Mayor of Louisville incorrectly impedes access to E -mails about the tennis complex of Joe Creason Park, experts say

Mayor of Louisville Craig Greenberg's administration undermined the Kentucky Open Records Act when it refused to offer correspondence between city officials and a private non -profit organization that pushes a controversial development planAccording to experts in the legislation of the state.

A proposal supported by Greenberg to build a tennis and pickleball complex in Joe Creason Park pushback From many locals. The Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting asked for correspondence about the proposal, including messages between city staff and members of Kentucky Tennis & Pickleball Center, Inc., the non -profit pitching the development, and bellarmine university, that, that, public registers was presented as part of early plans for the facility.

Greenbergs administration told Kycir that it must specify the e-mail addresses of non-urban employees to find the government such documents.

We have no way to look for communication with an external party, specifically without their e -mail address, the city responded in a message on its online platform for managing open record requests.

Experts say that the city should not demand that someone will state specific e -mail addresses for external parties before being submitted to a public register request, not according to the current state law.

There is simply no legal authorization, said Amye Bensenhaver, co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government CoalitionA non -profit that promotes the transparency of the government.

Kycir appeals to the case with the attorney general of Kentucky.

In an e -mail Thursday afternoon, the spokesperson for the mayor's office Kevin said slower, because KyCir has not provided any specific domain names or e -mail addresses to search for, his request would require open record staff manually search by tens of thousands of employees looking for correspondence with the Kentucky and Pice -Kleball.

A fleeting search has resulted in thousands of e -mails and documents and would probably cost hundreds of hours of staff time to complete editors, said slower via e -mail.

Attorney Michael Abate, who specializes in the law of the first amendment and LPMS lawyer is in media matters, Kycir said the claim that the request of the news organizations for records was not specific enough, is nonsense.

They must be able to look for certain topics or words in their e -mail system, and if they do not maintain it that way, they are not complying with the act by reasonably making the records available to the public, he said via e -mail. There is no doubt what you ask and it is their duty to provide it.

Louisville Metro Government manages dozens of record requests from members of the public, and the city has a well -documented disadvantage From unfulfilled requests, with civil servants who quote limited staff.

Greenberg promised to stimulate transparency in city registers in 2023. Since then he has been confronted Louisville Public Media” The Courier Journal and his own government.

In this case, Kycir asked for the following information from the Metro government:

• Correspondence that goes back to January 2024 between different city officials and staff, including Greenberg, and the Kentucky Tennis & Picleball Center, as well as one of the officers or employees, including drivers Will and Fred Davis, David Dick and Susan Moss. (Moss also leads Louisville Public Media Board of directors.)
• Correspondence of January 2024 between different city officials and employees, including Greenberg, and Bellarmine University and various of its employees, including President Susan Donovan, Trustees Donald Kelly and James Allen, and several members of the athletics staff.

KyCir made similar requests for correspondence between Kentucky Tennis & Pickleball Center representatives and Louisville Metro Council members Josie Raymond and Ben Reno-Weber.

While the requests to the mayor administration were looking for correspondence for or by employees in several city departments, the requests from the Metro Council for messages were sent to or of only two individual council members.

The office of the Metro Council Clerks has fulfilled those data requests without asking KyCir to provide specific e -mail addresses for the non -profit organizations or staff.

Bensenhaver said, according to the state law that public authorities can demand that they submit a signed archive request in writing, printed with their name, that the records describe they want to inspect.

It says nothing about it, you know, superponating additional requirements, she said.

Bensenhaver, whose earlier, 25-year-old Stint was focused on public archives and meetings in the office of the state procurer-generals, noted that Kentuckys Open Records Law was founded in 1976, so e-mails and automated searches for documents that were then intended.

Anyway, she said that the law does not stipulate that government agencies can add requirements if necessary or tell someone to provide extra details if they are looking for records involving a private person or organization.

They just pull it out of the air in which or not an attempt to impose extra obstacles on the access of the public, she said. The burden is not on the applicant to do something more than to describe the records to be inspected.

Local environmental lawyer Tom Fitzgerald, who opposes the proposed development, said that he received a similar answer at his own request for city correspondence on the development of Joe Creason Park. He said that city officials asked for individual e -mail addresses, as well as a specified time frame and keywords to search for.

I did not have the e -mail addresses of the third parties with which they have communicated because I do not know who they communicated with, he said. They should be able to sort that out.

Fitzgerald has expressed concern about the proposed tennis complex and how it was announced after Greenberg's administration has already carried out a declaration of intent with the developer.

And I am not insensitive to the fact that nowadays there is a large number of records that are generated on a certain day about any number of topics, Fitzgerald said. But in this case we try to get information that I think it should have been available to the public in the first place.