Concerned Members' Statement of Reasoning

The denial by the Commerce Cabinet in effect disenfranchises KHS members by denying them the information and means with which to exercise their rights and responsibilities as members. When members pay their dues, in return members receive the privilege, right, and fiduciary responsibility to elect officers of the KHS. The denial deprives access by members to members, also access by members to officers. Consequently, members are divested of their ability to be informed of the agency's business, address issues, select candidates, campaign, or elect candidates of their choice to the governing body of the KHS.

When assuming membership, members expect to be contacted regarding any and all issues and candidates pertinent to their membership status. This expectation of communication supersedes their own expectation of privacy because it is directly pertinent to their responsibilities as members. Without access to member contact information, no fair and level playing field inures to members for their maintenance of knowledge, addressing of issues, nor for their equitable participation in the KHS electoral process.

This matter is aggravated further by the fact that members are deprived entirely of any and all participation in the regular business meetings of the KHS, where decisions affecting members are routinely made. The only meeting at which members may attend and participate is the annual meeting, where the completed business of the directors is announced and the annual election of officers is held. Members have no access to agenda or minutes, and therefore no awareness or knowledge of what the governing body does, nor how it is done. There is no transparency to the process. Additionally, this represents in members' opinion a violation of The Open Meetings Act. However, members prefer to address this issue with the directors through process, if they could; but members are prevented from doing so by the denial of the Commerce Cabinet for contact information.

In issuing the denial, The Commerce Cabinet makes two citations:

Zink v. Commonwealth, Ky. App., 902 SW2d 825 (1994). Disclosure of information on workers compensation S.F.1 form, including claimant's social security and telephone number, address, etc., constitutes a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy. At page 829, the court recognized, At its most basic level, the purpose of disclosure focuses on the citizens' right to be informed as to what their government is doing. That purpose is not fostered however by disclosure of information about private citizens that reveals little or nothing about an agency's own conduct.

Hines v. Commonwealth of Kentucky, 41 S.W. 3d 872 (Ky. App. 2001) (request under State Public Records Act for the specific property value of the owner's rights in unclaimed property was not required to be disclosed because, on balance, it would invade the economic privacy interest of the owners, by disclosing possible incomes, a matter to which few things in our society are deemed of a more intimate nature.

The Concerned Members have made no request of personal information such as social security numbers or incomes. Members have only made a request for contact information, i.e. name, address, telephone number, email address of officers and members of the KHS. In the Commonwealth's practice, contact information for officials of public agencies is not proprietary, nor does it require the cloak of privacy the Commerce Cabinet maintains. Members recognize that employees of a state agency are shielded by privacy requirements and respect such. The Commerce Cabinet mistakenly places members in a like category as state employees, requiring similar privacy shielding. Members are not employees of the KHS. They are members of the public, who by their own choice, volition, and action take part in the support, maintenance, and governance of the KHS.

In seeking contact information, members only seek to obtain the means by which they can be informed as to what their elected governing body of the KHS is doing, and to insure members' own responsibility for being an informed part of its deliberative process.