Attorney general says state police broke records law, unemployment board broke meetings law

Kentucky State Police should have released information, including 911 tapes, on the death of William Sparkman in the Daniel Boone National Forest when requested by a reporter for The Associated Press, the state's attorney general has ruled.

While the state Open Records Act allows police to withhold information in cases under investigation, they must specify exactly what harm would be done by releasing it, the ruling said. Since they did not do so in this case, they violated the law, it said.

In another ruiling, the attorney general said the state's Unemployment Insurance Task Force violated the Kentucky Open Meetings Act. The office ruled in favor of The Courier-Journal, which had complained that the task force excluded the press and public when it split into several small groups to consider changes to the state's unemployment insurance program.

Full texts of these and other decisions issued Monday can be found via the Links of Interest at the bottom of ther KOG Blog.