State ex rel. Daly v. Info. Tech. Servs. Agency of St. Louis

• Decision Date: 15 October 2013
• Docket Number: No. ED98789,ED98789
• Parties: STATE OF MISSOURI, ex rel. GREGORY F.X. DALY, in his official capacity as Collector of Revenue of the City of St. Louis, and JENNIFER M. JOYCE, in her official capacity as Circuit Attorney of the City of St. Louis, Relators/Appellants/Cross-Respondents, v. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SERVICES AGENCY OF THE CITY OF ST. LOUIS and KATHY DOERR, in her official capacity as the Custodian of Records for Information Technology Services Agency of the City of St. Louis, Respondents, and ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, Intervenor/Respondent/Cross-Appellant.
• Court: Missouri Court of Appeals

STATE OF MISSOURI, ex rel. GREGORY F.X. DALY, in his official capacity as Collectorof Revenue of the City of St. Louis, and JENNIFER M. JOYCE, in her official capacityas Circuit Attorney of the City of St. Louis, Relators/Appellants/Cross-Respondents, v. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SERVICES AGENCY OF THE CITY OF ST. LOUISand KATHY DOERR, in her official capacity as the Custodian of Records for InformationTechnology Services Agency of the City of St. Louis, Respondents,and ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, Intervenor/Respondent/Cross-Appellant.

No. ED98789

Missouri Court of Appeals Eastern District DIVISION TWO

Filed: October 15, 2013

Appeal from the Circuit Court

of the City of St. Louis

Honorable Joan L. Moriarty

Introduction

The State of Missouri, ex rel. Gregory F.X. Daly, in his official capacity as the Collector of Revenue of the City of St. Louis (Collector) and Jennifer M. Joyce, in her official capacity as the Circuit Attorney for the City of St. Louis (Circuit Attorney) (collectively Relators) and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Newspaper) appeal from the June 25, 2012 Order and Judgment entered by the circuit court on Relators' Petition inMandamus and the Counterclaim for Declaratory Judgment filed by Information Technology Services Agency of the City of St. Louis (ITSA) and Kathy Doerr, in her official capacity as the Custodian of Records for ITSA against Relators and Cross-Claim against Intervenor Newspaper. We reverse in part and affirm in part.

Factual and Procedural Background

On November 23, 2010, Newspaper submitted a Sunshine Law request to the office of the Comptroller for the City of St. Louis (the Comptroller), asking for the 2009 and 2010 payroll records of all employees paid through the Comptroller's payroll system (payroll records). On November 29, 2010, the Comptroller told Newspaper that it had received approval of the City Counselor to fulfill Newspaper's request and was working with ITSA to do so.

ITSA is a public governmental agency created pursuant to St. Louis City Ordinance 65798 "responsible for the planning, development, coordination and implementation of timely, reliable, cost-effective municipal technology and information services for use by City government and City employees, citizens and businesses." The purpose of ITSA is to serve both City agencies and the public, using technology to assist other City departments as they deliver services to the public, and its services include computer support, programming and website administration. See http://stlouis-mo.gov/government/departments/information-technology/. ITSA supplies technological support services for assorted databases, including payroll information, owned by its government clients, including Relators, the City of St. Louis, and other public agencies. Relators pay an annual fee to the City of St. Louis in exchange for ITSA's processing of a variety of their electronic data, including payroll.

Specifically, the city agencies that use ITSA's services to generate their payroll give payroll data to the Comptroller, who in turn gives it to ITSA. This payroll data generally includes name, social security number, address, rate of pay, and hours worked. ITSA enters the data into its program, launches its program to process the data, and then delivers the results back to the Comptroller. The Comptroller provides the data to the individual city agencies, which check the results for accuracy, make any corrections, and give the data back to the Comptroller who gives it to ITSA. The corrected data is processed again by ITSA's program which generates a file of the processed data. This file is submitted to the City's Treasurer who electronically transmits the payroll funds to the bank to cause the city agencies' employees to be paid.

ITSA advised Newspaper that it had all of the requested payroll records in its possession but some city agencies wanted Newspaper to secure their consent in releasing their respective employees' records via their custodians of records. Accordingly, on January 5, 2011, Newspaper requested the consent of the custodians of records of certain city agencies¹ for ITSA to release their employees' payroll records. Relators, via letters sent January 10 and 12, 2011, from the Collector's office and the Circuit Attorney's office, respectively, advised Newspaper they would produce the requested records upon Newspaper's payment of the nominal search and copying fees called for by statute. Newspaper never tendered the funds of $315.00 and $949.38, respectively, nor procured the records from Relators.

