The report was obtained by WHAS 11 News through Kentucky Open Records Act. It says former Transportation Cabinet Deputy Secretary Crystal Ducker used a 7 month old report on internet usage to suspend eight employees in the Cabinet's Office of Business and Occupational Development. Most of those employees are African-American. They claim Ducker suspended them in retaliation for their complaints to the I.G.'s office about their boss, Jose Ceballos.

All of the employees appealed their suspensions to the state Personnel Board. All but one has now settled with the Transportation Cabinet which agreed to wipe the disciplinary actions off the employees personnel records in return for a promise by the employees not to sue the cabinet.

But what I found the most interesting tidbit in the report was an allegation from the Transportation Cabinet's records custodian, Ann Stansel, that Ducker ordered her not to release the results of a query into the internet usage in the Secretary's Office even though those documents should have been subject to the Open Records Law. Stansel told investigators that the internet usage reports for the Secretary's Office "were incriminating."

Former Secretary Bill Nighbert told me he wasn't involved in the disciplining of the employees so he had no comment. I left a phone message at Ducker's home and haven't heard from her. Nighbert, Ducker and other Fletcher administration officials in the Transportation Cabinet refused to be interviewed by the Inspector General's Office, presumably because the I.G.'s office sided with fired employee Mike Duncan in his battle with the Cabinet.