Covington is considering changing its open records ordinance to be more in line with state regulations about open records.
Specifically, the change would add a line requiring Kentucky residency for those making requests. The Covington City Commission performed a first reading of the ordinance on Tuesday.
The ordinance (and the state generally) define a resident as one of the following:
- Someone living in Kentucky
- An American business with a location in Kentucky
- A foreign business properly registered with the Kentucky Secretary of State’s Office
- Someone who is employed by and works at a business in Kentucky
- A person or business that owns property in Kentucky
- A person or business authorized to act on behalf of any of the business previously mentioned
- A news-gathering organization
Most cities in the commonwealth adhere to the residency requirement, and City Attorney Frank Schultz said the change came about due to the high number of out-of-state requests the city receives.
“The number of out-of-state open records requests that we receive constitutes roughly 41% of all requests, and honestly, it takes up a tremendous amount of time with the legal department,” Schultz told the city commission at their April 15 meeting.
“This is used a lot of times by companies and data miners who are trying to get information from the city for free and trying to make us do all the work,” Schultz later said. “Currently, our code of ordinances does not expressly state that we cannot use this exemption already provided by [Kentucky law], but we thought that it was needed to make it clear, just so that our policy is clear.”
Mayor Ron Washington asked if media organizations, especially ones across the river in Cincinnati, could still make records requests if they wanted to write a story about the city.
Schultz said the city would still honor requests from media organizations as long as they followed established records procedures.
The city commission will perform a second reading and cast a final vote on the ordinance at the legislative meeting on May 13.
Read the full ordinance below.