For the second time in just over a month, the Franklin Circuit Court has ordered an executive branch agency to pay the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting's attorneys' fees in an open records dispute relating to disclosure of records documenting allegations of sexual harassment within the agency.

Judge Phillip Shepherd ordered the Finance and Administration Cabinet to pay KYCIR $19,000 in attorneys' fees and penalties for willfully withholding records identifying employees against whom substantiated and unsubstantiated allegations of sexual harassment were made.

On April 10, the court ordered the Labor Cabinet to pay KYCIR more than $17,000 for refusing to disclose the identity of an employee who was accused of sexual harassment but whose case was never fully investigated when he transferred to another state agency.

Judge Shepherd cited the Finance Cabinet's refusal to cooperate with the attorney general's open records staff by honoring the staff's request to confidentially review the records — in order to discharge the duties assigned to the staff under the open records law — as the partial basis for his decision to award penalties in addition to attorneys's fees.

The open records law permits a court to award attorneys' fee, costs, and penalties of up to $25 per day for each day records are willfully withheld.

Judge Shepherd characterized the cabinet's actions as a willful subversion of the attorney general's authority "by pushing the matter to circuit court, and, as a result," causing KYCIR to incur "significant costs and delay."

The closing sentence in this article is the real "zinger." "Both the Labor Cabinet and the Finance and Administration Cabinet have appealed the ruling."

Kentucky's taxpayers will foot the bill as the attorneys' fees and penalties ratchet up while these cases — which deal with well established principles of law — proceed through the courts.