Corbin lawyer promises ‘straight talking’ website

Corbin attorney David O. Smith wants to pry open the veil of secrecy he says is too prevalent in area city and county governments.
To that end, he’s created www.straighttalk.tricountyky.com, a website dedicated to, in his words, “good government, proper fiscal management of your tax dollars, hot political topics, great columns, letters” and some of his own political commentary.
“We need a source of information for the people in the tri-counties,” Smith said in an interview Tuesday. “We have some people that are going to contribute regular columns on current topics of interest. We hope to expand it to the point of having a full-time person who can serve as an investigator and a reporter.”
Smith said he’d like for his corner of the Internet to be a clearinghouse for information about county and city governments people don’t often get to see in full: audits, monthly disbursements, fiscal court orders, etc.
“These are things people don’t normally get to see,” he said. “Nobody ever gets to see what the individual checks that go out look like and who they go to. Used to, that kind of information would be published in the newspaper, but through lobbying efforts, they got it to where they didn’t have to pay newspapers to publish those things anymore.”
Smith said he plans mainly to focus on Corbin, Knox and Whitley County government, but will visit topics in Laurel County if they are related to the Corbin area. He hopes most government agencies will be cooperative in providing information for the website, but said he realizes there may be some obstacles to hurdle.
The Kentucky Open Records Act gives citizens the fairly broad right to ask for nearly all records kept by government agencies with only a few exceptions. Smith said he would use the law when needed.
“These are public records. Taxpayers paid for this stuff,” he said. “Hopefully, we’ll be able to copy it and place it on the web sit so that way people can go there and click on it and read it or print it out.”
Already, the site has one article relating to the Whitley County School System. Smith said he’s had trouble broaching certain topics through letters to the editor in local newspapers because of political pressure.
In the near future, Smith said he plans to post a list of campaign contributions given to candidates. He also intends to use the site as a forum to do away with certain electronic voting machines in Kentucky, like the ones used in Whitley County, because he claims they are unreliable and can be easily rigged.
“I think there’s plenty of good, legitimate topics out there,” he said. “To reform county government in this county is going to be a major task.”
Anyone is welcome to submit information and articles for publication on the site. Smith said it would not be a totally open forum for people to post opinions because of the need to weed out slanderous or vulgar content. The site contains a link for submitted information, or it can be mailed to an address provided, or brought by his office in person.
“You don’t have to be computer savvy if you want something put on the website,” he said. “And hopefully, people that want to read it, if they aren’t that familiar with a computer, can find someone who is to help them get there.”