Request By:
Hon. John A. Breslin, Jr., Judge
218 Sutton Street
Maysville, Kentucky 41056
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; Joseph R. Johnson, Assistant Attorney General
In your letter to the Attorney General dated February 19, 1981, you state that you recently reported to take an examination for the post of Property Valuation Administrator, but that you were required to submit to fingerprinting before you were permitted to take the examination. You ask whether this office considers fingerprinting to be a legitimate requirement for an application to take an examination for a PVA post.
First, it should be pointed out that this requirement is not for candidates for a PVA post only but is common to all applicants for classified service. Formerly, when the examinations were administered by the Department of Revenue, fingerprinting was not required. However, now that the Department of Personnel is administering the test, fingerprinting is required. The purpose is for identification and to assure that an applicant is who he says he is. We are informed by the Department of Personnel that so-called "ringers" have been caught in the past through the use of fingerprinting when they appeared to take the examination for another.
101 KAR 1:060(3) states as follows:
Filing Applications. All applications shall be made on forms prescribed by the commissioner and must be filed with him on or prior to the closing date specified in the announcement or postmarked before midnight of that date. For those classes for which there is to be continuous recruitment, a statement shall be included in the announcement to the effect that applications will be received until further notice. Such application may require information concerning personal characteristics, education, experience, references, and other pertinent information. . . . (Emphasis added).
You are also referred to 62 Am.Jur.2d Privacy, § 17, p. 701 which states in part as follows:
It is generally held that the right of privacy must bow to a reasonable exercise of police power. The individual's right to preserve his personal seclusion must give way to the state's reasonable exercise of the police power, and statutes or ordinances making reasonable provision for taking and keeping fingerprints and photographs of persons accused of crime and of persons engaged in various trades or occupations. . . have been sustained.
Although the above-quoted regulation does not specifically provide for the taking of fingerprints, we are of the opinion that the references to requiring "information concerning personal characteristics and other pertinent information" provides authority for the taking of fingerprints for identification purposes. The policy of fingerprinting applicants for classified service positions is a legitimate exercise of the state's police powers.