The Bourbon County Commission meets Monday, and one of the first items is a set of minutes it already sent back — the Aug. 17 minutes, tabled on Aug. 24 after Commissioner Mika Milburn-Kee said they needed “extensive revision.”
That is not unusual. The commission has sent minutes back over the past ten months, and not always for the same reason. Members have never agreed among themselves on what the minutes are supposed to be.
The county has used AI software to help produce its minutes since at least the fall of 2025. The current program, HeyGov, was demonstrated to the commission in January 2026 by then-Clerk Susan Walker. It offered three levels of detail, she said then — “a simple level, a medium level and a detailed level.”
Acting County Clerk Michael Hoyt described the current process: after a meeting is uploaded to the county’s YouTube channel, the video is downloaded as a file and run through a program called HeyGov, which transcribes the meeting and matches what was said to each item on the agenda. Hoyt then proofs the draft against his own notes.
“All I have to do is go through and proof to my notes — you know, who made the motion,” he said. “Even sitting there as close as I am, you sometimes don’t hear who seconded, or if two second at once, who wants to take credit for it.”
The draft then goes into the agenda packet for the next meeting. The commission either approves it, or gives corrections and approves it later. Once signed, it is the official record.
Hoyt said he checks requested corrections against the video before making them, because “I’m the keeper of the records. Even though it’s their meeting and it’s their minutes, they still can’t make things up after the fact.”
The method is not new. In October 2025, Walker described nearly the same pipeline with different software. “I take what’s on YouTube and I take that link and push it into this software,” she told the commission. “And then it can produce a full transcript, but it was 145 pages long.”
The alternative is doing it by hand. Walker said a full-length meeting took her office about eight hours, “because you have to sit up there and listen to everything and then try and figure out who the speaker is.”
The commissioners’ requests have not pointed the same direction.
At the Oct. 20, 2025 meeting, with the commission ten sets of minutes behind, then-Chairman David Beerbower read out his view of what belongs in them, and argued against detail.
“They are official, they are permanent, they are legal record,” Beerbower said. “They are distinct from a full transcript, though. Details that should be in there is motions and resolutions, voting outcomes, summary of discussions — but it is not a direct quote.”
A week after Beerbower’s speech, Chairman Samuel Tran asked for more — and what happened to that request is instructive.
The minutes he objected to covered an Oct. 22 special meeting on the county’s decision to move payroll out of the clerk’s office. Walker had read a prepared statement, and the minutes record its sharpest line: “The decision to remove payroll responsibilities from the clerk’s office was portrayed as a cost savings, improved processes. I must say plainly that it was not an operational improvement, it was a political move.”
The minutes give Walker five bullet points, ending with that accusation. They give the commissioners five, all procedural — reach out to the vendor, get everyone to the next meeting, discuss the timeline, review the noise ordinance, “Commissioner Beerbower will contact legal counsel.” Nothing the commissioners said in reply appears.
They said a good deal. Tran answered at length: “In everything I’ve ever done in my life you either help or you hinder — if we have a problem, come to the table with the solution or a possible solution, not hindrance.” And: “We’re sitting here, I’m listening to a speech that does not paint us well in a public forum. We are elected by them. We are their voice. And I apologize for being terse, but I’m very frustrated.”
Tran did not dispute Walker’s cost figures or her account of how the decision was made; his objection was to the speech being delivered in public. The closest thing to an answer on the substance came from Beerbower: “And that’s a decision that we made at the time. And I’m going to stick with that.”
At the Oct. 27 meeting, Tran asked for those replies to be added, but the version the commission went ahead and signed on Dec. 1, 2025 appears to have been unchanged.
By June 2026 the software was producing longer minutes, and Tran objected to how they read. At the June 15 meeting, citing the May 11 minutes, he singled out phrases like “attempted to,” “push back gently” and “echo this point forcefully.”
“Minutes should be very bland. It should not have narratives in it,” Tran said. “I think we need to go back to just reporting what people say and leave it alone and not paint certain commissioners in a bad light.” He said the concern was not about any one commissioner.
The June exchange showed some differing opinions about what the commissioners think they can ask for.
Walker responded to Tran by explaining that the software produces long, medium and short versions, and that she had already changed which one she used.
“Before, I was being ridiculed for not doing enough, and so I went to the long version,” Walker said. “And now I’m being told the long version is [wrong], so now I need to go back to the medium version or the short version?”
Tran declined to say which he wanted.
“I’m not telling you anything, Madam Clerk. I’m not telling you anything. You’re an elected official. You do your job the way you see fit,” he said. “I’m just saying the final product does not meet my expectation of what minutes should be.”
On July 6, Beerbower put the question on the agenda to settle it: pick one of the three versions and move on.
He argued for the shortest, because “it provides just what is necessary by law to have.” Minutes “shouldn’t be about what you say,” he said, “it should be about what was done in the meeting.” Motley agreed: “My vote would be the short version.” Joe Allen said he had no preference, noting school boards “keep a shorter minute.”
Milburn-Kee’s answer was again about accuracy rather than length. “I’m happy with whichever one you want, Mr. Beerbower. I will read and correct whatever I need to do,” she said. “If they don’t send them to me with mistakes, I won’t have to make any corrections.”
County Counselor Bob Johnson gave the legal standard. “You shouldn’t have editorialized minutes,” he said. “It should be a concise description and summary of what was done. And I think that’s the law.” He added that the county’s minutes run “generally three times longer” than those of other boards he works with.
Tran said length had never been his concern. “That’s all I’m asking for, whether we vote on the long, the medium, or the short version,” he said. “To me, it’s always been one adjective in there changes the narrative.”
Then Tran made the motion: “So I move that we approve the short minute version of our minutes.” Motley seconded. The minutes of that meeting record that it carried unanimously.
Six weeks later, Tran asked for something the short version does not produce. At the Aug. 17 meeting, reviewing minutes that condensed Walker’s resignation statement, Tran said the full text should be in the record.
“I think it would be a disservice to the county if we did not include the whole verbiage of that resignation statement,” he said. Asked by Beerbower whether the letter would already be in county records anyway, Tran said the minutes are what people actually go to: “Very few people go back through and look at the actual documents.”
The commission agreed. Walker’s full three-page statement was attached to the Aug. 10 minutes, which were approved Aug. 24.
Running alongside the disagreement over length is a separate one about accuracy, and that request has been the same throughout.
Walker told the commission in June why speakers get mixed up: “It doesn’t pick up your voices because you don’t announce when you’re talking, and so therefore sometimes it might get Beerbower and Allen mixed up.” She added, “Oftentimes it says Mrs. Milburn is a man.”
Milburn-Kee has raised the same point at least three times. In October 2025 she asked that “great attention be paid before they’re sent to us in the first place.” A week later: “It’s important for me not to have extra things that are untrue in there, mainly.” On Aug. 24 she said it again: “Please, please make sure the right speaker is notated in there before sending it out as the minutes. I think I’m the only one bringing back edits for that.”
The commission takes up the Aug. 17 minutes again Monday, with corrections, and will review the Aug. 24 minutes.
Hoyt is doing the work alone. He said he is the only person in the clerk’s office, “replacing three people and doing it all.” He is seeking appointment as county clerk at the Bourbon County Republican convention on Sept. 1.