Opinion
Opinion By: Jack Conway, Attorney General; Amye L. Bensenhaver, Assistant Attorney General
Open Records Decision
This open records appeal having been submitted to the Office of the Attorney General, and the Attorney General being sufficiently advised, we find that University Medical Center, Inc., violated the Open Records Act in denying Courier-Journal reporter Patrick Howington's August 1, 2011, request for a copy of the "agreement by University Hospital, the James Graham Brown Cancer Center, and/or University Medical Center to merge with Jewish Hospital and St. Mary's Health Care and St. Joseph Health System" and "the letter of intent that [UMC] and the other merger entities announced on November 11, 2010. . . ." Because Mr. Howington's request and UMC's denial are nearly identical to the request and denial we analyzed in 11-ORD-157, that open records decision is dispositive of the issues presented in this appeal. 1 A copy of 11-ORD-157 is attached hereto and incorporated by reference. In 11-ORD-157, the Attorney General determined that UMC is a public agency as defined in KRS 61.870(1)(j) and that the agency presented insufficient proof to support its claim that the requested records are protected from disclosure by KRS 61.878(1)(c)1. We reach the same conclusion in the appeal before us.
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.
Distributed to:
Jon L. FleischakerTom Halbleib
Footnotes
Footnotes