Once again, the story may not be the story a reporter plans to write but instead becomes the story of the "cover up."

Here, the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting set out to do a story on commonalities in the deaths of thoroughbreds on Kentucky's racetracks and Kentucky officials' response to the unusually high incidence of death.

Instead, KYCIR got a story on the state Horse Racing Commission's refusal to operate transparently by allowing the public to inspect the records confirming —or not confirming — that it was and is discharging its duties.

Other states' horse racing regulatory agencies permit access to these records. But not Kentucky.

The Racing Commission's rationale for nondisclosure is a 2001 open records decision affirming, in part, the University of Kentucky's denial of access to records of its Livestock Diagnostic Center in cases of what was ultimately diagnosed as mare reproductive loss syndrome (involving a high incidence of foal deaths in Central Kentucky for unexplained reasons).

The 2001 open records decision can be found at:

https://ag.ky.gov/orom/20011/01ORD143.doc

(The Racing Commission also invoked the preliminary documents exception, arguing that the database into which the information is inputted is a preliminary draft — an argument that was rejected by the OAG in 1997 with respect to databases generally since they are ever changing —as new data is entered and older data deleted — and would never be "final" in the commonly understood sense.)

The 2001 decision involved tragic horse deaths. That's where the resemblance ends.

As the author of that decision, I can state — without fear of contradiction — that the deaths of those late term or full term foals in 2001 occurred tragically but mysteriously — and completely out of the public eye on private horse farms in Central Kentucky.

The horse farms brought the deceased foals to the Diagnostic Center voluntarily — and despite the highly competitive nature of horse breeding — in the hopes of uncovering the mysterious cause of death.

Disclosure of the farms' names placed them at a clear disadvantage in a highly competitive industry.

Since 2016, thousands of people have witnessed the deaths of thoroughbreds on Kentucky's racetracks — many of them with racing programs in hand to easily identify the horse, the owner, the site, and the farm where the horse was bred.

In most cases, these deaths occur all too publicly. There can be no plausible argument that disclosure of the details will cause the farms competitive harm.

In the meantime, the public is denied the right to ensure that the Horse Racing Commission is discharging it's legal obligations.

The story now is as much about the "cover up" as it is about an unexplained and ongoing tragedy in one of Kentucky's premier industries.