Last fall, the Kentucky Court of Appeals issued a clear message government business conducted on personal cell phones as part of the public record and thus subject to open records requests.

But a controversial House bill could create a carve out shielding public information on private devices from transparency laws.

Here is more about that from our Clayton Dalton.

So this bill lives on the faultline in between the public's right to know and the individual's right to privacy.

A panel of Kentucky state senators heard House Bill 509, which deals with the Kentucky Open Records Act.

The bill requires public agencies to issue its people an internal email account that they'll use to conduct all professional communication and business.

If you have provided your members, your employees with at least one official way to communicate and telling them that they need to do their official business on that, then you do not need to search their personal devices, personal accounts.

Public agencies would not be obligated to search personal devices like cell phones with private text messages for information that might be subject to an open records request.

Before discussion, the committee adopted a new version of the bill, but opponents from both sides of the aisle were quick to highlight their issues with the new House bill.

509.

This change in the new last minute substitute exempts the governor completely from the Open Records Act.

Every constitutional officer from the Open Records Act, every elected mayor, every elected city council member, every elected school board member.

There is nothing in this bill that says don't text or signal or anything else.

And the bill expressly exempts agencies from searching for something sent other than by email.

We saw in the JCPenney's audit this week, the auditing firm said, Hey, our senior employees felt they were encouraged to use text instead of emails because they're less susceptible to open records law.

That's going to be the norm.

That's what everybody's going to do.

If you pass this bill, that is what's going to happen.

It's human nature.

After opponents testified, the committee did something unusual.

Senator Storms recognized.

Make a motion to withdraw my motion to adopt the committee.

So they unadopted the new version of the bill reverting to the one passed on the House floor.

But some lawmakers still had issues.

There is a problem, and I congratulate the representative and everybody here for trying to address the problem of privacy versus our governmental records.

There's an issue there that absolutely, positively needs to be addressed, but we haven't addressed it in a way that really accommodates the the necessity for open records, government records, to be available to citizens that are concerned.

Even some supporters expressed their hesitancy to.

Even I'm not 100% and okay I guess sometimes you have to get to are you more okay than less.

Okay so I guess I think I look at this more at the start of a conversation moving forward, but I vote on.

The committee voted to approve House Bill 509 in the same version that passed on the House floor.

One Republican joined two Democrats in voting no, and one member registered a pass vote with just a single day left before the governor's veto period.

House Bill 509 heads to the Senate floor for a full vote.

For kentucky edition, i'm clayton dalton porter.

Thank you.

Clayton and that vote could happen this evening as the senators are going to be convening after 6 p.m..