Kentucky wants more secrecy for the public incentives it offers corporations
Frankfort -- A bill pending in the Kentucky House would punch new holes in the state’s Open Records Act, making it harder to follow public incentives offered to companies by the Economic Development Cabinet.
House Bill 387, sponsored by state Rep. Jason Petrie, would create additional exemptions in the open records law to prevent several categories of information from being released to the public.
Among the proposed exemptions: the identities of shareholders in a company that gets public incentives; the business plans of such companies; records about public incentives that were offered but not awarded; and, most broadly, “information declared confidential” by the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority in administrative regulations to be written sometime in the future.
“If this bill passes, we the people will lose every right to oversee how economic development works in this state and how our public incentives are awarded,” said Amye Bensenhaver, a former assistant attorney general who is an authority on Kentucky’s open records and open meetings laws.
Read more: https://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article226453720.html
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