Request By:
Mr. Jessee Rodgers Williams
Property Valuation Administrator
Muhlenberg County
P.O. Box 546
Greenville, Kentucky 42345
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; Carl T. Miller, Jr., Assistant Attorney General
Thank you for sending us the document we requested upon the appeal of Mr. Byron Lee Hobgood of the denial of inspection of a record under the open records law. The record in question is Revenue Form 370-62A pertaining to the property of Noah Baumgardner in Muhlenberg County.
OPINION OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
As required by KRS 61.880(2) we give as our opinion that the above named document should be made available for inspection by Mr. Hobgood or any other person. Said document contains only a description of the property, the name and address of the owner, and the assessed valuation for several years. We find nothing of a private nature in the document or any other matter which is exempted by law.
In your letter of denial you stated that you were relying upon OAG 66-696 and OAG 76-182. OAG 76-182 pertained to business assessments and intangible reports of individuals made to the Commissioner of Revenue. It is true that KRS 131.190 prohibits the Commissioner of Revenue or any employee of the Department of Revenue from divulging any information in reports made to the Department of Revenue: "Insofar as the information may have to do with the affairs of the person's business." Tomlin v. Taylor, 290 Ky. 619, 162 S.W.2d 210.
The document we are dealing with in this opinion is not the kind of document referred to in the above cited statute and case. OAG 76-182 therefore has no bearing on this document.
In OAG 66-696 it is pointed out that since the tax rolls are public records which can be copied and KRS 133.045 specifically provides that such records can be inspected, any interested person or organization would be permitted to photograph the record for publication if desired. Said statute provides in subsection (1) that the tax rolls shall be open to inspection in the Property Valuation Administrator's office for five days beginning the first Monday in June of each year. Subsection (2) was added in 1976 by House Bill 549 and provides:
"The tax rolls shall be available to the public at reasonable times, other than that provided in subsection (1) and in a manner not unduly interferring with proper operation of the custodian's office and so long as the inspection of the roll or disclosure of information contained therein would not be detrimental to public interest or used for commercial or business purposes unrelated to property valuation and assessment."
After reviewing the document in question it is the opinion of the Attorney General that it should be made available for public inspection.