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ST. LOUIS — As a candidate for mayor, Tishaura O. Jones made one of her campaign platforms a promise to “create the transparent, efficient city government that ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ans deserve.â€�

Yet city government is earning a reputation for slow-walking Missouri Sunshine Law requests, frustrating the media and lawyers who routinely use the state statute and prompting a lawsuit from one of Missouri’s most prominent government transparency advocates.

“It’s become an absurdity,� Mark Pedroli, an attorney who advocates for open records and transparency, said of the routine delays and lack of explanation for why it takes weeks — and sometimes months — for the city to produce government records.

Whether it’s a deluge of requests, a lack of staffing, bureaucratic ineptitude or something else isn’t entirely clear. But those who often seek public records from the city say the issues began with the launch in late 2020 of an online records request portal and the departure of the former staffer who oversaw it.

Such online systems to process and track record requests are increasingly common at all levels of government. ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County, for instance, uses a portal. Jones, when she was city treasurer, launched one to make it easier to request records. But ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½â€™ system stands out as uniquely problematic because of the delays.

“To be honest, I haven’t had as much problem with anybody else as I have ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½,â€� said Jean Maneke, the longtime Kansas City-based attorney for the Missouri Press Association.

The city’s open records practices prompted a lawsuit Sept. 14 from Elad Gross, a civil rights attorney and transparency advocate who won a major victory for the Sunshine Law last year in a case against Gov. Mike Parson’s administration that went all the way to the Missouri Supreme Court.

Gross’ lawsuit stems from his requests last year for records from the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Justice Center, the downtown jail. Some of those requests still have not been fulfilled, Gross alleges, and others were delayed for months. He names Jones, , and Sims’ boss, City Counselor Sheena Hamilton, as defendants in the lawsuit, alleging a “schemeâ€� to use taxpayer money to delay the release of records.

In at least one instance, the city claimed in response to a newspaper record request that a document — a salary study — didn’t exist as it was beginning negotiations with employee unions. After one of the unions complained to the Missouri attorney general’s office, the city released the study.

But more pervasive — in Gross’ lawsuit and in complaints from other lawyers and reporters seeking records from the city — are exceptionally long delays. Explanations for the delays read like form letters, pushing back by several weeks when the records will be available. When that date arrives, the city says it will take another several weeks for the records to be released.

The Post-Dispatch, for instance, requested two years of meeting minutes from the city’s Civil Service Commission, routine documents created during every public meeting that other agencies often just post online. It took nine months before all of the minutes were released to the newspaper. Every month or so, the city would send a note saying it would take another few weeks to locate the records.

In another case, the newspaper in late July asked for emails since June 1 between one building inspector and the operators of a downtown apartment building city officials had slapped with nuisance violations. The newspaper had learned of the existence of emails from building inspectors discussing a non-functioning fire alarm in a building with over 100 units. The city, which was negotiating a settlement with the building operators over other violations, at first said the search terms weren’t specific enough. Then it took over a month for the city to locate the emails.

After the newspaper dropped off a check to pay the $60 city said it cost to find the emails, they still hadn’t been released a week later. When the newspaper asked Sims if he had received payment, the city released the emails within 10 minutes.

Such delays run afoul of the state Supreme Court ruling in Gross’ case because they don’t give an explanation why the records aren’t available immediately. In that case, the Supreme Court said governments have to provide an exact date records will be available, and if they can’t meet it, the statue says they need to explain why.

“When they realize that the date they have set, they’re not going to meet it, the law obligates them to give you a detailed explanation why they’ve failed to meet their date,� Maneke said. “When you look at the Gross decision, the court said they didn’t provide him any explanation, but they are obligated to provide the explanation to the requestor so there is accountability.�

The rote responses from the city pushing back the dates don’t provide a “detailed explanation� of why the records aren’t available, as required by the Sunshine Law, critics say.

“A generic form letter is uncompliant with the Sunshine Law,� Pedroli said. “An artificial intelligence program cannot respond to a Sunshine request.�

The same thing has been happening to Emily Perez, a lawyer who represents the city’s firefighters union. In April, she asked for emails covering a three-week period between two specific city officials: John Moten, the city’s interim director of personnel, and Director of Public Safety Dan Isom.

She still hasn’t received them. The last date the city gave her, Aug. 25, has been pushed back to early October. And she’s not holding her breath.

“Why an (information technology) person can’t quickly run a search for them and get them over — I can’t imagine circumstances that would justify this amount of delay,� Perez said. “It seems pretty clear to me that this degree of delay is not what the statute contemplates.�

Perez and the firefighters union are suing the city over Moten’s appointment. And the media often have an adversarial relationship with those in power.

