Sadly, all of the open records issued by the attorney general's staff last week involve agency failure to understand and adhere to basic legal requirements: no response, untimely response, failure to afford requester timely access to records, imposition of excessive copying fees, failure to post rules governing access to records, restricting hours of access to records during regular business hours.

This is "the easy stuff." The law is clear and no interpretation is required.

It is indefensible that after 44 years, the courts and the attorney general's staff are still compelled to review agency violations of these basic requirements.

With adequate education and training, as well as a "change in culture" recognizing that the value of the open records law exceeds the "nuisance" factor, agency compliance with theses requirements should be second nature.

Judicial and administrative resources should be reserved for review of issues of subtle interpretation of a statutory exception to a particular record or records sets (like the recent open records decision involving partial denial of access to motor vehicle records by a county clerk under the federal Drivers Privacy Protection Act) or to issues "of first impression" (like the recent open records decision involving metadata).

So in response to Bluegrass Politics' morning Tweet, this is really nothing new "under the sun."

Sad, but true.