No sunshine in one city in this fair state.
One of the newspapers in the state took its city to task for a number of instances recently where,
according to the paper, the city was violating the sunshine law. And in each case, the law would
seem to support the right of access to the information that was being sought.
One incident involved the death of a juvenile on the way to the hospital. The newspaper asked
for the incident report on the matter. City law enforcement declined, acknowledging they have
provided some incident report information. The rest was not provided because it is a juvenile
record and closed under state juvenile laws, the city claims.
Those laws relate clearly to records which are generated and kept by the juvenile court system
for enforcement of the state’s laws against juveniles. I hardly think the city intends to prosecute
this juvenile for anything, seeing as how he is dead. And it’s interesting that even the city uses
the word some to describe what was released. An incident report is an incident report. Section
610.100 2 does not say some of the material in an incident report is open. It says ALL
incident reports shall be open records.
Instead, the city has asked the paper to sue it for the release of the records in a friendly suit,
and if the court says the report should be released, then it will be released. Want to know why
the city didn’t sue to ask the court about the release? Because if the city sued, the city would
have to pay the attorneys fees for the newspaper for its failure to follow the sunshine law. I
suggest that the paper should advise the judge that this suit was brought at the suggestion of the
city in hopes the judge will see through this ploy and grant attorneys fees anyway.
In the second case the paper cites, records regarding an attack by a dog owned by a city
council member were withheld pending the transcription of hand-written notes. The city says it
took the time before releasing that report to transcribe the notes. Apparently the city hasn’t
carefully read the Hemeyer case (Mo. Supreme Court, 1999), where the court made it clear that
records under the law are records in whatever form they exist. A request for access should
have generated the release of those hand-written notes if the finalized copy was not available.
Holding the release for the purpose of transcribing them is a clear violation of the law that says
in Section 610.023.3 that each request for access to a public record shall be acted upon as soon
as possible…. It does NOT say that a public body has the right to wait three days for whatever
reason it might choose.
Finally, the city fired an employee it believes embezzled money from the city. The city says it
doesn’t want to release the name because it doesn’t want to accuse the person of theft until
criminal charges are filed. It is understandable that the city doesn’t want to make criminal
accusations against an employee. But the sunshine law is clear that the dates of service of
employees is public record. It seems to me that the city could release that a certain employee
was no longer employed by the city. It does not need to accuse that employee of any crime and
it is clear under the sunshine law that it need NOT release the reason for the employee’s
discharge.
Whether the newspaper decides to connect the discharge and the embezzlement is not up to
the city. But the embezzlement factor doesn’t give the city the right to refuse to disclose dates of
service information on an employee.
Access to information is the means of ensuring the residents that the city is acting in their best
interest. It does not foster trust to say to local residents trust us and then to proceed to
withhold information.