Frenetic â some would say frantic â procedural maneuvering in Office of the Budget Director v. Ellen Suetholz as attorneys for the administration have aggressively employed various legal mechanisms to avoid the Franklin Circuit Court's May 9 "order directing the State Budget Director to publicly disclose the actuarial analysis, paid for by the taxpayers, which was performed at the request of a public agency, the Kentucky Retirement Systems, regarding the Governor's formal, and publicly announced, proposal to fix the pension crisis facing state government."
The circuit court gave the budget director ten days from the May 9 order to release the actuarial analysis and directed Suetholz, "as a prevailing party under KRS 61.882," to file a motion for attorneys' fees.
The court did not make its May 9 order "final and appealable" since it still has to rule on whether Suetholz should be awarded attorneys' fees.
Since May 9, the budget director's legal team has filed a motion for emergency relief in the Court of Appeals.That court, and -- in turn -- the Supreme Court, denied the budget director the relief sought.
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In its May 31 Order Denying Review, the Supreme Court advised the budget director that if he wished to prevent the Franklin Circuit Court from enforcing its order to protect his right of appeal, he should seek a writ of prohibition from the Court of Appeals.
The budget director has now done so.
In his June 3 order (linked below), Judge Phillip Shepherd questioned the budget director's failure to seek a stay of the court's May 3 order noting that the budget director "has never asked this Court for relief in the form of a stay, or an extension of time to comply with the Court's order that would enable the [the budget director] to obtain appellate review of the Court's injunctive order."
To protect the budget director's rights to "present those issues to this Court, and to preserve them for possible appellate review," Judge Shepherd stayed (temporarily stopped) the date specified in the Court's Opinion and Order entered on May 9, 2019 for disclosing the actuarial report, until a hearing scheduled for June 12, on the remaining issues (attorneys fees, costs and penalties).
For now, this means that the budget director does not have to immediately disclose the actuarial analysis that should have been disclosed when Suetholz first requested it.
What does this mean in the long run? Delays and attorneys' fees continue to pile up as this open records dispute concerning a taxpayer funded, statutorily required, nonexempt public record moves inexorably toward the appellate courts
