Opinion
Opinion By: Andy Beshear, Attorney General; James M. Herrick, Assistant Attorney General
Open Records Decision
The question presented in these consolidated appeals is whether the Wolfe County Sheriff's Department and County Judge/Executive violated the Open Records Act in denying Danny McIntosh's September 19, 2017, requests for access to various communications records. For the reasons stated below, we find the Sheriff's Department and County Judge/Executive in violation of the Act.
Mr. McIntosh's request to the Sheriff's Department specified the following items:
Any/all handwritten logs pertaining to the case involving Danny McIntosh of Jackson, KY arrested on 09/08/2017 by the Wolfe Co. Sheriff Dept.
Any/all radio traffic recordings, including CAD, occur[r]ing between the time periods of 09/7/2017-09/11/2017.
Any/all radio traffic logs in use occur[r]ing between the time periods of 09/07/2017-09/11/2017.
Any/all cell phone records of the Wolfe Co. Sheriff Dept., to include office phones and all extensions associated with the Wolfe Co. Sheriff Dept., occur[r]ing between the time periods of 9/7/2017-9/11/2017.
His simultaneous request to the County Judge/Executive was essentially identical to the last item in the request to the Sheriff's Department, but applied to cell phone records of the County Judge/Executive.
According to Mr. McIntosh, he hand-delivered both requests on September 19, 2017, and "[t]he Sheriff refused to accept the request." Regardless, neither agency issued a written response. We must therefore find both the Sheriff's Department and the County Judge/Executive in violation of KRS 61.880(1), which requires a written disposition of a request for public records to be issued within three days, excluding weekends and legal holidays.
In response to Mr. McIntosh's appeal, received in this office on October 3, 2017, Wolfe County Attorney Stephen R. Johnson argues as follows:
[I]t is the belief of the agencies that the "Open Records" request should be denied at this point, as all documents related to this time period may be directly part of a pending, criminal allegation against Mr. Danny McIntosh (Wolfe County District Court case 17-F-00065). ? The dates for which the material is requested, coincide with the criminal charges levied and which are still pending, and were originally submitted together, which indicates that Mr. McIntosh is requesting information that would pertain to the pending, criminal matter. Therefore, it appears that all of the information requested would be exempted from the Open Records request pursuant to KRS 61.878(1)(h) as they may be records of law informant [ sic ] of a pending case, and most certainly may be a component of the criminal case or possible evidence of the crime(s) charged against Mr. McIntosh. Some (or all) of this information may be obtainable under the Ky Criminal Rules pertaining to Discovery for which a person charges [ sic ] with a crime may be entitled; however, those request [ sic ] should be made to the appropriate Court of Law. ? To produce any of the above records prior to the matter being processed through court system and the criminal justice system, would seem to potentially hinder the prosecution of the matter and act to subvert the criminal justice system and the relevant rules of procedure and/or statutory guidelines.
(Emphasis added.) This argument a does not provide an adequate basis for denying Mr. McIntosh's requests.
KRS 61.878(1)(h), the only exception to the Open Records Act cited by the agencies, permits nondisclosure of:
Records of law enforcement agencies or agencies involved in administrative adjudication that were compiled in the process of detecting and investigating statutory or regulatory violations if the disclosure of the information would harm the agency by revealing the identity of informants not otherwise known or by premature release of information to be used in a prospective law enforcement action or administrative adjudication. Unless exempted by other provisions of KRS 61.870 to 61.884, public records exempted under this provision shall be open after enforcement action is completed or a decision is made to take no action; however, records or information compiled and maintained by county attorneys or Commonwealth's attorneys pertaining to criminal investigations or criminal litigation shall be exempted from the provisions of KRS 61.870 to 61.884 and shall remain exempted after enforcement action, including litigation, is completed or a decision is made to take no action. The exemptions provided by this subsection shall not be used by the custodian of the records to delay or impede the exercise of rights granted by KRS 61.870 to 61.884.
To rely upon this exception, a public agency must establish three things: (1) that the records in question are "records of law enforcement agencies or agencies involved in administrative adjudication" ; (2) that the records "were compiled in the process of detecting and investigating statutory or regulatory violations"; and (3) that disclosure "would harm the agency by revealing the identity of informants not otherwise known or by premature release of information to be used in a prospective law enforcement action or administrative adjudication. "
While the Wolfe County Sheriff's Department would be a law enforcement agency, the County Judge/Executive presumably is not. Furthermore, the agencies have not alleged nor shown that all of the records in question were "compiled in the process of detecting and investigating statutory or regulatory violations." To satisfy this element, a public agency must do more than simply assert that the records "may be a component of the criminal case or possible evidence of the crime(s)." See 09-ORD-012 (quoting OAG 89-11) (KRS 61.878(1)(h) requires showing that records are "those actively, specifically, intentionally, and directly compiled, as an integral part of a specific detection or investigative process").
Moreover, there is also the requirement of demonstrating that disclosure would harm the agency. In
City of Fort Thomas v. Cincinnati Enquirer, 406 S.W.3d 842 (Ky. 2013), the Supreme Court of Kentucky held that, unlike the investigation and litigation files of Commonwealth's and county attorneys, investigative files of law enforcement agencies are not categorically exempt from disclosure. Rather, when a record pertains to a prospective law enforcement action,
the law enforcement exemption is appropriately invoked only when the agency can articulate a factual basis for applying it, only, that is, when because of the record's content, its release poses a concrete risk of harm to the agency in the prospective action. A concrete risk, by definition, must be something more than a hypothetical or speculative concern.
406 S.W.3d at 851. Noting that the public agency bears the burden of establishing the applicability of an exception to the requirement of disclosure, the Court stated:
[T]he court must hold the agency to its burden of proof by insisting that the agency make a sufficient factual showing ? to justify the exemption. The agency should provide the requesting party and the court with sufficient information about the nature of the withheld record (or the categories of withheld records) and the harm that would result from its release to permit the requester to dispute the claim and the court to assess it.
Id. at 852. Thus, a concrete, non-speculative risk of harm must be attributed to the release of particular records. Since the agencies here have not done so, they have failed to meet their burden of proof under KRS 61.878(1)(h) and 61.880(2)(c).
Finally, to the extent the public agencies argue that the existence of pending criminal litigation suspends the application of the Open Records Act, we specifically rejected that argument in 03-ORD-213 and 03-ORD-226. Those decisions are attached hereto and their reasoning is adopted as part of the basis for our conclusion herein.
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 must be notified of any action in circuit court, but should not be named as a party in that action or in any subsequent proceeding.