A little known exception to the Kentucky open records law eliminates any potential for a records access dispute like the one the University of Delaware faces for withholding former Vice President Joe Biden's senatorial records.

In 2005, the General Assembly enacted new exceptions to the open records law for the first time in over a decade.

https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/law/statutes/statute.aspx?id=48230

Prompted by the terrorist attack of 9/11/01, lawmakers enacted a highly controversial, widely publicized, and carefully vetted "homeland security" exception to our law aimed at shielding "Public records the disclosure of which would have a reasonable likelihood of threatening the public safety by exposing a vulnerability in preventing, protecting against, mitigating, or responding to a terrorist act."

Virtually unnoticed at the time, lawmakers also enacted a new exception for "[p]ublic or private records having historic, literary, artistic, or commemorative value accepted by the archivist of a public university, museum, or government depository from a donor or depositor other than a public agency."

The new exception stipulated that it would "apply to the extent that nondisclosure is requested in writing by the donor or depositor of such records."

Thus, the "McConnell" exception — as it was informally known — became the fourteenth exception to the open records law.

Rumor had it that the exception was sought by, and on behalf of, a single individual with designs on donating his records to the University of Louisville.

As exceptions go, this one is singularly underused — as in never.

But there it remains to this day, virtually moribund but ready to be resuscitated should one man's need arise.