In a recent editorial, the State Journal editorial board expressed the hope that the Kentucky State University Presidential Search Committee "will do their due diligence and properly vet all potential candidates for the job. Kentucky State needs a president that can right the ship and look to the future."

The "committee of 10 stakeholders and Council on Postsecondary Education (CPE) Vice President and General Counsel Travis Powell," The State Journal wrote, "will be trusted with some of the most important decisions in the 135-year history of Kentucky State University — selecting candidates for the institution's next president during an unprecedented period of financial uncertainty.

"The group will be charged with conducting the search process, providing a summary of candidates and evaluating two to three finalists for the board of regents to vote on.

"One thing is clear whoever is tapped to lead the institution will be undertaking a monumental task."

To this, the Kentucky Open Government Coalition would add:

The KSU Presidential Selection Committee must be equipped with the fundamental legal tools necessary to discharge these duties.

The Committee must first acknowledge that it is a public agency for open records and open meetings purposes and that its conduct and communications are governed by those laws.

In Lexington Herald Leader v University of Kentucky Presidential Search Committee, the Kentucky Supreme Court determined that a UK presidential search committee, though an advisory body, was subject to the Open Meetings Act and that although it could discuss individual candidates in closed session, per KRS 61.810(1)(f), it was not permitted to discuss general personnel matters [or the selection process, qualification sought, salary and benefit range, etc] in secret."

https://casetext.com/case/lexington-herald-leader-v-univ-of-ky

The Court admonished UK that "the right of the public to be informed transcends any loss of efficiency."

Rarely has that right to be informed been greater or the stakes higher, suggesting the need for maximum transparency in the KSU presidential search. Thus far, neither the holdover administrators, legal counsel, nor regents have demonstrated any interest in the public's right to be informed, instead conducting three hour closed sessions and slow walking (or denying) public records requests on the thinnest of pretexts.

KSU's Presidential Search Committee — some of whom will be laymen — must receive at least one hour of open meetings and open records training at the earliest possible opportunity — ideally at their first meeting — lest they fall into the same trap that UK's Presidential Search Committee fell in 1987, exposing the KSU committee to successful legal challenge and potentially compromising the selection process.

The Kentucky Open Government Coalition stands ready to provide that training.

If the committee errs, let it err on the side of openness in the hope of restoring a measure of trust among the staff, the faculty, the community, and the state.

Then we must turn our attention to retraining the KSU Board of Regents whose strict adherence to Kentucky's open government laws has been questioned on multiple occasions.