Louisville’s failed Amazon bid could be shielded under Kentucky bill

Louisville’s unsuccessful Amazon headquarters bid, along with other rejected offers and trade-secret material, could have been formally shielded by proposed changes to Kentucky’s open-records law.

House Bill 387, filed in the Kentucky legislature, proposed allowing public agencies to exclude several categories of economic-development information from responses to open-records requests.

What the proposal covered

The proposal addressed information such as shareholder identities, incentives that were considered but ultimately rejected, and records involving companies interested in locating in another state.

Kentucky law already protected confidential and proprietary information when disclosure could give competitors an unfair commercial advantage. The proposal would have broadened that language to cover a trade secret that could provide an unfair advantage to any person, rather than only a competitor.

It also contemplated withholding information declared confidential by the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority. Its definition of a trade secret included financial information, shareholder investment interests and present or future business plans.

Why Louisville’s bid mattered

An attorney familiar with open-records law said at the time that the legislation could create greater secrecy around topics such as investor identities and unsuccessful development bids, including Louisville’s attempt to attract Amazon’s second headquarters.

In 2018, a newspaper sued Louisville after the city withheld the rejected proposal. A Jefferson County Circuit Court judge later ordered officials to release a copy, and the city appealed. Insider Louisville previously reported on the decision to appeal the records ruling.

At the time of the original report, that legal dispute remained unresolved. The attorney said the proposed legislation, if enacted in the form then under discussion, would likely have protected the bid from release.