A city employee who has been the object of many gripes by local journalists and transparency advocates took the stand in court today as part of an ongoing lawsuit alleging St. Louis city government routinely flouts state transparency laws.
Joseph Sims’ testimony at this morning's hearing was part of a suit filed in September by Elad Gross, a Democrat running for Missouri attorney general, concerning records requests he made on behalf of Robert Childs.
Childs said he was assaulted while being detained in the St. Louis City Justice Center and that the attack was abetted by the conditions there, including doors that didn't lock. Gross then requested records under Missouri’s Sunshine law for a potential lawsuit on Childs’ behalf. Gross says he waited a year for the requests to be filled before filing suit against the city — a lawsuit that drew significant publicity both for its allegations of an extensive pattern of violations and the city’s heavy-handed response.
Gross’ suit named Sims as one of the defendants.
Sims has become well-known among people who request records from the city. Post-Dispatch columnist Tony Messenger wrote in a column last year that messages from Sims to records requestors explaining why requests couldn't be fulfilled or why fulfillment would be delayed were "becoming infamous among the circles of folks — especially reporters and attorneys — who regularly file requests for open records with the city."
Gross says that Childs' situation is emblematic of why delays in fulfilling records requests matter. The laws under which Childs might file a civil suit have statutes of limitations, making the city's slow-walking of disclosure of relevant facts all the more problematic.
On the stand today, Sims described himself as a paralegal with the City Counselor's Office. He wore glasses and a goatee, his jet black hair swooped to one side.
Sims testified that as the city's Sunshine coordinator he is not the custodian of records for any city division but acts as a liaison between the requestor and the various record custodians throughout city government.
On the stand, Sims acknowledged that many responses to Sunshine requests are pre-written email templates, and in any given response little is changed other than the applicable city departments and dates.
In his questions, Gross drilled down on the templates that tell a requestor more time is needed to fulfill their request. These responses say, "per the Custodian of Records…additional time will be necessary to respond to your request." They go on to list the “earliest possible date” by which records may be made available.
Sims said this morning that "at times" he sends out those replies as well as assigns new “earliest possible dates” — despite having heard nothing from the relevant department’s custodian of records.
In one specific instance involving a records request Gross made to the city’s Department of Public Safety, Sims said of that department's records custodian, "She didn't communicate [a date]. I gave her one."
After the hearing, Gross called this practice "definitely arbitrary."
"Although he said he's doing it based on some reason, he didn't really give what the reason was he's selecting certain days. When he's responding to someone without actually responding on behalf of the custodian, but he's saying he's doing on behalf of the custodian, because he's trying to cover himself in all this — that's a very big problem,” Gross said. “He should not be doing that."
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