A scathing report in Texas Monthly examines "'Gods in the Building': How the Texas Senate Buries Sexual Harassment Complaints."
This is a non-issue in Kentucky. Not because -- it is safe to assume -- allegations of sexual harassment against lawmakers have magically dried up in Kentucky's General Assembly and Legislative Research Commission. We should be so fortunate.
It is because in 2021 the General Assembly erected an impenetrable barrier to public access to records of the state legislature and its administrative support arm, removing itself and LRC from the open records law and narrowly defining the term legislative "record" in its self-serving records access statute. Public access to "inconvenient or embarrassing" state legislative records In Kentucky is no longer a possibility -- much less a right.
https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/law/statutes/statute.aspx?id=51395
From Texas Monthly contributors Olivia Messer and Cara Kelly:
"Unlike other employers that have made progress toward zero-tolerance policies, the Texas Senate has created a system in which lawmakers who sexually harass employees are seldom held accountable. As a result of a lack of records, the public is in the dark."
Texas senators are given leeway to handle sexual harassment complaints reported to supervisors within their offices as they see fit. The policy does not require senators to keep records of complaints, to investigate complaints, to report complaints, or to hold anyone accountable for misconduct.
There's "no public accounting for how complaints have been handled. Multiple written requests for any records of sexual harassment complaints or investigations were met with similar answers: no responsive records."
"Requests for notes, emails, or other documentation from meetings, discussions, or consultations involving questions of whether or not sexual harassment occurred elicited the same reply, 'Our office released no records because there are no records to release.'
"No official sexual harassment complaints have been filed in the [Texas] Senate since 2001,” an idea that Lisa Banks, an employment attorney and founding partner at D.C.-based law firm Katz Banks Kumin, called “utterly preposterous.”
The issue has not -- to the best of our knowledge -- been tested in Kentucky's courts in recent years. Based on the 2021 law exempting the General Assembly and Legislative Research Commission from the open records law referenced above, sexual harassment complaints filed by KY's legislative staff -- as well as records relating to bribery ("BOPTROT") and prostitution ("Downey Affair") are inaccessible to the public.
The General Assembly's records law, KRS 7.119, narrowly defines legislative "records" accessible to the public, excludes complaints, and makes legislative denials of requests for "records" not enumerated in that definition "final & unappealable."
https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/law/statutes/statute.aspx?id=51395
This means an anemic (to no) internal legislative appeals process and no judicial review.
This is no coincidence.
The last legal challenge to legislative secrecy involved an LRC employee's complaint of sexual harassment by a state representative.
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ky-supreme-court/2022649.html
Issued in 2019, the Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed the application of the open records law to the General Assembly and LRC -- with very narrow exception relating to attorney general review -- and the right of judicial review of denials of requests for legislative records.
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ky-supreme-court/2022649.html
In 2019, General Assembly considered excluding itself from the open records law. Covid apparently forestalled legislative action in 2020.
The revisions to KRS 7.119 excluding the General Assembly and LRC from the open records law were enacted in 2021.
Extracting records from the General Assembly and the LRC, since 2021, has been like squeezing blood from a stone.
https://www.lpm.org/investigate/2024-07-11/meet-the-states-new-jcps-tas…
Kentucky's version of "Gods in the building."
Most importantly, these "gods" have grander and broader plans for eviscerating Kentucky's open records law in 2025.
https://kyopengov.org/blog/hb-509-sponsor-remains-determined-secure-pas…
Kentuckians beware.
