Friday, February 28, 2020

Nine pages or 15,000? After four years of battling in court, UK gives records to Herald-Leader

By Linda Blackford, Lexington Herald-Leader

It’s taken four years, but the Lexington Herald-Leader has finally prevailed against the University of Kentucky in an open records case that should have ended shortly after it was filed.

It’s taken four years and four courts to decide that UK did not have the right to withhold documents that would explain why it paid $4 million back to the federal government because of a cardiology clinic it acquired in Hazard. Although the Herald-Leader prevailed at all levels of the case, from the Attorney General’s office to the Supreme Court, UK kept fighting to keep this public business hidden away.

When the Kentucky Court of Appeals ordered UK to turn over related documents, UK attorneys said only nine pages were relevant. When the Herald-Leader challenged that, UK turned over the real number — at least 15,000 pages.

In all, this case has cost taxpayers roughly $118,000 in legal fees to an outside law firm in the past four years. That’s small potatoes at a school with a $2 billion budget. But it’s still public money used in a misguided and stubborn quest to show that UK knows best and the public does not need to be aware of what the state’s flagship university is doing.

SECRETS, SECRETS

It all started with a secret meeting.

On May 2, 2016, the UK Board of Trustees attended their regular dinner gathering the night before their monthly meeting. But they neglected to announce the main course: A Power Point presentation by a national healthcare lawyer who explained why UK had suddenly paid $4.1 million back to the federal Medicaid and Medicare programs that had been charged by a UK cardiology clinic in Hazard.

The Lexington Herald-Leader challenged the meeting as being illegal under the state Open Meetings law, and asked for a host of documents, including audits of the clinic. UK refused, citing two exemptions to the Open Records law: That the documents were preliminary (even though the payments had been made and the clinic had been sold) and that they were protected under attorney-client privilege. So the case went to the state Attorney General.

The Attorney General's Office said it would review the documents “in camera,” or privately, to see if they should be released. UK refused, and appealed to Fayette Circuit Court.

Circuit Judge Pamela Goodwine said UK should turn over the documents. UK handed over records detailing its attorney’s $1 million in billing and the Power Point presentation that was given to the board. But it refused to release additional records, including audits, and appealed the case to the Kentucky Court of Appeals.

The Kentucky Court of Appeals flatly rejected UK’s argument that the records were preliminary and agreed with Tom Miller, the Herald-Leader’s attorney.

“The University’s position is novel, but we do not find any authority supporting it,” the decision says. “Indeed, there is no dispute that the University took its final action based upon the information revealed during the audits. Records which are of an internal, preliminary and investigatory nature lose their exempt status once they are adopted by the agency as part of its action.”

UK then asked the Kentucky Supreme Court to review the decision. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

It returned to Fayette Circuit Court, where both Judge John Reynolds and his successor, Judge Julie Goodman, ordered UK to give the documents to the Herald-Leader, which it did last week. In coming weeks, the Herald-Leader will read through all of them and report to the public exactly what UK was trying to hide.

There are larger principles at stake than the fate of one clinic. In recent cases, UK, led by General Counsel William Thro, has argued that it is above the law, above the private scrutiny of the Attorney General, and above the public interest.

It is difficult to understand this recalcitrance, which not only keeps what could be short-lived controversies in the public eye for years, but makes President Eli Capilouto’s claims of openness and transparency look hollow. We’ve seen the same stubbornness in a far more serious case, that of the student newspaper, the Kentucky Kernel, and its quest to uncover the truth about the abuse of students in a sexual harassment case involving a professor. The Kernel is also represented by Miller.

UK’s blanket denial of documents was also overturned by the Court of Appeals and is now before the state Supreme Court.

“Here, there is more at stake than simple curiosity. The public has an interest in the investigative methods used by its public agencies and to know that a publicly funded university has complied with all federal and state laws,” Judge Kelly Thompson of Bowling Green wrote in the Court of Appeals decision. “In this instance, the university has not yet made any attempt to comply with the Open Records Act in any meaningful way. It has taken the indefensible position that the records are exempt because it says they are and it must be believed. That position is directly contrary to the goal of transparency under the Open Records Act.”

A DISTURBING TREND

As UK points out, it does respond quickly and positively to 90 percent of the numerous information requests it receives every year.

