There was a brief but revealing exchange at the December 21 marathon city council meeting that leads The Martin Chronicles to believe that Mayor Martin has finally woken up to the fact that his Open Records stonewalling has landed him in some serious trouble.
The Chairman of the City’s Code Enforcement Board (CEB) has been requesting documents the board needs to properly perform its job for months. Over those many months Martin and his interim city clerk have been telling the chairman that those records don’t exist. The interim city clerk even sent an official letter to the chairman telling him that. Sources tell us the interim city clerk may end up regretting the day she signed and sent that letter. More about that shortly.
Back to the December 21 exchange. Martin told the chairman that after an “eight hour search” in the city building the requested documents had finally been located. When pressed about why it took so long to produce the documents, Martin resorted to his, “I’m the CEO. I located your documents. Get over it. We’re moving on.” But Martin may soon find this incredible delay in the release of the documents just isn’t that easy to brush off.
Have you ever driven by the Villa Hills city building? It is a converted tri-level home. How many rooms do you think it has? Maybe 8? Could it be 10? Certainly not many more than that. How many storage areas? How many filing cabinets? How many desk drawers? Aren’t there four clerks falling over one another in that building who should have been searching for the requested documents for these many months? It ain’t The Pentagon-or is that The Octagon?
A reasonable person would have every right to wonder how it is possible that important public documents could go missing for many months if that many clerks were searching in a building that size with limited storage capacity. That same reasonable person could also wonder why the mayor waited so many months to launch that “eight hour search” for those important public documents. If for no other reason than that Kentucky Open Records statutes require a government agency to produce requested documents in three business days or provide an explanation and a reasonable time frame for when the documents will be made available.
Here’s the key. A government agency is certainly not expected to produce records it does not have in its control. That is common sense. But by trying to play the hero, Martin walked into a trap he set for himself. You see, he has now proven that the City absolutely had the requested records in its control. So, what defensible reason is there to have taken many months to produce those records?
There has been a story floating around town for many months that Martin indeed had the documents in his possession and made the conscious decision not to provide the information. What possible motivation could he have to commit such a flagrant act of official misconduct? It could be something as simple as “the CEO” resenting his “broad powers” being challenged in any way. Whatever the reason, it flies in the face of state statute.
Council voted to give Special Counsel Phil Taliaferro the authority to interview every city employee. That process will begin shortly. When the clerks are questioned about the Open Records issues, and specifically the whereabouts of the documents the CEB chairman had been requesting for months, what will the employees say? And if it turns out that there was a willful decision taken to withhold those documents, how will the interim city clerk explain her signature on the official letter stating the records didn’t exist?
