An attorney general’s decision issued last week found that Warren County Attorney Amy Milliken violated the state Open Records Act in her response to an open records request from the Kentucky AFL-CIO.

The decision followed a request from attorney David O’Brien Suetholz on behalf of the state AFL-CIO for records related to Warren County’s passage of a local right-to-work ordinance.

Both sides said the open records issue could end up in circuit court.

The attorney general’s office found Milliken committed a “procedural violation” of the Open Records Act.

“We find that the Warren County Attorney procedurally violated the Open Records Act in failing to invoke specific exemptions in withholding documents,” the decision said.

In its original open records request, the Kentucky AFL-CIO specifically asked for communication between Milliken and county attorney employees and individuals or organizations not associated with Warren County relating to local or county right-to-work organizations, along with other documents, including the official calendar of the Warren County Attorney for December and January.

In his appeal to Milliken’s response, Suetholz said emails the organization received from other open records requests were not included in records she provided as part of the request to her office.

The appeal said Milliken failed to cite a specific exemption or provide an explanation of why she didn’t provide requested records.

“These omissions illustrate a good faith basis to believe that Ms. Milliken does not respect the procedural importance of a response to the ORA as well as the public policy importance of disclosing requested documents to the requester,” the appeal said.

In her response to the appeal, Milliken said an email from Simpson County Judge-Executive Jim Henderson was not included in the documents she provided because her search engine didn’t locate it, and other emails were provided when she was helping fill a similar request for documents for the Warren County judge-executive and Warren County Fiscal Court.

“In no way did I neglect my duties as County Attorney,” she writes. “I provided everything I had to the County Judge-Executive to provide in the response from Warren County.”

The decision from the attorney general’s office said Milliken didn’t specify exemptions to open records law in responding to the initial request. It also noted Milliken’s response to the request for her calendar, which she denied based on KRS 61.878. That section of Kentucky Revised Statutes lists all the open records exemptions.

“We do not dispute the Warren County Attorney’s good faith in attempting to comply with the request,” the decision said. “However, the Warren County Attorney did not invoke any specific exemptions; it merely provided all documents that it claimed were not exempt. The Warren County’s Attorney’s response was thus procedurally deficient in that it did not specifically state the exemptions under which documents were withheld.”

Suetholz said the open records decision will further the pursuit of showing that out-of-state entities were behind a push for local right-to-work ordinances.

“It’s not going to mean much except for the fact that we’re continuing to shine a light on who was behind this local right-to-work initiative,” he said.

Suetholz said he expects to get more records from Milliken’s office following the decision. If that doesn’t happen, the Kentucky AFL-CIO could take action in circuit court.

“The public deserves to know, again, who was pushing this idea,” he said.

Milliken said that, despite the decision from the attorney general’s office, there are no more documents that need to be provided to the Kentucky AFL-CIO.

“The county’s made everything available,” she said. “The only thing that I didn’t provide to them was my calendar, and that is not subject to open records.”

She said that the opinion is “personal,” and said she found it odd that the attorney general’s office went outside the scope of the initial appeal to find something done incorrectly by mentioning her response to the request for her calendar.

The Office of the Attorney General has weighed in on the issue of local right-to-work ordinances. An opinion issued a day before Warren County approved the final reading of its right-to-work ordinance said local governments do not have the authority to enact such ordinances. It was not made public until the morning of Warren County’s final vote on the ordinance.

Milliken said in a text message that the decision can be appealed to circuit court.

“I may do that because they are clearly wrong,” she said in the text message.

— Follow government beat writer Katie Brandenburg on Twitter at twitter.com/BGDNgovtbeat or visit bgdailynews.com.