“There have been a handful of cases where we have sought to protect records,” said spokesman Jay Blanton. “Those handful of cases revolve around three issues and exceptions that the law – and our moral obligations – provide for: protecting the privacy of students, victims and patients; protecting attorney-client communications and work product and protecting the preliminary recommendations of administrators to ensure the kind of candid conversations and dialogue necessary to get at the facts.”

Still, in this kind of case, UK’s thwarting of the Open Records Act is costing it both good will and good money. It is a tax-payer supported institution, devoted to learning, open minds and service to the Commonwealth. Its residents have a right to know what it is doing. This fight has done nothing for that greater good.

The case also shows the importance of Kentucky’s robust open-records laws, and highlights an important issue now at stake in the shifting and challenging economic climate affecting local media. For decades, the Herald-Leader and other local newspapers in Kentucky and nationally have championed transparency, open records and open meetings as watchdogs of public agencies and government at all levels.

That role is more important today than ever as public institutions like UK increasingly push back against laws that require the public’s business to be done out in the open.

This case took four years, wound its way to the Kentucky Supreme Court and back, and involved thousands of dollars in legal fees paid by the Herald-Leader, with support from the Kentucky Press Association.

Amye Bensenhaver, a former assistant attorney general who wrote numerous open-records and open-meeting decisions, said the Herald-Leader decision is an important one.

“The court’s analysis in this case will be regularly cited to refute agency attempts to broadly construe the preliminary documents exception — long considered the most abused exceptions — and the attorney-client privilege/work product doctrine — rising stars in the galaxy of overused exceptions,” she noted. “The final victory is the Herald-Leader’s and ours.”

Saturday, February 15, 2020

National report gives data on records decisions, notes staff attorneys give state agencies an edge; expert says noncompliance is likely to increase

Based in part on a post by the Kentucky Open Government Coalition

The National Freedom of Information Coalition recently issued a white paper, ”Blueprint to Transparency: Analyzing Non-compliance and Enforcement of Open Records Laws in Select U.S. States.”
Kentucky is one of the states that is featured. The white paper gives recent data showing widespread violation of the Kentucky Open Records Act, and notes the disadvantage records requesters face when fighting with taxpayer-paid lawyers — an issue currently before the Kentucky General Assembly.
NFOIC reviewed open-records decisions by the Kentucky attorney general in 2016 and 2017 revealed a high prevalence of noncompliance: Almost half of open-records decisions in 2016 and 2017 exhibited a violation of the state Open Records Act (49 and 48 percent, respectively).
Former assistant attorney general Amye Bensenhaver, co-founder of the Kentucky Coalition for Open Government and primary author of open-government decisions for the attorney general for 25 years, told NFOIC that she expects noncompliance will grow because she sees "now-common impediments to access that were uncommon in the past—agency failure to conduct an adequate search for responsive records; agency rejection of requests as overbroad; unjustified agency delays in producing public records. The list of evasive tactics is growing."

