Lexington Herald Leader Newspaper: Confidence In Courts On Trial.

Confidence in courts on trial

Agencies that control hundreds of millions of tax dollars should open their books to public scrutiny.

No one could seriously argue otherwise.

Yet the Kentucky judiciary claims a constitutional mandate to selectively withhold information about a 10-year, $880 million courthouse building program.

New Chief Justice John D. Minton Jr. and the Supreme Court should end this abuse of public trust.

All they'd have to do is adopt a procedure requiring the Administrative Office of the Courts to follow provisions of Kentucky's Open Records Law, and establish a process for appeals.

The benefits of voluntarily opening AOC records include the potential for better decisions.

Knowledge is power. And citizens lacking information have less influence over choices that profoundly affect their hometowns and the public treasury.

In "Law and Mortar," the Herald-Leader recently revealed a lack of competition in awarding contracts for 65 new justice centers overseen by the AOC. Such an ambitious public works program raises lots of questions that demand full disclosure.

For example, in 2003, an AOC official requesting more money for the Johnson County Justice Center said the project's cost had been driven up by an increase in the prevailing wage determination.

But the AOC refused to disclose specific cost data to the leader of a statewide labor group.

Any other government agency would have been required by the Open Records Act to provide the documents.

But instead of handing over its records, the AOC told the labor official he could ferret out the information from the state budget and county records.

Herald-Leader reporters met similar roadblocks. So you can imagine the obstacles an ordinary citizen might encounter.

Such high-handed treatment of legitimate inquiries about public spending is not what the constitution's drafters had in mind when they created three equal branches of government.

The AOC's exemption from the Open Records Act is rooted in the constitutional separation of powers: Court records are part of the judicial process and subject only to the courts' control.

But construction contracts are not judicial documents. Neither are details related to financing or selecting contractors. It's legal, but AOC's arbitrary withholding of records gives the courts a bad name.

Under retired Chief Justice Joseph Lambert, the AOC's relationship with lawmakers and the public suffered. Opening the courts' administrative records would do much to repair that damage.

Separation of powers also precludes the state auditor from examining AOC oversight of the building program unless invited by the chief justice. He should issue that invitation.