Request By:
Mr. J. Chase Forrester, Secretary
Jefferson County Community Development Dept.
710 West Main Street
Louisville, Kentucky 40202
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; Carl Miller, Assistant Attorney General
Mr. Edward D. Briscoe, Jr. has appealed to the Attorney General a second time under KRS 61.880 your denial of inspection of certain public records which would furnish him with the names, addresses and phone numbers of individuals on the waiting list for various loans from the Jefferson County Community Development Department. In OAG 81-239 we dealt with an appeal by Mr. Briscoe on the cost estimates by rehabilitation counselors for individual loans to prospective applicants. We held that such records were preliminary memoranda the release of which would corrupt the bidding process, and the records are exempt from public inspection by KRS 61.878(1)(g)(h).
OPINION OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
It is the opinion of the Attorney General that records which disclose the names, addresses and phone numbers of individuals who have applied for a loan from the Jefferson County Community Development Department are open to public inspection. If the records contain information of a personal nature where the public disclosure thereof would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, the agency should separate the exempted material and allow inspection of the records or prepare a list of the names, addresses and phone numbers of the loan applicants in order to comply with KRS 61.878(3) which reads as follows:
"If any public record contains material which is not excepted under this section, the public agency shall separate the excepted and make the nonexcepted material available for examination."
It is our opinion that when an individual applies for a loan of public money he cannot expect that the fact of his application can be kept private and that KRS 61.878(1)(a) does not warrant the concealing of that fact.
It is, therefore, our opinion that you should make available to Mr. Briscoe the names, addresses and telephone numbers of persons who have applied for a loan to the Jefferson County Community Development Department.
A copy of this opinion is being sent to the requester.