Gov. Andy Beshear said he hopes his administration and state Auditor Allison Ball’s office “can work through” access issues around a database in a Thursday press conference.?

Earlier this week, Ball, a Republican, sent a “demand letter” to Beshear, a Democrat, and Cabinet for Health and Family Services Secretary Eric Friedlander over access to the database, iTWIST, which includes abuse and neglect reports and cabinet case files. She said the cabinet refused to allow the Commonwealth Office of the Ombudsman access to records in the database.?

When asked about the letter Thursday, Beshear said the issue “isn’t some dramatic disagreement that has any type of political tones at all” and arose after changes to the ombudsman’s office. In 2023, the legislature created the Commonwealth Office of the Ombudsman, an independent office attached to the auditor’s office, effective July 1. It replaced the Office of the Ombudsman and Administrative Review, previously part of the cabinet.?

Beshear said statutes about what access the previous office had access to were not updated to reflect the new office, limiting access to what can be shared with someone outside of the cabinet.?

“I’m sure the General Assembly intended for the ombudsman to be able to do what they need to do, and I support them having the access, but we have a written statute that is on the books that says we can’t provide certain access,” Beshear said. “And I don’t think the General Assembly is going to tell me that if you think that you know what we wanted you to do, then you can ignore the other statutes that we passed on the books.”?

The governor said the ombudsman’s office wants full access to the database, but the cabinet feels “like they’d be violating the law.”?

“This is something that I hope we can work through in a way that works until January, and then ultimately, we can get a statutory — either revocation for the limitations or a change that helps us to get this done,” Beshear said. “But it would be an interesting precedent if different chairmen or chairwomen of the General Assembly told me I can ignore certain statutes on the books because of what they were trying to do.”?

Joy Pidgorodetska Markland, communications director in the auditor’s office, wrote in an email to the Kentucky Lantern Thursday that Beshear’s administration had “never raised this specific statutory concern despite going through two legislative sessions and numerous meetings with our office and sponsoring legislators” in the past two years. Markland added that the auditor’s office has not received a response from Beshear or the cabinet to the letter sent this week and it “is disingenuous to say that he is working with us.”?

“The statute that governs this transition clearly states that all files and records must be made available to us,” Markland said. “The Cabinet is misconstruing a law in the juvenile code that actually permits our access to the database. Moreover, the juvenile code would have no bearing on adult records that are contained in the database, and therefore, all of those should be made available to us immediately. The Governor wants to say this is a dispute about the law, but it is actually about his decision to obstruct us from protecting children and other vulnerable Kentuckians. On this point, our office continues to receive complaints about the Cabinet everyday.”