Rewrite of KY open records bill is victory for open government, participatory democracy

Light appeared at the end of the HB 509 tunnel on Friday as the primary sponsor of the bill — which threatened massive damage to the open records law — agreed to re-tool the bill to omit all changes made by the sections redefining “public record.” Articles published in both the Courier Journal and Lexington Herald-Leader announced Rep. John Hodgson’s decision to “revise” and “overhaul” HB 509, a bill that, among other changes, would have excluded a majority of public records under the expansive nearly five decades-old definition of that term by redefining it. Later in the day, the bill’s co-sponsor, Rep. Jason Nemes, tweeted in response to criticism of HB 509: ”This was an inartfully drawn bill that the sponsor has said will be scrapped because it did much more than he intended it to do.”