And other news, if public officials are doing government business on personal cell phones, are their messages subject to the state's open records laws?

Well, that was the question before the Kentucky Supreme Court this morning.

The case involves the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Commission and a nonprofit called Kentucky Open Government Coalition.

A Franklin Circuit Court judge previously ruled that work related emails sent to private email addresses are subject to open records requests, but that text messages are not.

A court of appeals later ruled that all messages on personal devices pertaining to government business are public records, and therefore subject to Kentucky's open records laws.

Today, justices asked questions about how to weigh privacy rights, how text messages could be compelled, and more.

What would keep people who wanted to keep things out of open records?

Just doing business on their personal farms?

So, you know, send emails about work on personal phones, not government emails of government phones, you know.

What do you say about that?

Well, I mean, I think that is the primary issue.

There's nothing concrete that have any.

But I think that would be up to the agencies, to civil rights, other commission members there, board members not to do this and not do not that have a reason.

We cannot create a vehicle for doing the public's business that lives outside of the existing laws passed by the General Assembly, not only for open records, but for retention in archives.

We would be creating a massive loophole where the public would effectively lose the right to get crucial information about what the public needs to be.

Open records.

The Kentucky General Assembly attempted to address this issue on its own last year.

Republican State Representative John Hodgson introduced House Bill 509.

It would have shielded public records on private devices from being disclosed in open records requests.

That bill ultimately died in the state Senate.