Attorney General Daniel Cameron’s office dinged the University of Kentucky’s compliance with state open records law in an opinion surrounding the disclosure of messages between University of Kentucky football coaches and two unnamed individuals.
Cameron, a Republican who is running for governor in 2023, opined that UK officials did not adequately respond to a request filed by the Kentucky Democratic Party for all emails and text messages between UK Football head coach Mark Stoops, an associate head coach, and two people, as well as another request for posts on Twitter from the coaches’ accounts “related to a specific person.”
The request came from a KDP staffer on Sep. 7, the same day that 2023 GOP gubernatorial candidate, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and prominent UK Athletics donor Kelly Craft announced her bid for the highest elected office in the state. On that day, Stoops and associate head coach Vince Marrow re-posted Craft’s announcement video on their Twitter accounts.
A spokesperson for UK administration confirmed to the Herald-Leader that on that same day a deputy athletics director texted senior department staff, asking them to remind coaches and other staff of university policy regarding political activities. The university bars employees from engaging in political activities “in their official capacities, including instructional responsibilities.”
Days later, the University announced that Craft and her billionaire coal magnate and philanthropist husband Joe Craft donated $7.5 million to UK Athletics, specifically for a $25 million renovation of the football program’s indoor practice field and construction of a new indoor track facility.
A spokesperson for the Kentucky Democratic Party has yet to provide a copy of their open records request, and has not confirmed the identities of the “unnamed individuals.”
Penned by Assistant Attorney General James Herrick, the opinion states that the university erred when it only responded to a portion of the KDP’s request, that the university did not explain its complaint that KDP’s request was “unclear,” and that the university unnecessarily asked the requester to identify email addresses of the individuals they identified. UK officials asked the KDP to narrow its request and the KDP declined.
“The University asserts that ‘if [the Appellant] will narrow her request, the University will respond in a reasonable period.’ The Appellant, however, has already declined to narrow her request. Therefore, it is the University’s duty to respond in a timely manner to the request as framed,” Herrick wrote.
The University could appeal Cameron’s opinion in circuit court.
In a statement, UK spokesperson Jay Blanton said that the school is “committed to transparency” and that they had responded to similar open records requests before.
“We will be reviewing the opinion before commenting further. However, to clarify, the issue we raised is regarding being able to narrow the request so that we could gather the appropriate records and respond… We were simply asking to narrow a very broad request and, in fact, had responded to a similar, but narrower request, recently from another media outlet,” Blanton said.
Relatedly, the Herald-Leader requested messages on both public and private accounts between the Crafts and the following individuals: Stoops, Marrow, UK Athletic Director Mitch Barnhart, and UK head basketball coach John Calipari.
Cameron’s office has interpreted the state open records law to exclude private devices from requests or inspection, and the university said the same in denying that request. The school did release some documents, though, on the coaches’ public email accounts.
The Craft campaign sent Stoops two emails on the day of her announcement, and Craft herself forwarded Stoops details about a Kentucky Chamber of Commerce event in June of this year. Craft also forwarded Calipari an April 2022 brief from the United Nations containing information from the President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the state of the country; UK basketball star Oscar Tshiebwe is from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Marrow’s email records contained only messages from Twitter that mentioned Craft.