Request By:
Ms. Anne Leitsch
Paralegal
Kentucky Labor Cabinet
The 127 Building
U.S. Highway 127 South
Frankfort, Kentucky 40601
Opinion
Opinion By: David L. Armstrong, Attorney General; Thomas R. Emerson, Assistant Attorney General
G. C. Perry, III, Esq., has appealed to the Attorney General pursuant to KRS 61.880 your partial denial of his Labor Cabinet.
In a letter to the Kentucky Labor Cabinet, dated March 31, 1987, Mr. Perry requested permission to inspect the Labor Cabinet's file pertaining to an accident involving Howard S. Craft.
You replied to Mr. Perry in a letter dated April 3, 1987. You advised him that the Labor Cabinet's occupational safety and health investigative file concerning an accident involving Howard S. Craft, an employee of Armco, Inc., contains in part the compliance officer's preliminary worknotes which are exempt from inspection pursuant to KRS 61.878(1)(g) and (h). All other documents and forms in the file were made available to Mr. Perry for inspection and copying.
Mr. Perry's letter of appeal was received by this office on April 13, 1987.
OPINION OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
Among the public records which may be excluded from public inspection in the absence of a court order authorizing inspection are those records described in KRS 61.878(1)(g) and (h):
"(g) Preliminary drafts, notes, correspondence with private individuals, other than correspondence which is intended to give notice of final action of a public agency;
"(h) Preliminary recommendations, and preliminary memoranda in which opinions are expressed or policies formulated or recommended;"
In OAG 86-27, copy enclosed, we dealt with the occupational safety and health compliance officer's worknotes. Where those worknotes are compiled in the ordinary course of an investigation of an employer worksite, and contain preliminary handwritten drafts of possible citations and correspondence with private persons which are not intended to give notice of final action, the material is preliminary and the exemption set forth in KRS 61.878(1)(g) applies. Furthermore, work papers and intra-office memoranda are exempt from public inspection under KRS 61.878(1)(h). Thus, worknotes containing the compliance officer's handdrawn diagrams of the worksite or work operations and his observations, opinions and preliminary drafts of possible citations may be excluded from public inspection under KRS 61.878(1)(h). See also OAG 87-9 and OAG 86-37, copies of which are enclosed.
It is, therefore, the opinion of the Attorney General that you acted in conformity with the Open Records Law (KRS 61.870 to KRS 61.884) in denying access to those records in the occupational safety and health investigative file consisting of the compliance officer's preliminary worknotes. KRS 61.878(1)(h).
As required by statute a copy of this opinion is being sent to the requesting party, G. C. Perry, III, Esq., who has the right to challenge it in the appropriate circuit court pursuant to KRS 61.880(5).