Does Missouri's Open Records law cover agencies that contract with the state and use state money for projects?
That's a question assigned this week to Cole County Presiding Circuit Judge Pat Joyce in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Missouri against the Missouri Association of Community Task Forces, which generally is known as "ACT Missouri."
The seven-page lawsuit asks the court to find that ACT Missouri is a "quasi-public governmental body" as defined by the Sunshine Law, then order the agency to provide records it was asked for a year ago under the law, and to find that its failure to provide those records was a purposeful or knowing violation of the law's requirements, allowing the court to impose a fine for the failure to obey the law's requirements.
The ACLU filed the suit on behalf of Aaron M. Malin, of Columbia, identified in the suit as a Missouri resident but also identified in the supporting documents as "director of research" for the group Show-Me Cannabis, which is working for laws allowing the free use of marijuana in the state.
The lawsuit argues ACT Missouri is covered by the Open Meetings/Open Records law "because it has as its primary purpose to engage primarily in activities carried out pursuant to an agreement with public governmental bodies."
ACT Missouri also "directly accepts the appropriation of money from a public governmental body," the lawsuit said.
But, the ACLU lawsuit complains, Charles "Chuck" Dougherty, ACT Missouri's executive director, told Malin last Nov. 25 that "according to "legal advice,' ACT Missouri is not a governmental or "quasi-governmental' body that is required" to reply to Sunshine Law requests.
The agency didn't respond Friday to a News Tribune request for a comment for this article, and its attorney has not yet filed any legal answers to the claims in the lawsuit, which was filed Tuesday and announced by the ACLU late Thursday afternoon.
The suit accused ACT Missouri of refusing to provide documents to Malin a year ago, after the agency had fulfilled similar requests twice earlier in the year.
"Our client requested documents from a training that was paid for entirely with taxpayer money," Tony Rothert, legal director of the ACLU of Missouri, explained in a news release announcing the lawsuit.
"When the people pay for a private entity to carry out a function on behalf of the people, the people have a right to view the records related to the function that they paid for."
ACLU of Missouri Executive Director Jeffrey Mittman said in the news release: "All too often, public officials seek to hide information that might embarrass them.
"Our American system of checks and balances only works if the public has the information necessary to review our government's work."
The suit said Malin asked for copies of documents related to ACT Missouri's annual Prevention Conference, held Nov. 18-19, 2014, at the Lodge of Four Seasons.
Specifically, Malin wanted "any records or documents showing the presentation slides or other presentation materials shown during ... the session entitled, "Marijuana Proponent Strategies,'" that Dougherty presented on Nov. 18.
That's the request Dougherty rejected, even though the agency had given Malin documents from two earlier requests for budget-related information and, on at least one of those, had told Malin the response was "an effort to honor your request for open records under Missouri's Sunshine Law."
Rothert wrote in the lawsuit: "Daugherty did not indicate how, if at all, ACT Missouri's status as a quasi-governmental body had changed between (Malin's) two fulfilled requests and his denied Nov. 18, 2014, request."
The information Malin asked for a year ago involved "public records subject to disclosure under the Sunshine Law" and aren't records that "may be closed under any exception to the Sunshine Law.
No hearing dates have been set in the case.