded long ago."

In other words, we aren't buying it!