LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet violated the state's open records law when it "heavily redacted" RiverLink reports provided to WDRB News, Attorney General Russell Coleman's office ruled.
The opinion issued this week sides with WDRB, which sought a trove of documents late last year for a story analyzing the performance of the company now operating the Ohio River toll system. That firm, Texas-based Electronic Transaction Consultants (ETC), began work in September 2023.
Among the records were monthly reports that track goals that ETC agreed to in its contract with the Kentucky-Indiana Joint Board, the bistate entity on which KYTC sits. The reports show milestones such as phone calls to customer service agents, email correspondence and wait times at RiverLink offices in Louisville and Jeffersonville, Indiana.
An example of redactions included in records provided to WDRB under the Kentucky Open Records Act (Kentucky Transportation Cabinet document)
But KYTC's response in February withheld key data in those records, arguing that state law allowed it to hold back "proprietary information" of ETC such as trade secrets and statistics that competitors could use to harm the company's reputation and gain a commercial advantage.
WDRB then appealed to Coleman's office, which handles disputes over Kentucky's open meetings and open records laws, contending that the state's reasoning was at odds with legal precedent and previous opinions.
The attorney general's staff agreed in an opinion dated Wednesday, concluding that KYTC failed to show that its redactions were permissible under state law.
In particular, the ruling by Assistant Attorney General James M. Herrick found that the state and ETC only agreed that the RiverLink information should be considered "confidentially disclosed" after the WDRB request in late December.
Typically, Herrick, wrote, public agencies prove that confidentiality through a written agreement.
"Here, although ETC clearly disclosed the redacted information to the Cabinet, the Cabinet has not provided a written confidentiality agreement or otherwise shown it required the ETC to provide it with the required information," Herrick wrote.
WDRB's appeal also noted that the redactions were at odds with the state's longstanding approach to providing unaltered operations reports from Kapsch TrafficCom, ETC's predecessor that operated RiverLink from its inception in late 2016 until last year.
"The fact a competitor has previously disclosed this information is evidence that it is not 'generally recognized as confidential or proprietary' by those engaged in this type of business," Herrick agreed in the opinion.
Despite the redactions, the reports contained enough information for WDRB to report in February that ETC was struggling to achieve its customer service goals on the toll network: the I-65 Kennedy and Lincoln bridges downtown, and the Lewis and Clark Bridge connecting eastern Jefferson County with Utica, Indiana.
"WDRB has aggressively scrutinized RiverLink on behalf of Kentuckiana drivers since tolling began, and we will continue to do so," said Jennifer Keeney, WDRB's news director. "This ruling is a win for transparency. The public deserves to know exactly how efficiently the toll bridges are being operated."
KYTC has 30 days to appeal the ruling.
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