On February 4, 2011, ITSA agreed to release payroll records for 22 city agencies. ITSA did not release payroll records for 10 city agencies,² which included Relators.

On September 26, 2011, Newspaper made a "final" Sunshine Law request to ITSA for all city agencies' public employees' payroll records. On September 29, 2011, ITSA notified Newspaper and all city agencies that it intended to produce all payroll records it possessed on October 7, 2011, unless legal action was taken to stop it. On October 5, 2011, Relators filed a Petition in Mandamus in the Circuit Court of the City of St. Louis seeking a preliminary and permanent writ of mandamus to prohibit ITSA from producing payroll records relating to their respective employees. On October 6, 2011, the circuit court issued a Preliminary Order in Mandamus. On October 7, 2011, ITSA provided the payroll records for all city agencies other than Relators to Newspaper. Newspaper intervened in the mandamus action and filed an Answer and Suggestions in Opposition to the Petition in Mandamus. On October 27, 2011, ITSA moved to quash the Preliminary Order in Mandamus. ITSA also filed a Declaratory Judgment counterclaim against Relators and cross-claim against Newspaper raising two issues, each of which is subject to a point in this appeal: (1) whether ITSA must provide, upon Newspaper's request, payroll data of employees of public agencies other than itself which it has in its possession for data processing purposes; and (2) whether records reflecting accrued vacation pay, compensatory time and sick pay for public employees (accrued pay records) are public salary records subject to disclosure pursuant to the Sunshine Law.

The parties agreed that a ruling on ITSA's declaratory judgment claims would resolve the other claims in the action. On June 25, 2012, the circuit court issued an Orderand Judgment holding (1) the payroll records may be obtained from ITSA through a request to ITSA's Custodian of Records, and (2) pay records for accrued sick time, vacation time and compensatory time are not open records. This appeal follows.

Standard of Review

The standard of review in a declaratory judgment case is the same as in any other court-tried case. Guyer v. City of Kirkwood, 38 S.W.3d 412, 413 (Mo.banc 2001). The judgment will be affirmed unless there is no substantial evidence to support it, it is against the weight of the evidence, or it erroneously declares or applies the law. Id.

Statutory interpretation is an issue of law that we review de novo. Spradling v. SSM Health Care St. Louis, 313 S.W.3d 683, 686 (Mo.banc 2010). Our task in statutory interpretation is to discern the intent of the legislature from the language used. Id. In doing so, we consider the language's plain meaning. Id.

Payroll Records

In their point on appeal, Relators contend the circuit court erred in finding their payroll records processed by ITSA are subject to a Sunshine Law request directed to ITSA, thus requiring ITSA to produce the records, because the court misapplied the Sunshine Law in that the law places an unequivocal, exclusive right and duty on Relators to receive, review, and respond to such requests, and excluding them from the process of producing the records is inconsistent with legislative intent and sound public policy.

Section 610.023,³ titled "Records of governmental bodies to be in care of custodian, duties--records may be copied but not removed, exception, procedure--denial of access, procedure," provides:

1. Each public governmental body is to appoint a custodian who is to be responsible for the maintenance of that body's records. The identity and location of a public governmental body's custodian is to be made available upon request.

2. Each public governmental body shall make available for inspection and copying by the public of that body's public records. No person shall remove original public records from the office of a public governmental body or its custodian without written permission of the designated custodian. No public governmental body shall, after August 28, 1998, grant to any person or entity, whether by contract, license or otherwise, the exclusive right to access and disseminate any public record unless the granting of such right is necessary to facilitate coordination with, or uniformity among, industry regulators having similar authority.

3. Each request for access to a public record shall be acted upon as soon as possible, but in no event later than the end of the third business day following the date the request is received by the custodian of records of a public governmental body. If records are requested in a certain format, the public body shall provide the records in the requested format, if such format is available. If access to the public record is not granted immediately, the custodian shall give a detailed explanation of the cause for further delay and the place and earliest time and date that the record will be available for inspection. This period for document production may exceed three days for reasonable cause.

4. If a request for access is denied, the custodian shall provide, upon request, a written statement of the grounds for such denial. Such statement shall cite the specific provision of law under which access is denied and shall be furnished to the requester no later than the end of the third business day following the date that the request for the statement is received.

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