Opinion
Opinion By: Daniel Cameron, Attorney General; James M. Herrick, Assistant Attorney General
Open Records Decision
On November 5, 2020, the Cabinet received Samuel Hayward's ("Appellant") request for certain records related to the Office of Unemployment Insurance. 1The Appellant's request contained nine subparts, six of which the Cabinet denied for various reasons. This Office will address each part in turn.
First, the Appellant sought the "total amount" of sick days that unemployment referees had taken since June 2020, and the "total amount" of claimants who have been found eligible for benefits but who have not yet received "a single payment." The Act does not require public agencies to fulfill requests for information. KRS 61.872;
Dept. of Revenue v. Eifler , 436 S.W.3d 530, 534 (Ky. App. 2013) ("The ORA does not dictate that public agencies must gather and supply information not regularly kept as part of its records."). The Cabinet properly denied each of these requests as requests for information.
Second, the Appellant sought copies of the training materials that would explain how to facilitate payments to claimants following an award of benefits. The Cabinet denied this request. As grounds for its denial, the Cabinet claimed that the responsive training materials are exempt from inspection under KRS 341.190(4). KRS 341.190(4) provides that "[i]nformation obtained from an employing unit or individual and other records made by the cabinet in the administration of [KRS Chapter 341] are confidential and shall not be published or be open for public inspection," except as otherwise provided.
Recently, in 21-ORD-006, this Office considered KRS 341.190 and a similar request for training materials under the Act. There, this Office concluded that the phrase "other records," as used in the statute, applies only to those records that contain information pertaining to specific employers or workers. 2As a result, this Office found that the Cabinet could not rely on KRS 341.190 to deny inspection of the training materials at issue in that decision. See generally 21-ORD-006. Here, the Cabinet has not claimed that these training materials contain information about a specific employer or worker, and the Cabinet has not distinguished these training materials from those materials addressed in 21-ORD-006. Accordingly, the Cabinet violated the Act when it denied inspection of the responsive training materials.
Finally, the Appellant sought a "complete list, by day, of questions" submitted to the Governor at his daily press conferences. In response to this request, the Cabinet explained that it is not the custodian for the records the Appellant was seeking. Under KRS 61.872(4), "[i]f the person to whom the application is directed does not have custody or control of the public record requested, that person shall notify the applicant and shall furnish the name and location of the official custodian of the agency's public records." Here, the Cabinet directed the Appellant to the records custodian for the Governor's Office. 3Because the Governor's Office would have the responsive records, the Cabinet did not violate the Act in its response to the Appellant. 4
A party aggrieved by this decision may appeal it by initiating action in the appropriate circuit court pursuant to KRS 61.880(5) and KRS 61.882. Pursuant to KRS 61.880(3), the Attorney General shall be notified of any action in circuit court, but shall not be named as a party in that action or in any subsequent proceedings.
Footnotes
Footnotes