Request By:
Mr. Philip H. Scholtz
Cabinet Director
Public Health and Safety
City of Louisville
Louisville, Kentucky 40202
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Carl Miller, Assistant Attorney General
In our letter to you of December 12, 1977, we stated that the Courier Journal and Louisville Times Company had appealed to the Attorney General the denial of access to certain documents in the custody of your office. The documents in question were the following:
(1) A copy of the transcript of the inquiry-disciplinary hearing conducted by the Internal Affairs Division of the Louisville Police Department on the complaint of William Allen Wright;
(2) The statement of Police Officer Nancy Dodson made in said investigation;
(3) Two letters which were deleted from the file of said investigation which the Police Department claimed were included in the file originally by mistake.
We requested that you send to this office documents Nos. 2 and 3 in order that we might determine for ourselves whether said documents were properly withheld from public inspection. Assistant Director of Law, Sallie Haynes, complied with our request and responded by a letter of December 19, 1977. Having reviewed the documents and considered the response of Ms. Haynes, the Attorney General now gives the following opinion as he is directed to do by KRS 61.880.
OPINION OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
It is the opinion of the Attorney General that the above listed documents are exempted from the requirements of the Open Records Statute under the specific provision of KRS 61.878(1)(j) which reads as follows: "Pulic records or information the disclosure of which is prohibited or restricted or otherwise confidential by enactment of the General Assembly."
The enactment of the General Assembly which we consider makes these documents confidential is that provision in the Open Meetings Statute which provides that closed meetings shall be held for discussions or hearings which might lead to the appointment, discipline or dismissal of an individual employee. KRS 61.810(6). From the information we have at hand we believe that the Internal Affairs investigation was such a hearing and as such was to be held in a closed meeting unless the person under investigation demanded a public hearing. The purpose of holding such a hearing in closed session would be defeated if the agency were required to make public a transcript of the hearing.
The statute states that the purpose of having a closed session on a disciplinary matter is to protect the reputation of individual persons. In the instant case, the opening of the requested documents to the public could possibly affect not only the reputation of the person being investigated but also the reputation of one or more of the witnesses in the investigation. In regard to Police Officer Nancy Dodson, we do not believe that the transcript of a portion of her testimony is exempted because it might invade her privacy. [KRS 61.878(1)(a)] We do not believe that a police officer has any right to privacy as to any of his actions while on duty. However, we do believe that Nancy Dodson's testimony should have been received in a closed session and, therefore, should not have been made available to the public.
In regard to the documents listed as No. 3 above, we agree that they appear to have no relationship to the Internal Affairs investigation of Officer Jon Higgins and were, therefore, in the Higgins' file by mistake.
We, therefore, are of the opinion that the Public Health and Safety Department of the City of Louisville did not improperly withhold the above named documents. In compliance with the statute, we are sending a copy of this opinion to the requester, the Honorable Jon Fleischaker, Counsel for the Courier Journal and Louisville Times Company.