But those who say they support Jones, such as Pedroli, also say they are stymied in their requests and believe the issue is within the city counselor’s office. Chelsea Merta, a civil rights attorney and supporter of Jones during her campaign, said she, too, has encountered far more delays with her city record requests than those she makes to other public bodies.

“I can tell you exactly when the problems began and with whom,� Merta said. “It was when Diedra Weaver left.�

Weaver, , left in late 2020, before Jones took office. It was only when Sims took over that the delays began, Merta said.

“Since he took that position, I’ve had nothing but issues,� Merta said.

Sims, who is not an attorney but an administrative assistant in the city counselor’s office paid $37,500 a year, did not respond to a request for comment.

Jones spokesman Nick Desideri also declined to comment, citing pending litigation. But in August, he should be directed to a department’s custodian of records, for which the coordinator is just a liaison.

Yet, since Sims took over, he has instructed reporters not to contact custodians of record directly. Custodians in other jurisdictions often speak directly with reporters to understand the records being sought, sometimes suggesting narrower Sunshine requests that make the process more manageable for governments and help the public get records faster.

Attempts to contact custodians in ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ have been met with stern reminders from Sims that all communication must be through the portal — even though the Sunshine Law does not spell out such a requirement. It only specifies that a government’s custodian of records must act on a records request when they receive it.

Designed to improve, not impede access

Still, the value of a central portal — when it functions efficiently — is obvious, say local government veterans: it allows tracking of Sunshine Law requests, so those in power know what’s coming and what reporters, lawyers and political operatives are up to.

In the city, there were discussions in the city counselor’s office about centralizing records requests as far back as the administration of former Mayor Francis Slay. Winston Calvert, a former city counselor in the city under Slay and former chief of staff for County Executive Sam Page, said he has seen custodians of records for different departments interpret the Sunshine Law differently. Having one person interpret the Sunshine Law consistently can reduce confusion, he said.

“It seems we could all agree that public bodies should act consistently, behave coherently and be held accountable for complying with the law,� Calvert said. “That’s all much more likely if there is one professional records custodian rather than several records custodians scattered throughout a single government.�

Julian Bush, former Mayor Lyda Krewson’s City Counselor, oversaw the office while the records portal was being set up, leaving shortly before the current portal’s launch in late 2020. The idea was to make it easier for the public to get records by better coordinating and tracking requests — which can pile up and become overwhelming for governments.

“It was done to provide better access, not to impede access,� Bush said.

Governments are increasingly faced with a deluge of requests from data-mining companies, attorneys, political operatives and a public more aware of open records laws and able to request documents online.

“Public bodies are inundated,� Maneke, the press association lawyer said. “There’s more recognition that this information is available, and it’s a challenge for them.�

But it’s not the volume that makes ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ an outlier. ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County has received more non-police requests so far this year, 2,430 compared with ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½â€™ 1,496 as of Thursday. ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County said it had 5,820 requests through its records portal last year. ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ reported 1,639 non-police requests in 2021.

And ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County, by all accounts, doesn’t have the same issues as the city responding to record requests. Pedroli, who asks for records from ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County frequently, said he sometimes disagrees with the county’s interpretation of the Sunshine Law regarding which records should be open. But, in terms of processing time, the “county’s procedural compliance is better,â€� he said.

“Although the county closes more records, at least they do it in a timely manner so you know where they stand,� he said.

Pedroli has seen timeliness issues before — he’s still litigating a 2019 lawsuit over open records and meetings related to the aborted bid to lease ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Lambert International Airport to a private operator.

The city eventually released meeting minutes to him, which indicate topics such as media strategy were discussed in closed meetings, conversations Pedroli said should have been discussed in the open.

Though the city has released the records now that the effort is dead, that’s not the point, Pedroli said. The fact that the minutes were delayed when he asked for them in November 2019, at the height of the privatization effort, stymied public knowledge of the process at precisely when it was needed. If he wins, the city could be on the hook for financial penalties and attorney fees, essentially punishment to deter similar behavior.

“The timing of information being disclosed is probably the most important thing,� Pedroli said. “A lot of people are just going to slow-walk you until the aldermen vote, or the public officials vote. ... The whole point of politics is to respond to issues in real time to get reform.�

Perez, the fire union attorney, sees a pattern.

“The city is pretty clearly failing to meet some very minimal obligations, whether it’s responding to information requests as required by law or things like picking up the trash or keeping the streets safe,� she said. “It seems like the inquiries into the matters are being met with shrugs, or lip service and without any sense of urgency.�

Coming Monday: Despite pledges of transparency, Missouri open records often cloaked in secrecy.