Few weeks have rivaled the week of October 30 to November 3 for reaffirming the principles of open government. A description of the week’s events follows. On October 30, the attorney general ruled that the Cabinet for Health and Family Services violated the Open Records Act in denying the State Journal’s request for records relating…
For Immediate Release: November 6, 2017 (FRANKFORT, Ky.) — The Kentucky Office of the Attorney General in response to a complaint filed by the Bluegrass Institute Center for Open Government has ruled that the House of Representatives violated the Open Meetings Act when it met “with a quorum present” behind closed doors to discuss a…
Does the public have a right to know how the Department of Revenue interprets Kentucky’s tax laws in recurring disputes that affect taxpayers? On October 30, 2017, the Bluegrass Institute Center for Open Government filed an amicus curiae, or friend of the court, brief in which it urged the Kentucky Supreme Court to affirm a…
When the legislature enacted KRS 61.810(2) in 1992, it did so with good intentions. The Open Meetings Act had prohibited secret meetings of a quorum of the members of a public agency where public business was discussed or action taken since its enactment in 1974. But agencies quickly found ways to circumvent the Act by…
The Kentucky Department of Education’s new director of charter schools, Earl Simms, talks to WDRB in Louisville about his new role and what is coming with charter schools in Kentucky. Check the video interview here: WDRB 41 Louisville News Kentucky’s charter school regulations have been approved by the Kentucky Board of Education and are now…
In July, 2017, we criticized an open records decision issued by the Kentucky Attorney General declaring that a public agency could place restrictions on an open records recipient’s use of nonexempt public records without subverting the intent of the Open Records Law. We suggested that an attorney general’s decision endorsing agency’s censorship of a recipient’s…
My own experience indicates that, properly conducted, digital learning can be beneficial. Essentially similar machine-based instruction certainly proved to be an improvement nearly half a century ago when I was an Air Force Instructor Pilot programming the first generation of automated teaching technology to go operational in that service’s pilot training program. Student pilots picked…
Thanks to the passage of Senate Bill 1 during the 2017 Kentucky Regular Legislative Session, Kentucky’s current education standards for English language arts and mathematics, which are currently cut-and-paste adoptions of the Common Core State Standards, are going through a change. However, it remains to be seen how dramatic a change will actually occur. Part…
One of my first undertakings as director of the Bluegrass Institute’s Center for Open Government was an open meetings challenge to the Jefferson County Board of Education’s decision to conduct a board meeting in a private law office on the 28th floor of an office building in downtown Louisville. The Open Meetings Law requires public…
But, minority opportunity remains an issue AdvanceKentucky remains important motivator for improvement in AP statistics New performance results for Advanced Placement (AP) courses have been released by the Kentucky Department of Education, and there is some good news tempered by some continuing questions about equity and access in these numbers.