Request By:
Mr. Jim Morse
Director of Operations
Oldham County Central Dispatch
2307 South Highway 393
LaGrange, Kentucky 40031
Opinion
Opinion By: David L. Armstrong, Attorney General; Thomas R. Emerson, Assistant Attorney General
Ms. Kit M. Wolfe has appealed to the Attorney General pursuant to KRS 61.880 your denial of her request to inspect certain records in your custody. She describes the documents in question as the dispatch log sheets, fire and rescue run tickets and any other information, memoranda or reports pertaining to fire and rescue operations in the county for the years of 1985 and 1986.
After consultation with the County Attorney, James W. Pike, Esq., you advised Ms. Wolfe in a letter dated February 7, 1986, that her request was denied. Your letter stated in part that fire and rescue run tickets and dispatch logs contain information of a personal nature including the names and addresses of victims, names and addresses of reporting parties and descriptions of personal losses, injuries and illnesses. In your opinion the disclosure of any of that information would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of the personal privacy of the persons named and described in those documents. KRS 61.878(1)(a).
You further advised Ms. Wolfe that your agency has made weekly releases to her newspaper for most of the last two years describing certain aspects of fire and rescue runs outside of the privacy exemption set forth in KRS 61.878(1)(a).
The undersigned Assistant Attorney General talked by telephone with Mr. Pike on April 10, 1986. He advised that the only information furnished by your agency involves the number of fire and ambulance runs made, the dates and times on which those runs were made, the general nature of the run (house fire, vehicle fire, field fire, ambulance run) and the general location involved (6500 block of Highway 146, etc.). No other information relative to ambulance runs is released. No other information concerning fire runs is released if it involves private dwellings as opposed to public or commercial structures.
OPINION OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
While there is no specific provision requiring that information of the type we are concerned with here be kept confidential, there is a provision in the Open Records Act that a public agency need not permit the inspection of documents if to do so would involve the unwarranted invasion of a person's privacy. Among those public records which may be excluded from public inspection in the absence of a court order authorizing inspection are those described in KRS 61.878(1)(a) as public records containing information of a personal nature where public disclosure would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.
In OAG 83-344, copy enclosed, this office concluded that records and documents of a publi ambulance service, pertaining to ambulance runs, which included names and addresses of persons transported by the service, ages of persons transported, where they were picked up by the ambulance service, where they were taken and the nature of the runs (such as automobile accident, shooting, stabbing, etc.) may be excluded from public inspection as a protection against an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy pursuant to KRS 61.878(1)(a).
The right to protection against an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy must be balanced against the public's right to know. In OAG 83-344 we could find no compelling reason why the interest of the public to know all of the information described in the preceding paragraph would outweigh the right of the persons involved to personal privacy. It was also noted that police accident reports are open to public inspection and some of the requested information relative to some ambulance runs would be available from those sources. See also OAG 76-568, copy enclosed, dealing with the confidentiality of material contained in the reports and records of an ambulance service.
In the opinion of this office the records and documents of a public agency pertaining to fire runs more closely resemble the situation relative to ambulance runs than that involving police reports. Frequently a fire run only involves a personal tragedy and the misfortune of those who have suffered injury or damage to themselves or their property or who have had family members injured. Such personal information can be handled in the same manner as the personal information contained in ambulance run reports.
If the information has been incorporated into a police report it could be requested from the police department. In OAG 81-395, copy enclosed, at page two, we said in part that what a person does in his own home or on his own property is, generally, his private affair, but when he enters on the public ways, breaks the law or inflicts a tort on his fellow man he forfeits his privacy to a certain extent. The public interest in police business outweights any privacy interest of victims, offenders or police personnel but that same public interest in the business of public ambulance services and fire departments is not, generally, present or necessary.
Note also that in OAG 84-19, copy enclosed, we concluded that a report from a fire chief to another city official could be excluded from public inspection pursuant to KRS 61.878(1)(h) as a preliminary intra-office memorandum in which opinions or recommendations are set forth.
It is, therefore, the opinion of the Attorney General that a public agency could adopt a policy involving records and documents pertaining to fire and ambulance runs whereby it prohibits under KRS 61.878(1)(a) public inspection of material relative to the names and addresses of victims, names and addresses of reporting parties and descriptions of personal losses, injuries and illnesses of persons receiving the fire and ambulance services. Furthermore, it would be permissible under KRS 61.878(1)(h) to preclude the public inspection of memoranda and reports concerning fire and ambulance runs if they are preliminary intra-office documents containing opinions or recommendations.
As required by statute a copy of this opinion is being sent to the requesting party, Ms. Kit M. Wolfe, who has the right to challenge it in circuit court pursuant to KRS 61.880(5).