Opinion
Opinion By: Jack Conway, Attorney General; Matt James, Assistant Attorney General
Open Records Decision
The questions presented in this appeal are whether the Christian County Jail ("CCJ") violated the Open Records Act in not providing a written response to a request for records, and in not providing records that the requester had already been provided outside the open records context. We find that CCJ violated the Open Records Act in not providing a written response to a request for records, and in failing to provide documents that the requester had already been provided outside the open records context.
Harold Jones ("Jones") submitted an open records request to CCJ on Jan. 16, 2014. Jones requested "a copy of my 'Administrative Discharge' letter you issued terminating me from the Substance Abuse Program on January 15, 2014." Having received no response, Jones filed an appeal to this office on Jan. 22, 2014, appealing the lack of a response. CCJ responded on Feb. 4, 2014, providing a letter dated Feb. 3, 2014 from the substance abuse program's director, Howard Dixon, "in which he advises he gave Mr. Jones the requested information on January 14, 2014 upon Mr. Jones' termination from the program. It appears Mr. Jones then requested this same information two days later from Mr. Dixon." The attached letter from Howard Dixon, addressed to this office, stated that "Mr. Jones was provided with a copy of his requested document, Administrative Discharge, on January 14, 2014 upon his termination in accordance with this agency's policy."
KRS 61.880(1) provides that "each public agency, upon any request for records . . . shall determine within three (3) days . . . after the receipt of any such request whether to comply with the request and shall notify in writing the person making the request, within the three (3) day period, of its decision." In failing to respond in writing to Jones' open records request, CCJ committed a procedural violation of the Open Records Act. 10-ORD-167; 05-ORD-203.
CCJ also committed a substantive violation of the Open Records Act in not producing the requested record. While this office "has opined that a public agency is not required to produce multiple copies of the same records in response to duplicative requests," 02-ORD-141, we are not presented with a duplicative open records request. Even though Jones may have been presented with a copy of the requested document at some point in the past, we are not presented with any evidence that he has requested the document through an open records request in the past. KRS 61.880(1) provides that "an agency response denying, in whole or in part, inspection of any record shall include a statement of the specific exception authorizing the withholding of the record and a brief explanation of how the exception applies to the record withheld." There is no statutory exception for documents that a requester may have had in the requester's possession at some time, and CCJ does not cite to any statutory exception. The fact that a requester was given a copy of a document in the past outside the open records context is not a legal basis for refusing to produce the document in an open records request. A person may simply lose a record, and may need another copy; the fact that a requester once had a copy is not grounds for refusing to provide another. Accordingly, we find that CCJ committed a substantive violation of the Open Records Act in failing to provide documents in its possession that it claimed the requester had already been provided outside the open records context.
A party aggrieved by this decision may appeal it by initiating an action in the appropriate circuit court pursuant to KRS 61.880(5)(a). The Attorney General should be notified of any action in circuit court, but should not be named as a party in that action or any subsequent proceedings.
# 61
Distributed to:
Harold Jones #137917Brad BoydJ. Michael Foster