Request By:
J. Michael Brown, Esq.
Director of Law
City of Louisville
Department of Law
Room 200, City Hall
Louisville, Kentucky 40202-2771
Opinion
Opinion By: Frederic J. Cowan, Attorney General; Thomas R. Emerson, Assistant Attorney General
Wesley P. Adams, Jr., Esq., has appealed to the Attorney General pursuant to KRS 61.880 your handling of the request of Mr. Steve Burgin of WLKY-TV to inspect the inventory of items made by the city relative to the police chief's office.
This office has not been furnished with a copy of Mr. Burgin's letter of request to you but he evidently made some kind of a request on July 17, 1990.
You replied to Mr. Burgin in a letter dated July 20, 1990, and advised him in part as follows:
Your request to see and inspect the inventory of Louisville Police Chief Richard Dotson's office is denied. The document requested would be exempt from public inspection under KRS 61.878(1)(a), (g) and (h), either as public records the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy; as preliminary drafts or notes; or as preliminary documents containing observations and recommendations.
In his letter of appeal to this office, Mr. Adams requested that we review the city's denial of Mr. Burgin's request to inspect the inventory of physical items made by the city. Mr. Adams maintains that you failed to observe the statutory requirements governing the denial of a request as set forth in KRS 61.880(1) in that you did not include a brief explanation of how the exceptions cited applied to the record withheld.
Paul V. Guagliardo, Esq., Assistant Director of Law for the city of Louisville, replied to Mr. Adams' letter of appeal in a letter dated August 1, 1990. He maintains that your response on the city's behalf was proper and within the statutory requirements.
Opinion of the Attorney General
In regard to the duties of a public agency in connection with a request to inspect and copy public records, KRS 61.880(1) states in part as follows:
An agency response denying, in whole or in part, inspection of any record shall include a statement of the specific exception authorizing the withholding of the record and a brief explanation of how the exception applies to the record withheld . . . .
In OAG 86-38, copy enclosed, at page three, this office said in part as follows:
As this office construes your obligations relative to a request to inspect documents, KRS 61.880(1) requires that you advise the requesting party as to the existence of the documents requested. If the documents exist and inspection is denied, you should list each document which the city will not permit the requesting party to inspect and state how the exception to public inspection relied upon applies to the particular document withheld from inspection.
In the situation with which this appeal is concerned, the city denied inspection of a document (an inventory of items). The specific exceptions to public inspection relied upon were cited [KRS 61.878(1)(a), (g) and (h)] and a brief explanation of how those exceptions applied to the document withheld was given (unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, preliminary drafts or notes, preliminary documents containing observations and recommendations) .
Compare your situation with that which was dealt with in OAG 90-1, copy enclosed, where the public agency's letter of denial merely cited statutory subsections and made no attempt to explain how they applied to the documents withheld.
The public agency's explanation was extremely brief but its written response was timely and it set forth the specific statutory exceptions to public inspection upon which it was relying. Whether he agreed with their applicability, the requesting party was promptly advised of the public agency's reasons for denying accessibility to the document in question. Since the only issue presented by this appeal is the public agency's conformity to the provisions of KRS 61.880(1), it is the opinion of the Attorney General that, from the facts available, the city's response to the request to inspect the document was proper and within the statutory requirements.
As required by statute, a copy of this opinion is being sent to the appealing party, Wesley P. Adams, Jr., Esq., who has the right to challenge it in the appropriate circuit court pursuant to KRS 61.880(5) and KRS 61.882.