Report on Ky Lege So Bad It's Kept Secret

Nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand, reports like this recommend the firing of a couple of low-level scapegoats. At worst, it might wrist-slap legislative leaders for letting things get out of control.

But what in this report could be so terrible that the lege has buried it where no one will ever find it?

John Cheves at the Herald

In October 2013, the Kentucky legislature faced a growing scandal: a lawmaker who resigned over accusations that he sexually harassed women at the Legislative Research Commission; allegations that sexual misconduct and favoritism made the LRC a hostile workplace; and the abrupt departure of longtime LRC director Bobby Sherman, whom police investigated for shredding documents at the Capitol days after he quit.

Hoping to restore public confidence, Senate President Robert Stivers and House Speaker Greg Stumbo gave a $42,410 contract to an outside group — the National Conference of State Legislatures — to perform a top-to-bottom performance audit of the $19-million-a-year LRC, the bureaucracy that runs the legislative branch of state government. The leaders pledged to publicly air and fix any problems identified.

"There's a lot of interest in what has occurred," Stivers, R-Manchester, said at the time.

That was the last the public ever learned about it.

The National Conference of State Legislatures, or NCSL, flew a team to Frankfort to interview scores of legislative staffers and lawmakers, and pore over data and documents. The group submitted a draft report of its findings in April to Stivers and Stumbo, co-chairmen of the LRC. But the leaders never responded.

As of last week, the LRC considered the report a "preliminary draft" and so refused to release it to the Herald-Leader under the Kentucky Open Records Act.

Call girls in the hearing rooms?  Meth cooking in the leadership offices?  Butt sechs in the stairwells?

Nah, probably just the usual boring Big Coal buying up everybody's ass and nobody giving a shit about some dusky-skinned secretaries whining about a little harmless attempted rape.