AG says city council broke open-meetings law

The following decisions on open records and open meetings were issued by the Office of the Attorney General March 16-20:

09-OMD-051 (Harlan County)
The Cumberland City Council violated the procedural requirements of the Open Meetings Act by failing to respond to written complaint alleging a Jan. 30 secret meeting of a quorum of its members or a series of less than quorum meetings where the members attending collectively constituted a quorum. If a quorum was present at a single, non-public meeting where public business was discussed, the council violated KRS 61.810(1). If council members collectively numbering a quorum attended a series of less than quorum meetings, the members' actions offended two of the three elements of KRS 61.810(2).

09-ORD-049 (Franklin County)
The state Personnel Cabinet’s original response to a request for designated information fields, including employee identification numbers, of all current Executive Branch employees, was procedurally and substantively deficient. On appeal, the Cabinet properly retreated from its position as it pertained to non-Merit System employees, and, upon submission of request for additional information, demonstrated a heightened privacy interest in employee ID numbers that warranted its invocation of KRS 61.878(1)(a) to support nondisclosure of those numbers.

09-ORD-050 (Franklin County)
The state Labor Cabinet improperly relied on KRS 61.878(1)(c)1 to withhold a private employer's records, because there was no evidence of proprietary or confidential information or unfair competitive advantage.

Open-meetings and open-records decisions have the force of law but can be appealed to circuit court. They are designated as OMDs and ORDs. Other opinions of the attorney general are designated as OAGs. For full texts of the decisions, see the Link of Interest at the bottom of the KOG Blog.