Bevin releases emails about road project after Stumbo sues for them

Gov. Matt Bevin released 13 pages of emails concerning the cancellation of the East Brannon Road project in Jessamine County a few hours after House Speaker Greg Stumbo sued him Friday in Franklin Circuit Court for not disclosing them.

The emails mostly deal with how to handle a reporter’s request for information about the road project.

In response, Stumbo spokesman Brian Wilkerson said the Democratic lawmaker will “still need assurance, from the court, that the emails are all of the records.”

Bevin’s deputy general counsel, Chad Meredith, told Stumbo’s general counsel, Matt Stephens, late Friday that the governor’s office was “surprised that you have chosen to circumvent the normal open records process by filing a lawsuit rather than pursuing the typical course of appealing to the attorney general’s office, or even asking for a reconsideration of our response.”

In most instances, a person who has been denied records that they sought under the Open Records Act seeks an opinion from the attorney general’s office before filing a lawsuit, but the law allows either course of action.

“Your act of jumping the gun has done nothing more than produce an unnecessary lawsuit that clogs up our courts and wastes taxpayer resources,” Meredith said.

Meredith also said the 13 withheld pages of emails were exempt from inspection under the Open Records Act because they are preliminary documents but were released Friday “to avoid a superfluous legal battle.”

Earlier in the day, Stumbo said Bevin had publicly released portions of emails over the past several months but responded to his requests for records by claiming they were exempt from disclosure.

“The governor has released selected emails to the public while refusing to be transparent in open records requests to release all emails relating to the East Brannon project,” Stumbo said in a news release about his lawsuit.

“As a former attorney general who issued opinions concerning the open records laws, I don’t believe you can release portions of emails while claiming the remaining are privileged from disclosure,” he said. “The Open Records Act and the people of the commonwealth require that the governor be transparent in the commonwealth’s business dealings.”

A special House panel Stumbo created earlier this month is investigating claims that the Bevin administration delayed an $11 million extension of East Brannon Road in Jessamine County as political retribution against Democratic Rep. Russ Meyer of Nicholasville for not switching political parties last December. The project had been approved by former Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear.

Bevin has said he delayed the project because the Beshear administration didn’t secure a necessary portion of land before the deadline to begin work. The state was contractually obligated to pay The Allen Co. $625,000 in damages because of the delay.

One of the emails Bevin released Friday is from Bevin’s chief of staff, Blake Brickman, dated Aug. 30 and sent to the administration’s legal and communications staff.

It claimed Meyer is “a terrible steward of taxpayer dollars,” noting several of Meyer’s financial deals as mayor of Nicholasville.

On Oct. 21, Bevin released emails to discredit Meyer’s claim that the governor delayed the project as punishment.

Those emails from state transportation officials said Meyer knew about the problems with the road project as early as October 2015, before Bevin was even elected.

Meyer did not dispute the emails, but said if the land acquisition was such a problem for the contract “why did they award the contract in the first place?” The Bevin administration signed the contract on Dec. 10, two days after Bevin took office. But nearly all of the contract work, including awarding a bid to the contractor, took place under the Beshear administration.

Meyer, who is finishing his first term in office, is facing Republican Robert L. Gullette III in the Nov. 8 election. Republicans hope to gain control of the state House for the first time since 1921. Democrats now outnumber Republicans in the chamber 53-47.

The special House panel held its second meeting Friday but it was short. Two state Transportation Cabinet employees who had been scheduled to testify did not appear.

Bevin’s general counsel, Steve Pitt, informed the committee’s chairman, Democratic Rep. Jim Wayne of Louisville, on Thursday that they would not be testifying because the Bevin administration does not believe the panel has legal authority to investigate the road project and summon witnesses for testimony under oath.

The committee did hear its general counsel, Eli Richardson of Nashville, Tenn., review records it already had received. He kept stressing that it would be better for the committee to hear from witnesses who wrote the records to “get their context.”

Wayne said the presentation gave the members “a framework” of the handling of the Brannon Road project in the Beshear and Bevin administrations.

The only Republican on the four-member committee, Rep. Jim Stewart III of Flat Lick, protested the hiring of Richardson at $225 an hour, saying he would prefer a Kentucky attorney.

Wayne said he tried to find a Kentucky attorney but many of them had conflicts of interest. He acknowledged that the state’s usual pay rate for legal work is $125 an hour but noted that the Bevin administration is paying $250 an hour for legal investigation of activities in the Beshear administration.

Wayne also said he does not plan to subpoena any witnesses to testify, saying the panel will work in an open, transparent environment. It is to meet again Nov. 4.

This story was originally published October 28, 2016 at 4:52 PM with the headline "Bevin releases emails about road project after Stumbo sues for them."