This debate over access to public employees' dates of birth, which is raging in Washington and *not in Kentucky,* is fascinating.

Unlike Kentucky's law, Washington's open records law has long recognized the public's right of access to government employees' DOBs. A bill under consideration in this *Washington* legislative session would limit access. Access advocates have brokered a deal that permits media access but restricts public access generally.

One of the great virtues of Kentucky's open records law is its recognition that all requesters stand in the same shoes relative to access to public records. Generally, what is accessible to one is accessible to all. No preference is shown for any constituency, including the media.

In only a small number of statutes addressing access to public records does the media enjoy an enhanced right of access—for example, automobile accident reports and body cam recordings.

These rare exceptions are presumably based on the same rationale as the proposed Washington bill permitting media access to government employee DOBs but excluding access to the public. Reporters, the argument goes, "need to continue to have access to birth dates. They use them as primary identifiers to make sure investigative articles about government wrongdoing are accurate. 'They're the watchdogs.'"

Read more here: https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/politics-government/article24008771…

Rest assured, there is no likelihood that Kentucky lawmakers could or would consider codifying the public's right of access to state and local government employees' birthdates.

While some may vehemently disagree, the analysis of thIs issue in Kentucky proceeds under the existing state privacy exception. It requires disclosure of public employee birthdates *only* in cases where the public interest outweighs the privacy interests that are implicated by disclosure.

This means that, because there is a recognized privacy interest in a person's date of birth, disclosure of public employee birthdates is only required in Kentucky if it will advance the public's right to know how the agency that possesses the birthdates is discharging it's duties—in other words, if it will enable the public to monitor public agency action and the public's interest therefore outweighs the privacy interests.

For example, if an employee is required to be a certain age as a condition of public employment and his or her qualifications are questioned, the open records related public interest may be said to outweigh the public employees' privacy interests.

But these cases are rare. In most cases, disclosure of a public employee's birthdate does little to advance the public right to know whether/how the employee, or the agency the employee serves, is discharging their duties.

Okay, I get it. There are many who argue that personal privacy is a relic of a bygone era.

But to the extent our laws continue to recognize personal privacy, and the purposes for which our laws were enacted still obtain, public employees are not forced to entirely surrender those privacy rights simply because they serve the public.

Because the privacy, or "weighing of competing public and private interests," analysis is a fair one that is weighted in favor of public access—based on the requirement that disclosure constitutes a "*clearly unwarranted* invasion of privacy"—I believe it is a sound.

I can't agree that "nearly every public building should be made out of glass." The 16 exceptions to public access statutorily carved out over time—if strictly construed and given no broader application than is necessary to effectuate their underlying rationale—strike a reasonable balance between the statutorily favored right to know and the disfavored need for government confidentiality.

Unlike Washington, Kentucky is spared debate on this issue.