Request By:
Hon. Mitch McConnell
County Judge Executive
Jefferson County Courthouse
Louisville, Kentucky 40202
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; By: Carl Miller, Assistant Attorney General
The Courier-Journal and Louisville Times Company through its attorney Jon L. Fleischaker has appealed to the Attorney General pursuant to KRS 61.880 your denial of its request to inspect certain public records in your custody. The requested record is the "Development Potential Analysis, Ormsby Village, Lynwood Properties, Jefferson County, Kentucky" prepared for Jefferson County by Real Estate Research Corporation. The response to the request was made for you by Assistant County Attorney F. Chris Gorman and stated that the request was being denied under KRS 61.878(1)(d) which exempts from mandatory public disclosure "the contents of real estate appraisals, engineering or feasibility estimates and evaluations made by or for a public agency relative to acquisition of property, until such time as all of the property has been acquired."
In order that the Attorney General might give a ruling on this appeal as required by statute, we wrote Mr. Gorman and requested that he send us a copy of the document in question. Mr. Gorman complied with our request with the understanding that we would not release the document.
OPINION OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
It is the opinion of the Attorney General that the described document is exempt from the requirement of mandatory public inspection by KRS 61.878(1)(h) -- "preliminary recommendations, and preliminary memoranda in which opinions are expressed or policies formulated or recommended."
This particular document is almost entirely opinion and recommendations. While it is probably a final report of the corporation employed by Jefferson County to analyze the potential of the Ormsby Village property, it is preliminary in that the county, is it chose to do so, could have other analyses made for its consideration.
It is contended by Mr. Gorman that the release of the document to the public would adversely affect the price which the county may obtain for the property. For that reason Mr. Goeman relied on KRS 61.878(1)(d) which has to do with appraisals made when the county is purchasing property. Under the rules of statutory construction we believe that since exemption (d) expressly mentions appraisals and feasibility estimates and evaluations relative to the acquisition of property we could not hold the document exempt from public inspection under that provision. However, we have heretofore taken the position that in reviewing an open records appeal we are not limited to only the exception which is cited by the agency in denying access to the record but may consider all of the exceptions listed in KRS 61.878. On this basis we hold that the requested document is exempt under exemption (h) and hold that you properly denied inspection of the record.
As directed by statute, a copy of this opinion is being sent to the requester who has the right to challenge it in court under KRS 61.880(5).