Request By:
Honorable Winston E. King
Assistant Director of Law
City of Louisville Department of Law
Room 200, City Hall
Louisville, Kentucky 40202-2771
Opinion
Opinion By: David L. Armstrong, Attorney General; By: Cicely D. Jaracz, Assistant Attorney General
Ms. Kimberly K. Greene, on behalf of Ms. Pamela Luecke and The Courier-Journal, has appealed to the Attorney General pursuant to KRS 61.880 your denial of Ms. Luecke's request to inspect and copy ". . . the completed report of SRI International of Menlo Park, California, on plans for future economic development in Louisville."
Your timely response denied Ms. Luecke's request based on KRS 61.878(1)(h) under the premise that the report constituted preliminary memoranda in which opinions were expressed and policies recommended.
OPINION OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
It is the opinion of the Attorney General that your denial was proper under the Open Records Law.
The report in question is a public record in possession of a public agency, and is therefore open to public inspection unless exempted under KRS 61.878. It is our opinion that the report is exempt pursuant to KRS 61.878(1)(h) which exempts from public inspection (except upon court order):
(h) Preliminary recommendations, and preliminary memoranda in which opinions are expressed or policies formulated or recommended.
According to you, the report was prepared with the assistance of SRI International and contains recommendations of a steering committee and four sub-committees, made up of local people, on joint public-private actions to revitalize the Louisville economy and create new jobs. The report's opinions and recommendations are preliminary to a final decision by the City. The City is under no obligation to accept or implement the opinions and recommendations of the report.
We cannot agree with Ms. Greene's argument that the report is no longer preliminary as it constitutes a final report by SRI International to the City. In OAG 82-450 we held that a report entitled "Development Potential Analysis, Ormsby Village, Lynwood Properties, Jefferson County, Kentucky," prepared for Jefferson County by the Real Estate Research Corporation, was not open to public inspection under KRS 61.878(1)(h) even though the report was a final report by the corporation because the report remained preliminary to any final action by the County. Additionally, in OAG 81-285 a report prepared by an ad hoc committee for University of Kentucky President Otis Singletary entitled "Report to the President of the University of Kentucky Summarizing the Findings of the Site Visit to Evaluate the Research Activities of the Tobacco and Health Research Program and Research Institute" was held exempt from public inspection under KRS 61.878(1)(h) because the ad hoc committee had no authority to take final action. In both instances, although the reports were final reports to the public agency, they remained preliminary and exempt from public inspection due to the fact that they contained opinions and recommendations which the agency could accept or disregard in taking final action.
It is therefore the opinion of the Attorney General that the completed report of SRI International to the City of Louisville constitutes preliminary memoranda in which opinions are expressed and policies formulated and recommended. It is therefore exempt from public inspection pursuant to KRS 61.878(1)(h).
As directed by statute, a copy of this opinion is being sent to the requestor, who may initiate further proceedings pursuant to KRS 61.880(5).