Of the 511 decisions NFOIC reviewed, 74 (17%) found that an agency improperly withheld records; 60 (12%) found an improperly stated exemption. Louisville lawyer Jon Fleischaker, chief author of the records law, said public agencies often cite improper exemptions and ignore settled law.
“You have public officials that are reaching,” Fleischaker said. “And if they have a lawyer and they go to the books they’ll figure out that there are a lot of cases that say ‘No, they can’t do that. This has already been decided.’”
Also among the most common types of violations are those based on time, such as failing to respond to a request or allow inspection in a timely manner; 84 of the 511 records decisions (about 16%) exhibited a such violations, which are treated as procedural as opposed to substantive violations.
“I don’t consider, and I know Fleischaker doesn’t consider, a procedural violation a petty violation. It’s still a violation,” Bensenhaver said.
Playing with public money
Open-records decisions have the force of law, but the losing party can take the case to circuit court, and state agencies often do. Any civil penalties for violations fall on the agency, not the individual officials.
Because taxpayers cover the cost, a state agency has the resources — in the form of attorneys on the state payroll — to devote to litigation and the appellate process, allowing the state to appeal as many times as allowable to avoid or delay disclosing the records.
Unlike requesters, the public agency usually does not incur hourly attorneys fees.
“They’re using their time [on the public records dispute] instead of someplace else ... but it’s easy to hide that expense,” Fleischaker said. “It goes toward a different line item: Personnel. And nobody goes back to look at that stuff.”
Jason Riley of Louisville's WDRB-TV said some state agencies feel they are exempt from the law since penalties aren’t rigorously enforced against them: “Some agencies know how to work the system in their favor so as to not have to provide records they don’t want to provide unless a citizen or media outlet is willing to pay a lot of money and wait.”
Bensenhaver says no other state agency is as notorious for violating the records act than the Kentucky State Police. In the decisions where KSP was a party in 2016 and 2017, the attorney general found the agency in violation of the records act 19 times, or 59% of the time.
Riley found KSP was the most frequent violator of the act over the last five years​, after conducting a review​ of attorney-general decisions.
Bensenhaver, Riley and Fleischaker said the KSP frequently appeals decisions, which lengthens litigation and makes proceedings more expensive for records requesters.
“We won about $11,000 in fines and attorney fees earlier this year” from the KSP, Riley said, “but they have appealed that ruling.”
Large local governments also have attorneys on staff, but many if not most use contract attorneys and thus incur hourly fees.
House Bill 232, sponsored by Rep. Maria Sorolis, D-Louisville, would require agencies to pay attorneys’ fees if a court finds a record was willfully withheld; her HB 309 would award fees when there is no “justiciable reason” for an agency's denial of a complaint that it violated the Open Meetings Act. Neither bill has been posted for committee consideration; Sorolis is a Democrat, newly elected to a House with a Republican supermajority.
The national report says, “According to a ​2010 examination of state transparency laws​, the vast majority of state jurisdictions explicitly either allow for, or mandate, attorney fee shifting in open-government dispute cases because these disputes confer a societal good, not just personal benefit . . . to ensure that plaintiffs are able to find lawyers to represent them; to attract competent counsel to seek redress of statutory rights; and to even the fight when citizens challenge a public entity.”

Monday, January 20, 2020

Kentucky courts still grappling with records of probes into sexual harassment at universities

From the Kentucky Open Government Coalition

An article in the Wisconsin State Journal reminds us that the issue of access to university records relating to investigations into sexual harassment by faculty and staff has yet to be finally resolved by Kentucky’s courts.

The open records lawsuit pitting Western Kentucky University against the University of Kentucky student newspaper, The Kernel, and it’s own student newspaper, The College Heights Herald, remains in Warren Circuit Court. This follows a 2017 Kentucky attorney general’s ruling that WKU improperly relied on the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act as the basis for withholding sexual harassment investigative records.

In a separate lawsuit pitting UK against the Kernel, the Kentucky Court of Appeals in 2019 affirmed a 2016 attorney general’s decision, reversed a local judge's opinion, and ultimately rejected UK’s claim that FERPA protects university investigative records into allegations of sexual harassment.

However, the court returned that lawsuit against the Kernel to Fayette Circuit Court for further review on other privacy issues. There it remains.

The court slammed UK for failing to “fulfill its statutory mandates under the Act” and making no “attempt to comply with the Open Records Act in any meaningful way.”

Rejecting the suggestion that the Kernel was motivated by “simple curiosity,” the court recognized that “the public has an interest in the investigatory method used by its public agencies and to know that a publicly funded university has complied with all state and federal laws.”

It criticized the university for taking “the indefensible position that the records are exempt because it says they are and it must be believed.”

The University of Wisconsin case presents similar facts and similar illegal university secrecy. It involves a tenured ecology professor who retired in the midst of an investigation that confirmed allegations of sexual harassment.

Neither the professor nor his victims were satisfied by the university’s investigation and subsequent “cover up.”

Echoing the Kentucky Court of Appeals in the UK v. Kernel case, Frank LaMonte, director of the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information at the University of Florida and former director of the Student Press Law Center, observes: “There’s a compelling public interest in the investigative process. The public needs to be able to see that cases are being taken seriously, processed promptly and dealt with appropriately. If you cannot see the records, the university is left on a ‘trust me’ honor system. We know from experience that the ‘trust me’ honor system doesn’t always work.”

Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, notes that release of redacted records helps the public assess how fair the investigation was to both parties: “This is a case in which a public employee’s misconduct was affirmed by an investigation. The public has a right to know what that misconduct was beyond ‘sexual harassment,’ which could mean anything and include a wide range of behavior.”