It is no secret that Kentucky’s public pension system is in crisis. Today, initial steps toward solving the crisis were taken. The Kentucky General Assembly passed a resolution to: Establish the Kentucky Public Pensions Task Force; provide that the purpose of the task force is to study issues regarding Kentucky’s state-administered pension funds and to…
This is the scene outside budget discussions this morning in Frankfort. Does this send the message of transparency and openness?
For immediate release Tuesday, March 27, 2012 Contact: Jim Waters 270-782-2140 (FRANKFORT, Ky.) – The Bluegrass Institute called on the state’s political leaders today to increase access to the room where critical budget negotiations are being held today. The hallway leading to Room 131 of the Capitol Annex, where the state budget conference committee is…
A recent investigation by State Integrity graded all 50 states on transparency, accountability, and corruption found Kentucky with a poor grade of ‘C-‘. Not good. From stateintegrity.org …the State Integrity Investigation, a first-of-its-kind, data-driven assessment of transparency, accountability and anti-corruption mechanisms in all 50 states. Not a single state — not one — earned an A…
Al Cross points to an interesting backward step Kentucky may take on transparency: The state House has passed and sent to the Senate a bill that would allow county clerks to charge up to 50 cents per page for paper copies of any record and let them ban scanners, cameras and other devices that could…
The National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors has compiled a condensed timeline of scheduled health care reforms that make up the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) or “Obamacare”. Every citizen should take note of these changes to health care. This legislation will affect every American. Here are a couple that jumped out at me:…
Teacher evaluation, merit based pay, and the role of standardized tests are all hot topics in the education community. Nick Gillespie of the Reason Foundation recently wrote an interesting piece on teacher evaluations. A couple of quotes that stuck out to me: Teachers consistently argue that, like doctors and lawyers, they are professionals who deserve…
We have written previously about House Bill 496, which would protect companies who do business with the government from being subject to Open Records rules. The bill filed by Rep. Johnny Bell, D-Glasgow, is a response to an attorney in his district who apparently is using an earlier attorney general’s ruling to harass private companies. After…
I wrote a guest post about the recent attack on transparency in Kentucky for the Sunlight Foundation this week. Give it a read here!
My friend Zubedah Nanfuka at the Sunlight Foundation highlights my colleague Logan Morford’s wake-up call about the risks of shutting off government contractors from Kentucky’s open records laws. Why do we require government agencies (and those who contract with the government) to avail themselves of requests for information from the public? A few reasons. It’s…