Cellphone numbers used by Missouri governors or retained by the Governor's Office are public records, but the refusal of former Gov. Eric Greitens' office to provide that information in response to a public records request was not a violation of the state's Sunshine Law, a Cole County judge has ruled.
Circuit Judge Jon Beetem ruled last week in a public records access case stretching back more than three years involving Greitens and his staff's use of Confide, an app that erases text messages once they're read.
Filed in December 2017 against Greitens - who resigned in 2018 - and his office, Beetem had already ruled in July 2019 that Confide does not create government records that can be retained, according to the Associated Press. That was part of the reason Beetem dismissed claims Greitens' office had used the app to avoid the Sunshine Law.
However, that still left the issue of whether Greitens' office had appropriately denied to disclose "mobile phone numbers used by the governor (sic)" in response to a public records request under the Sunshine Law by the lawsuit's plaintiff, St. Louis attorney Ben Sansone.
Beetem ruled last week: "That information, 'mobile phone numbers used by the governor (sic),' stored or retained by the Governor's office is without a question a public record as that term is used (in state law) as the Governor's office is a public governmental body and the requested numbers are in its possession."
The law cited by the office to exempt the records from disclosure does not actually do so, Beetem added.
"The cell phone numbers used by the governor, irregardless (sic) of their governmental or personal nature, are public records," he ruled.
However, Beetem annotated that statement with: "Virtually every policy argument made by the Governor's office as to why these numbers should be closed holds merit. However, changes to the law are the province of the legislature."
Beetem also ruled last week Greitens' and his office's conclusion that cellphone numbers used by the governor were closed records and was not a violation of the Sunshine Law.
Beetem said that conclusion was reached by more than one lawyer, and "similar conclusions were drawn by other agencies looking at disclosure of telephone numbers and the practice was to redact those numbers from their responses to various requests. It appears that this is the first time that the disclosure of the actual numbers themselves were requested."
The legal authority Greitens' office asserted and had "a number of attorneys" sign off on - "however weak and hollow this court finds this authority to be" - was not "a knowing violation of the Sunshine Law," Beetem ruled.
"In other words, looking for authority to not disclose information does not necessarily infer an intent to violate the law," he added.