Tis the season for the gift of truth.

In releasing the actuarial analysis of the former governor's 2017 "Keeping the Promise" pension reform plan, Governor Beshear demonstrated the value of Kentucky's open government laws.

He gave us the truth.

Leaving aside the competing interpretations of the open records law that locked the former state budget director and Ellen Suetholz in a two-plus year legal battle, Kentuckians were entitled to know the truth from the moment Gabriel, Roeder, Smith submitted the analysis to the Kentucky Retirement Systems.

Assuming, purely for the sake of (unpersuasive) argument, that the actuarial analysis enjoyed protection under the preliminary documents exceptions to the open records law — a position rejected by the Office of the Attorney General and the Franklin Circuit Court — the former state budget director, here the former governor's surrogate, owed us the truth.

Nothing stood in the way of his waiver of the exceptions (erroneously) invoked to deny Suetholz's request other than blind self-interest.

Kentucky's courts established long ago that the exceptions are a shield and not a shackle. "The General Assembly," the Supreme Court opined, "did not intend to mandate an iron rule of nondisclosure whenever an exception applies."

The actuarial analysis, the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy recently wrote, "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.

The former state budget director's denial of 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."

Governor Beshear did what the law required. It is, of course, ironic that we are obliged to thank him for simply discharging his statutory duties.

Nevertheless, we are grateful for his recognition that the public has a right to know the unvarnished truth and to equip itself with the power which knowledge gives.

We should not be distracted from the real meaning and importance of the season, but this long overdue gift of the truth is just short of a Christmas miracle.