Opinion
Opinion By: Jack Conway, Attorney General; James M. Herrick, Assistant Attorney General
Open Records Decision
The question presented in this appeal is whether Kentucky Correctional Psychiatric Center ("KCPC"), a maximum-security facility operated by the Department for Mental Health and Mental Retardation Services, Cabinet for Health and Family Services, violated the Open Records Act in the disposition of Sammie Bowles' May 22, 2009, request for a copy of "the complete Mental Evaluation conducted on me in the year 2007, while at your facility." According to the prior decisions of this office, KCPC properly denied Mr. Bowles access to his pre-trial competency evaluation on the basis of KRS 61.878(1)(l), incorporating KRS 26A.200 into the Open Records Act. We therefore find that KCPC did not violate the Act in the disposition of Mr. Bowles' request.
Mr. Bowles' request was received by KCPC on May 27, 2009. On June 3, 2009, KCPC's health information management director, Sharon W. Proctor, responded that the court order directing KCPC to conduct his competency evaluation specifies the persons to whom the information can be distributed, and Mr. Bowles is not included among those persons. She cited KRS 26A.200, incorporated into the Open Records Act by KRS 61.878(1)(l), for the proposition that Mr. Bowles' competency evaluation, as a record created at the direction of a court and placed under distribution restrictions by the court's order, is under the exclusive jurisdiction of the court and therefore exempt from disclosure. 1
The Attorney General has dealt with this identical issue on multiple occasions and has followed the reasoning expressed in KCPC's response. We therefore adopt the latest of these, 08-ORD-067, a copy of which is attached hereto, as the basis for our decision in the present appeal. Also attached are copies of 04-ORD-021 and 99-ORD-109, in each of which we reached a similar result. Under these prior decisions, KCPC did not violate the Open Records Act.
A party aggrieved by this decision may appeal it by initiating action in the appropriate circuit court pursuant to KRS 61.880(5) and KRS 61.882. Pursuant to KRS 61.880(3), the Attorney General should be notified of any action in circuit court, but should not be named as a party in that action or in any subsequent proceeding.
Sammie Bowles, # 186579Sharon W. Proctor, RHIAJon R. Klein, Esq.
Footnotes
Footnotes
1 Ms. Proctor's response was adopted by Assistant Counsel Jon R. Klein as the basis of his response to this appeal.
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