Malheur County, Oregon, received considerable attention today as this article was reposted and retweeted.

Malheur County officials drew the wrath of critics outraged by the officials' request that the local sheriff launch an investigation into "criminal conduct in reporting" by the Malheur Enterprise.

That alleged "criminal" contact consisted of the newspaper's use of personal email addresses and phone numbers — sometimes after business hours — to reach officials of the Malheur County Economic Development Department who failed to respond to inquiries received through normal workplace channels.

Although the reporters' contacts did not involve open records requests or open meetings challenges, they relate to public business and the newspaper's efforts "to hold public officials accountable."

The sheriff is considering the officials' request for a criminal investigation and has asked the officials to forward the newspaper's emails to him.

Kentucky has not been immune to intimidation tactics directed at members of the media and the public for exercising their rights under the open records and open meetings laws.

Who can forget the "show of force" at the May 19, 2016, Kentucky Retirement Systems Board of Trustees meeting. Three to five Kentucky State Police troopers were dispatched to the meeting to prevent then chairman Tommy Elliott from taking his seat on the board under threat of arrest. Elliott did not take his seat, but the "show of force" had the expected effect of unnerving — if not intimidating — members of the public in attendance.

The result of a citizen open meetings challenge to those action was a questionable open meetings decision from the attorney general determining that the board violated the open meetings law — despite the absence of any proof that the board summoned the State Police.

https://ag.ky.gov/orom/2016/16OMD124.doc

In September, 2017, the Associated Press reported on an alarming trend in public agencies' assault on open government. The article identified several cases in which public agencies had gone on the offensive by filing lawsuits against open records requesters for exercising their open records rights.

https://apnews.com/7f6ed0b1bda047339f22789a10f64ac4

The requesters, often private citizens with limited incomes, were forced to stand down or absorb the substantial cost of litigation to obtain public records.

One of the cases identified in the article involved the University of Kentucky's legal action against student reporters at The Kernel. In 2016, the reporters successfully appealed UK's denial of their request for investigative records relating to sexual harassment complaints against a professor. That case, and a companion case involving Western Kentucky University, remain in the courts.

https://www.facebook.com/1088036789/posts/10214215698681576?s=184659870…

A second Kentucky case often cited as an example of attempted intimidation involved the state Finance and Administration Cabinet. In November 2017, the Cabinet named as the defendant in a lawsuit the reporter for The State Journal who had prevailed in an open meetings challenge to the cabinet's action. The cabinet later agreed to substitute the newspaper as the proper party, and The State Journal prevailed in the case.

But in what may be the most singularly mind blowing attempted intimidation tactic, the City of Taylorsville demanded monetary damages — compensatory and punitive — from a frequent open records requester and constant critic in a lawsuit.

In 2017, the city challenged an attorney general's open records decision determining that Taylorsville improperly denied a request for the written responses of three city commissioners to ethics complaints filed against them by the city clerk.

The second, and more menacing aspect of the case, involved the city's demand for damages from the requester because he obtained a second public record — a memorandum written by the city clerk — by means other than an open records request.

He was "negligent," the city theorized, because he "circumvented the legal procedure to inspect public records" in obtaining the memorandum which would otherwise "have been found to be exempt from production pursuant to KRS 61.878." The city offered no legal support for this statement.

The Spencer Circuit Court resolved both issues in favor of the requester and against the city.

With respect to the city's lawsuit, the court concluded that "the purpose of the Open Records Act is to provide 'any person' with the opportunity to obtain 'free and open examination of public records'" and not to provide "an avenue of attack against a person who did not use the Open Records Act to obtain a public record."

In the order entered by the court in December 2018 the court stated that the city "wrongfully withheld public records from [the requester] without a good faith basis or plausible justification." "Equally troubling," the order continued, "is the fact that [the city] also brought an unfounded claim for compensatory and punitive damages against [the requester] in an apparent attempt at intimidation designed to dissuade him from further exercising his rights under the Open Records Act in this case and in future cases."

That case — unbelievably — is on appeal to the Court of Appeals.

Kentucky's officials and Oregon's officials, it seems, are not so very far apart.