Office of Information Practices

Opinion Letter No. 92-17
September 2, 1992
HVB Contract Attachments

[OIP Op. Ltr. No. 05-03 partially overrules this opinion to the extent that it states or implies that the UIPA’s privacy exception in section 92F-13(1), HRS, either prohibits public disclosure or mandates confidentiality.]

With one exception, the attachments to the contract between the Hawaii Visitors Bureau (HVB) and the State Office of Tourism must be made available for public inspection and copying. The OIP found that the salaries paid to HVB employees identified by name in one of the contract attachments should not be disclosed in individually identifiable form to avoid a clearly unwarranted invasion of the employees’ privacy.

However, because the salaries of certain HVB employees are required to be made public in the HVB’s annual return of a tax-exempt corporation, the OIP found that these salaries are not protected from disclosure. The OIP also found that three other contract attachments were not protected from disclosure because the HVB does not have a personal privacy interest that is recognized under the UIPA, and because the attachments did not contain “trade secrets” or “confidential commercial and financial information.”

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