Opinion
Opinion By: Jack Conway, Attorney General; Amye L. Bensenhaver, Assistant Attorney General
Open Records Decision
This matter having been presented to the Attorney General in an open records appeal, and the Attorney General being sufficiently advised, we find that Little Sandy Correctional Complex violated KRS 61.872(4) 1 by failing to furnish Uriah Pasha with the "location" (address), along with the "name . . . of the official custodian of the" mental health records to which he requested access on July 23, 2012. LSCC issued what appears to have been a timely response, 2 advising Mr. Pasha that the facility "no longer [has] paper files here," and properly furnished the name of the public agency in whose custody the records reside, but omitted the location (address) of that agency. This violation was mitigated when LSCC furnished the location (address) of the facility in correspondence directed to this office after Mr. Pasha initiated his appeal. A copy of LSCC's supplemental response was mailed to Mr. Pasha. Having furnished the name and location (address) of the official custodian of the records identified in Mr. Pasha's request, LSCC fully, albeit belatedly, discharged its duties.
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:
Uriah Pasha, # 092028Beth HarperAmy V. Barker
Footnotes
Footnotes
1 KRS 61.872(4) provides:
If the person to whom the application is directed does not have custody or control of the public record requested, that person shall notify the applicant and shall furnish the name and location of the official custodian of the agency's public records.
(Emphasis added.)
2 We cannot conclusively resolve the question of the timeliness of LSCC's response inasmuch as the date stamp reflecting receipt of the request is illegible. Nevertheless, as LSCC correctly notes, even if we assume that the request reached LSCC on the same day it was sent, July 23, LSCC's July 30 response was timely per KRS 197.025(7).