(Dariush) Shafa, a junior at the University of Kentucky, was assigned to request the Montgomery County Jail's 24-hour jail log, a public record that displays the names of all incarcerated inmates. He spoke with jailer Dewayne Myers and two other jail officials, who refused to produce the documents.
"The jailer and two other gentlemen backed me against the wall and demanded to see my identification when I asked to see the log, and they demanded to know why I had asked for the log," Shafa said. "As David Greer instructed, I avoided their questions and I didn't tell them who I was until I felt it would be better to give them my identification and get out of there."
In each of the 114 counties, auditors requested records from four different venues: a city hall to obtain a city budget; the county courthouse to obtain travel expenses of the county judge executive -- the highest elected office in each Kentucky county; a public school board of education to obtain the contract of the superintendent; and the county jail to obtain a copy of the jail log.
"The result was that we found compliance to the Kentucky open-records law very high at city halls, very high at county courthouses, about 60 percent at school board offices and it was the lowest at county jails," Greer said. "Many of the auditors ran into problems when seeking the jail log. ... Many of the jailers that we encountered were not familiar with public records and many replied to the auditors that that law did not pertain to their office."
