A couple weeks back, we told you of the city’s game of goal post-changing regarding the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animal’s wish to place a crippled chicken statue in glorious downtown Louisville. Since then, LEO Weekly has obtained interdepartmental Metro correspondence via an open records request that suggests the city may have more to hide after all.

Of the 326 pages I was allowed to peruse, there was one page of omitted correspondence PETA had actually supplied me with that the city had not: A letter dated Nov. 24, 2009, wherein David Marchal, Metro’s urban design administrator, classified the statue as an “exempt activity” that wouldn’t need review by the Downtown Development Overlay Committee. Translation: This would also exempt PETA from having to pursue the labyrinthine right-of-way applications thrust upon them by the Department of Inspections, Permits and Licenses as well as Public Works and Assets.

Perhaps most interesting are 18 e-mails withheld from the request due to “attorney-client privilege.” Although communications from legal departments are typically exempt from open records requests — including the 39 withheld (and most likely juicy) e-mails from the Mayor’s Office of Legal Counsel — the same ethic doesn’t appear to jibe when the exemptions are applied to a non-legal body. In this case, IPL and Public Works and Assets.

Long story short, there’s still probably something funky going on, but who the hell knows.