When an employee becomes aware of actual or possible wrongdoing in their agency or department, their initial and most logical inclination is to report the matter to those persons in the agency or department with power to investigate and remedy the matter. The Kentucky Supreme Court has ruled in Workforce Dev. Cabinet v. Gaines, No. 2005-SC-000965-DG (November 26, 2008) that such an internal report with the employee's own agency, department or cabinet is protected by the Kentucky Whistleblower's Act.
The Act has a remedial purpose in protecting public employees who disclose wrongdoing. It serves to discourage wrongdoing in government, and to protect those who made it public. The purpose of the Whistleblower Act is clear, and it must be liberally construed to serve that purpose.
After considering the persons and entitles specifically listed to whom a protected report may be made, the Court decided whether language protecting a report to "any other appropriate body or authority" could include an employee's own agency, department or cabinet. The Court asserted that to conclude otherwise would be "absurd," since an "internal report is often the most logical first step, and in many cases may be the only step necessary to remedy the situation." Therefore, the Court advised and ruled as follows:
We believe that "any other appropriate body or authority" should be read to include any public body or authority with the power to remedy or report the perceived misconduct. This interpretation serves the goals or liberally construing the Whistleblower Act in favor of its remedial purpose, and of giving words their plain meaning. Generally, the most obvious public body with the power to remedy perceived misconduct is the employee's own agency (or the larger department or cabinet).
