22-ORD-194
September 29, 2022
In re: Lynette Warner/Graves County School District
Summary: The Graves County School District (the “District”) violated
the Open Records Act (“the Act”) when it did not issue a response to a
request submitted under the Act within five business days of receiving
the request.
Open Records Decision
On August 23, 2022, Lynette Warner (“Appellant”) submitted a request to the
District to inspect the outstanding bonds payable for the 2022 fiscal year. The
Appellant specified that her request included “each series bond” and “the [d]ebt
[s]ervice [p]ayments.” On August 31, 2022, having received no response from the
District, this appeal followed.
Upon receiving a request to inspect records, a public agency must decide within
five business days whether to grant the request, or deny the request and explain why.
KRS 61.880(1). After the appeal was initiated, the District states it received the
Appellant’s request and prepared a response to be issued on August 29, 2022.
However, the District admits that “through inadvertence, the prepared response was
not sent to the” Appellant. Thus, the District violated the Act when it did not issue a
response to a request under the Act within five business days.1
1
On appeal, the District claims it notified the Appellant that the requested records were available
“for review during its normal business hours” at its office. In response, the Appellant claims that “the
documents [she] received appear to be incomplete.” Specifically, the Appellant claims that “[t]he
document with the [o]utstanding [b]onds has no description for each bond and [she] believe[s] the bond
for the GCHS security project is not included.” Historically, this Office has found that it is unable to
resolve factual disputes of this type between parties. See, e.g., 22-ORD-010 (agency was found to haveA party aggrieved by this decision may appeal it by initiating action in the
appropriate circuit court under KRS 61.880(5) and KRS 61.882 within 30 days from
the date of this decision. Under 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. The Attorney General will accept notice of the complaint
emailed to OAGAppeals@ky.gov.
Daniel Cameron
Attorney General
s/Matthew Ray
Matthew Ray
Assistant Attorney General
#317
Distributed to:
Lynette Warner
Jesse E. Wright
Matthew Madding
not violated the Act when it provided the requester with all responsive documents in its possession
even though the requester alleged the agency did not provide many of the requested records); 19-ORD-
083 (stating this Office cannot “resolve the factual dispute between the parties regarding the disparity
between records which have been provided and those sought but not provided”). Consequently, this
Office is unable to resolve the factual dispute between the parties that the records the Appellant
inspected are different from those records she requested but was not able to inspect.