ST. LOUIS — A ӣƵ firefighter is suing the city, saying it’s trying to overcharge him for public records.
Deputy Fire Chief Kenny Mitchell said in a recent court filing that city officials asked him for a deposit of $130,000 to process a request for emails between the city’s personnel director and the leader of a group that advocates for Black firefighters.
The city said his request for about 11 months’ worth of communications between personnel chief Sonya Jenkins-Gray and Percy Green III, the leader of Firefighters Institute for Racial Equality, turned up 32,031 emails.
The city’s open records coordinator, Joseph Sims, told Mitchell it would take 3,203.1 work hours — about a year and a half — to review those emails and find the ones responsive to his request.
Lynette Petruska, Mitchell’s attorney, said in the lawsuit that the estimates were nonsense because there should be nothing to review.
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“It should be clear,” she wrote, “that the City is once again playing games with the Sunshine Law to prevent the disclosure of public records because the City has something to hide.”
Petruska’s comment marked only the latest criticism of the city’s open records work. City Hall has gotten a reputation for slow-walking requests in recent years, frustrating the media and lawyers who routinely use the state statute. Once, officials even claimed a salary study they had commissioned didn’t exist, only to release it after a lawyer for the city firefighters union complained to the state attorney general.
Conner Kerrigan, a spokesman for Mayor Tishaura O. Jones, declined comment on the lawsuit. City officials generally don’t talk about on pending lawsuits outside of court.
But in a written statement, Jared Boyd, the mayor’s chief of staff, said the city gets many large requests that require civil servants to comb through large volumes of information to find responsive materials.
“This can result in longer wait times and fees for that time,” said Boyd. “Mayor Jones’s administration remains committed to transparency in government.”
Mitchell did not, in his request, say why he wanted the records.
Petruska, his attorney, didn’t say Thursday either.
View life in ӣƵ through the Post-Dispatch photographers' lenses. Edited by Jenna Jones.
