ERLANGER, Ky. — Erlanger's first Open Records Request Task Force meeting was much more heavily attended than Chairman Tyson Hermes expected.
"Honestly, I didn't think we'd have enough people show up to have an official meeting," Hermes said.
The city needs two council members plus a third person to hold a task force meeting, according to the councilman, but the hearing on potential new limitations over who can get public records requests filled and how drew a handful of upset locals ready to make their concerns heard.
"I feel like they're trying to destroy transparency," said long-time Erlanger resident Kevin Brinkman.
Brinkman and others said they came to the meeting after seeing the agenda posted on the city's website and social media.
Hermes told the handful of people huddling around a table and scattered in chairs in the city's meeting hall that public records requests have expanded from 98 in 2018 to 350 in 2024. If requests maintain a steady rate in 2026, he said the city would fill 530 requests.
"To me, that's concerning," Hermes said.
WATCH: We go one-on-one with the task force chair about transparency concerns
The councilman blamed out-of-state requests for police body camera footage from people attempting to find social media content, "bad lawyers" and requests from "artificial intelligence" for the more than 500% increase in records requests.
Hermes said to help ease the burden that increased requests place on city staff, Erlanger could start charging for requests filled digitally.
"Personally, I think it would be OK to charge for some staff time, especially when it's taking seven or eight hours to fulfill some of these requests," he said.
The meeting agenda also suggested refusing requests seen to be used as a "political weapon" and included a topic for discussion labeled "just say 'no.'"
Hermes said the intent behind that discussion was to clarify what the city clerk could and couldn't flatly deny.
"We are trying to make sure that she can feel comfortable in just saying no to some things," he said.
Late in the meeting, several people loudly questioned the legality of any limitations and called for the city to simply rely on existing state law.
"The law is what the law is, you know? I don't even know why they have to have a task force," Brinkman said.
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Hermes said the task force was an attempt to openly explore what the best practices could be under the law with public input.
"When we don't seek that, and we just try to produce this stuff on our own, we get accused of being dictators and not transparent," he said.
Without reaching any concrete conclusions, the task force set a second meeting date for 5 p.m. on April 14.
