Monday, October 26, 2009

Attorney general rules against city, county agencies

The Kentucky Attorney General’s office has cited several county and city agencies for holding closed sessions or meetings or refusing requests for public records in a batch of rulings.

The office ruled:

• A planning committee formed by Shelby County Fiscal Court and the cities of Shelbyville and Simpsonville violated the Open Meetings Act by conducting non-public meetings without notice or minutes. The committee had been created by official action.

• The Joint Board of Ethics for the cities of Bardstown and Fairfield and Nelson County failed to observe requirements for conducting closed sessions and failed to respond to an open meetings complaint.

Laurel County Fiscal Court was late in responding to a request for public records and wrong in refusing records of a closed session on jail personnel.

• The Webster County Board of Education violated the Open Meetings Act in failing to strictly comply with legal requirements before going into closed session.

• The city of Raceland subverted the intent of the Open Records Act by representing that charges would be made for staff time spent on an open records request.

Madison County Fiscal Court violated the Open Meetings Act in relation to a September 22 meeting of a quorum of its members or a series of less than quorum meetings where the members attending collectively constituted a quorum and where public business was discussed.

Kentucky Community and Technical College System improperly relied on KRS 61.878(1)(a) and (i) in denying a request for evaluations and performance improvement plans relating to public officials whose conduct had been questioned. The ruling also said KCTCS's inability to produce correspondence exchanged by the chancellor and the president for a two-month period suggests record management issue, and referred the matter to the Department for Libraries and Archives.

The attorney general’s office also ruled in favor of the Office of the Commonwealth’s Attorney for the 30th Judicial District, Campbell County Fiscal Court, Western Kentucky Correctional Complex, Kentucky State Reformatory, Pike County Circuit Court Clerk and Louisville Metro Department of Corrections in separate open records and open meetings complaints.

Full texts of the opinions can be found through the Links of Interest below.

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