Judge fines Missouri agency $12K for violating public records law with ‘secret plan’
A circuit court judge has fined the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services $12,000 for purposely violating the state’s public records laws when it denied a nonprofit group’s request for years of birth and death announcements.
Cole County Judge Patricia S. Joyce found last week that the state agency four years ago wanted to charge a California-based genealogical group $1.49 million to retrieve birth and death listings going back to 1910.
Joyce said the agency deliberately delayed granting the request and then worked to get state lawmakers to change the open records law.
“These are the public’s records,” said Bernie Rhodes, a Kansas City media attorney, who specializes in open records laws. “Government bureaucrats who behind the scenes worked to frustrate the public’s right to get access to those records should be punished and that is what the judge has done here. We commend her for her ruling.”
Lisa Cox, a spokeswoman for DHSS said the agency is aware of the ruling and is still considering filing an appeal of the summary judgment decision.
The legal battle started in February 2016 when Reclaim the Records, a California-based nonprofit organization of genealogists, historians, researchers and open records advocates, made a records request to DHSS for a listing of the state’s birth and death announcements. The group has made similar requests throughout the United States, Rhodes said.
The group wanted the Missouri vital records from Jan. 1, 1910 through Dec. 31, 2015.
Initially, DHSS said it would take their staff 35,064 hours to retrieve the records, according to court documents.
The nonprofit group hired Rhodes to help them. Rhodes told DHSS officials that their estimate violated the Sunshine Law.
Rhodes asked state officials to tell him the type of database the agency used to store the records. Rhodes said he believed there was an easier, faster and more cost-efficient way to retrieve the records.
DHSS officials later sent Rhodes an email with a dramatically revised cost of $5,100.
Nikki Loethen, general counsel for the agency, said the difference between the two estimates was that staff could “run the lists for one year at a time versus one day at a time as originally estimated,” according to court records.
In July 2016, DHSS officials reached out to Garland Land, the former Missouri Registrar, about the genealogical group’s request.
Rhodes said he obtained communications between Land and state health officials. Land advised state officials that they should deny the group’s request and “require them to take you to court,” and to use the delay caused by the lawsuit to get the Legislature to change the law, according to court records.
The agency petitioned lawmakers to make changes in how the state’s open records law would be applied. But the agency was unsuccessful.
Loethan wrote Rhodes about two weeks later and said DHSS was denying the group’s request.
Rhodes filed a lawsuit on behalf of the nonprofit group. In its lawsuit, the group said DHSS charged them more than $5,000, which is more than double the allowable cost to retrieve records under the Sunshine Law.
The state agency violated the law when it later denied the group’s request six months after providing two cost estimates to retrieve the records, the lawsuit said.
Last week, Joyce ruled in favor of the genealogical group and ordered the state to provide the listings at a total cost of $2,500.
She found DHSS committed both knowing and purposeful violations of the Sunshine Law. She fined the department $12,000 and ordered the department to pay attorney’s fees.
In her ruling, Joyce wrote, “the secret plan advocated by Mr. Land, the former State Registrar - which DHSS followed meticulously - is a textbook case of a purposeful violation of the Sunshine Law.”
The plan, she wrote “represents an utter disdain for the public policy of this state that records of public governmental bodies be open to the public unless otherwise provided by law.”
This story was originally published April 21, 2020 at 5:18 PM.
