Request By:
J. H. Voige, R. Ph.
Executive Secretary
Kentucky Board of Pharmacy
P.O. Box 553
Frankfort, Kentucky 40602
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; Carl Miller, Assistant Attorney General
You have requested an opinion of the Attorney General as to whether the files of the Kentucky Board of Pharmacy pertaining to a person licensed by the Board are a matter of public record subject to public inspection. You sent with your request a letter from a law firm in Ashland, Kentucky requesting your complete file on a pharmacist licensed by the Commonwealth of Kentucky, who is currently practicing pharmacy in Ohio.
There is nothing in KRS Chapter 315 pertaining to pharmacists or in the Kentucky Open Records Law, KRS 61.870-61.884, prohibiting the Board of Pharmacy from making available for public inspection the file of a licensee. OAG 76-573. You may, therefore, comply with the request to send a copy of the complete file.
We observe in passing that a licensing board may withhold from public inspection as a matter of policy any record which comes under the exemptions to the Open Records Law stated in KRS 61.878. However, no liability is incurred by disclosing a record which falls under one of the exemptions as long as the agency acts in good faith and according to a consistent policy. The Board could have a policy of refusing to disclose matters affecting personal privacy and unsubstantiated complaints against a licesee. KRS 61.878(1)(a). Other records in the file of the licensee would still come under the mandatory requirement of public disclosure and the excepted material would have to be separated from the non-excepted material. KRS 61.878(3).
We repeat -- there is no statutory prohibition against releasing the entire file of a licensee.