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Bureaucrats down at the courthouse generally hate to see them coming.
. . .
If
some elected officials privately dismiss these citizens as pests,
Assistant Attorney General Jim Ringo called them "self-appointed
watchdogs." The law is on their side and they know it. . . .
"I
don't believe they think I'm so much a nut as they think I'm an S.O.B.,"
said Randy Skaggs, an Eastern Kentucky animal-rights activist who in
1997 gained the distinction of becoming possibly the first person to
file open-records' requests in all 120 Kentucky counties.
Fighting for animal rights
The
documents Skaggs has obtained helped him raise awareness on different
animal rights issues, he said. Some of the information helped
lead to a law prohibiting animal euthanasia by gunshot, and minimum
standards for animal shelters, he said.
"It's through the usage of the open-records law that you can flush out
the truth," Skaggs said. "You can't always make the change come
about that you're hoping will come from the findings, but at least you
can expose the truth." . . .
Inspiration from dogs
Skaggs, 52, of Webbville, remembers the day he discovered the power of
Kentucky's open-records law. He was standing in his living room
in Elliott County, surrounded by about 130 barking dogs.
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Skaggs said that after he founded a no-kill animal shelter called The
Trixie Foundation in 1996, the number of dogs at his home doubled,
making him wonder how many surrounding counties were complying with
Kentucky's 50-year-old dog law. That law requires that every
county to hire a dog warden and provide access to an animal shelter.
At
first, several county judges "totally ignored me," Skaggs said.
Then
his attorney, in a phone call, told him about the open-records law.
You
don't have to be a lawyer or a journalist to use it, the lawyer told
Skaggs. Anybody with paper, pen and a stamp can make almost any
public agency sit up and pay attention, he said, and they often have
only three days to do it.
"I
knew I'd hit a gold mine," Skaggs said. "The law was on my side
for a change and it wasn't going to be up to the local yokels to
enforce it. Incredible! The attorney general's office is
the hammer because, in open-records cases, their opinion has the force
of law. Without them, it's all a waste of time." . . .
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