The following letter to the editor appeared in the Lexington Herald-Leader last week.

More Kentuckians would be outraged if they knew that the state's public pension system was legislated into secrecy in the early 1970s.Included in KRS 61.661 is language that ensures public pension disbursements are not subject to open records laws. The law states "each current, former, or retired member's account shall be administered in a confidential manner..."

Why is this a problem? Kentucky is currently saddled with — and broken by — a $34 billion unfunded public pension liability. Taxpayers don't have a chance of holding their government accountable without transparency.

Taxpayers have access to public employee salary information, state contracts and school districts and executive branch check registers.

All of those items are available via the Kentucky Open Record Act so that taxpayers can understand how their hard earned money is being spent.

But if a taxpayer wants to know how much money is being spent to fund the gold-plated pension of a part-time legislator, well, they are out of luck.

Kentucky doesn't allow transparency in its public pension system.

It is time for our legislators to have the courage to force transparency in the Kentucky Retirement Systems.

Logan Morford

Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions

You can read more about Kentucky's public pension crisis here.