State tosses ethics complaint against past Kenton County election officer

The Kentucky Board of Elections has tossed an ethics complaint against former Republican member of the Kenton County Board of Elections Scott Kimmich, who filed paperwork signaling his intention to run for a spot on the Kenton County Fiscal Court with Kentucky Registry of Election Finance on June 16.

Erlanger Council Member Jennifer Jasper-Lucas lodged the complaint against Kimmich in early July, alleging he had used his position to obtain confidential information about poll workers for personal gain so that he could backhandedly get his name out to politically-engaged Republicans in the county.

“He used his office for personal gain, in my opinion, and he misused poll worker contact information,” said Jasper-Lucas.

Kimmich, on the other hand, characterized the Jasper-Lucas’ complaint as a cynical and wasteful abuse of government processes that “used taxpayers’ time and money to deal with an issue that was not really an issue.”

Does Jasper-Lucas’s complaint hold water, and why or why not? And what is the process for leveling an ethical complaint against a local official, anyway?

How Kenton County’s Ethics Commission works

The General Assembly passed legislation in the mid 90s that mandated local governments in the commonwealth establish ethics ordinances.

Shortly thereafter, Kenton County passed an ordinance establishing the Kenton County Ethics Commission and Code of Ethics, which sets out to “provide a method of assuring that standards of ethical conduct and financial disclosure requirements for officers, employees, board or commission members of the county shall be clearly established, uniform in their application, and enforceable.”

The commission consists of five county residents who are not already elected or appointed, locally or otherwise. Appointed administrators and government employees are also barred from serving on the commission. A nine-member appointment committee selects members of the commission.

The ethics ordinance generally prohibits financial and personal conflicts of interest among officials. The ordinance also contains restrictions against nepotism, other forms of favoritism, commercial endorsements and misuse of public property, among other prohibitions.

If the commission receives an ethics complaint, it can investigate the complaint and hold a hearing to carry out interviews. It can level fines, but serious criminal findings are usually sent to the local commonwealth’s attorney’s office for further investigation and potential prosecution.

Stacy Tapke, the Kenton County attorney who doubles as the attorney for the ethics commission, told LINK nky the commission had not held any hearings since she began working with the County in 2015. She added that complaints tended to increase around election time.

The complaint against Kimmich

Jasper-Lucas told LINK nky the complaint was prompted after she received a letter penned by Kimmich dated May 19. The letter points to some of his accomplishments during his time on the Board of Elections and thanks poll workers for their efforts in helping run the election.

Jasper-Lucas had worked as a poll worker in the past, but not for the most recent election, since she was running for a position on the Erlanger City Council.

“I just thought it seemed really odd, and I just kind of held on to it,” said Jasper-Lucas. “And then I happened to think, ‘you know, did only Republicans get this after he announced that he was running for county commissioner?’ I thought, well, now this letter makes a little bit more sense; he was trying to get his name out there to folks.”

Jasper-Lucas submitted her complaint to the Ethics Board by emailing Tapke on July 6. In it, she alleges Kimmich violated two specific policies of the county’s ethics ordinance, sections 35.11 and 35.14, which prohibit the use of an elected office for personal gain and the misuse of confidential information (in this case, poll worker data).

“As a poll worker, my personal contact information was provided to the Kenton County Clerk, and I assumed it would be kept confidential and not made available to the general public,” Jasper-Lucas writes in her complaint. “While Board of Elections members may have access to this information in their official capacity, using it to send campaign-style letters is, in my view, an abuse of that access.”

Tapke wrote back to Jasper-Lucas on July 9, arguing that the ethics ordinance did not apply because the county’s board of elections is a branch of the state board of elections, not the county government.

“While the fiscal court is responsible for paying for election costs, it has no direct oversight over the local board of elections,” Tapke writes. “The local board of elections serves under the direction and supervision of the state board. The Republican and Democratic representatives are appointed by the state board from a list of 5 names provided by the local party. Given this distinction I do not believe the Ethics Ordinance would apply to either the Republican or Democratic representative.”

As a result, Jasper-Lucas sent her complaint to the Kentucky Board of Elections. Taylor Austin Brown, the general counsel for the state board, tendered a response on Aug. 7, arguing her complaint lacked merit for the following reasons:

• Poll worker information for the 2024 General Election became public record after the close of the election, meaning anyone could have found that information. Since Kimmich’s letter is dated May 19, 2025, poll worker information would have been freely available.
• Kimmich didn’t file fundraising paperwork with the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance until June 16, two weeks after he resigned from the board of elections on June 2.
• As the Republican representative on the board, he would have had an active relationship with the Republican poll workers.
• There was no evidence the letter, Brown writes, “solicits support, financial or otherwise, for any candidacy Mr. Kimmich may have been contemplating at the time.”
• While Kentucky law enabled the State Board of Elections to remove a county representative for just cause, “the State Board of Elections has no authority to sanction a former member of a county board of elections.”
• Finally, Brown writes, “while ‘just cause’ is not defined in [Kentucky Law], more than an accusation of using publicly available information to send letters of appreciation to citizens of the community for their service in administering elections would be needed to find ‘just cause’ in removing a sitting member of a county board of elections.”

“With these findings, the State Board of Elections considers this matter closed,” the letter concludes.

Jasper-Lucas’ and Kimmich’s response

Kimmich regarded the whole episode as a waste of time.

“In politics today, so many people want to race to the gutter,” Kimmich said. “I would hope we could stay above that and talk about real issues affecting Kenton County’s future.”

Kimmich wondered if Jasper-Lucas’ actions were a way of skewing a future election towards Rebecca Reckers, another Erlanger resident serving on the city council with Jasper-Lucas. Reckers is running against Kimmich for a seat on the fiscal court next year.

Jasper-Lucas denied that Reckers’ campaign had anything to do with the complaint.

“I do serve on city council with one of his opponents, but that really didn’t have anything to do with my ethics complaint,” Jasper-Lucas said. “My ethics complaint was because I’m a poll worker, and I don’t think that he should be sending out letters to tell everybody what he did.”

Poll worker information does, in fact, become public record upon the close of an election–the clerk’s office confirmed this with LINK nky. Any Kentucky resident, elected official or otherwise, can make a records request for the information.

Still, Jasper-Lucas said, “it may not be by the letter unethical; I still don’t think it’s OK. He only contacted Republican poll workers. I still think it’s a very gray area.”

When asked, Kimmich said he didn’t, in principle, have an issue with extending ethics ordinances over county election officials, but he said the problem becomes more slippery when considering what actual authority different bodies have under the law.

“Let us assume for a minute that someone did violate the county’s ethics ordinance as a member of the board,” Kimmich said. “What authority does the Ethics Commission really have over that board? None. So, I don’t know that it’s really appropriate to give investigative powers to an agency that has no authority.”

Jasper-Lucas said she had no intention of escalating the complaint further.