News of Amendment 1 to HB 194 — which, if enacted, will effectively vest control of creation of, and timing of public access to, actuarial analyses of pension bills in the presiding officers of the House and Senate or the LRC Director — coincided with a Brechner Center for Freedom of Information listserv inquiry to open government coalitions across the country about the proliferation of confidentiality provision in each coalition's state public records law.

Some confidentiality provisions appear as ravening wolves. Others appear as wolves in sheep's clothing.

Some are unapologetic exercises of legislative prerogative over the public's right to public information. Some are more subtle.

Stated simply, some are transparent, and some are opaque.

All are to be approached with trepidation, carefully vetted, and enacted only after their full implications are understood.

Amendment 1 to HB 194 falls into the latter category.

As introduced, HB 194 "establishes additional requirements for the completion of the actuarial analysis required for bills pertaining to state-administered retirement systems."

Additionally, HB 194 "[requires] projecting costs/savings over a 30 year period rather than 20 years, [requires] completing the analysis in a format established by the Legislative Research Commission, and requir[es] the front page of the analysis to include summary information."

No threat to public access here.

But Amendment 1, sponsored by Speaker of the House David Osborne, "provides that when the General Assembly is not in session and a pension bill has been pre-filed, the Legislative Research Commission (LRC) shall not transmit the request for an actuarial analysis unless authorized by the House Speaker or President of the Senate."

Further, it "provides that when the General Assembly is in session and a pension bill is filed, the retirement systems or its actuary shall not begin completion of an actuarial analysis on the bill until the LRC director or his or her designee notifies the system that the bill has been posted in committee or will be on a Senate committee agenda."

In other words, the timing of the public's right to know the impact of a proposed pension bill will once again be in the hands of someone other than the retirement systems that commissioned it.

As Jim Carroll, President of Kentucky Government Retirees, tweeted on January 28, "The new amendment to House Bill 194 co-opts the authority of KRS to provide actuarial analyses in a timely manner. Did we learn nothing from Matt Bevin's lack of transparency on pension issues?"

Control of public access to the actuarial analysis of former governor Bevin's 2017 "Keeping the Promise" pension reform plan was wrestled away from the Kentucky Employees Retirement System by then State Budget Director John Chilton — as surrogate for the former governor — with the apparent goal of hiding the inconvenient truths it contained.

Upon its voluntary release by newly elected Governor Beshear, the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy wrote that the actuarial analysis to which the Bevin administration denied the public access, "has lessons that should apply to Kentucky's pension debate in the future." Those same lessons could have, and should have, applied to the pension debate in the last two legislative sessions.

Franklin Circuit Court Judge Phillip Shepherd said it best in his June 2019 opinion affirming the public's right of access to the actuarial analysis.

The former state budget director's denial of Ellen Suetholz's request "*was a conscious, deliberate strategy to suppress public debate on an important issue of public policy*.

"Certainly, the budget director is free to dispute or contest the conclusions reached by the actuaries. The budget director has every right to point out any problems or concerns he has identified in these actuarial studies; that is a necessary part of the public debate on this important issue. Such public debate of this important issue should be encouraged. *But he cannot stifle the public debate on these issues and suppress criticism of the governor's policies, by hiding the contents of the actuarial studies paid for by the public and the members of the KRS*."

Amendment 1 to HB 194 presents a substantial threat to our statutory right to know, not — perhaps — in the form of a ravening wolf but certainly in the form of a wolf in sheep's clothing.

Amendment 1 to HB 194 cleared the House on January 28. The battle now turns to the Senate to preserve retirement system autonomy and transparency.