By Steve Taylor
For the Leader
The Missouri Attorney General’s Office has filed a lawsuit against Jefferson County Councilwoman Renee Reuter, accusing her of violating the state’s Sunshine Law.
The suit, filed Jan. 17 in Jefferson County Circuit Court by Attorney General Josh Hawley, names both Reuter and the County Council as defendants.
The suit alleges that Reuter (District 2, Imperial), who was council chairwoman in 2017, directed the council’s administrative assistant, who is Pat Schl-ette, to delete email messages containing invoices for legal services provided to the council, in violation of the state’s open meetings and records law.
People or agencies found in violation of the Sunshine Law can face fines up to $5,000.
Reuter did not return messages asking for comment.
Schlette declined to comment on the suit.
The invoices in question were from the Kirkwood law firm of Cunningham, Vogel and Rost for its defense of the County Council in two lawsuits:
■ The first lawsuit, filed in late 2015 by a group of former and current Jefferson County officeholders, asserts that elected officials have been underpaid since the county’s home rule charter was fully implemented in January 2010. An outside attorney, William Hellmich, was hired to represent the county because current elected officials were parties to the suit. However, after County Executive Ken Waller joined the suit, Hellmich withdrew, so the council hired David Struebel and the Cunningham firm. Waller later withdrew from that suit. That case is still ongoing.
■ The second suit was filed by Waller in March 2017 against the council and asked the court to overturn an ordinance, approved by the council in December 2016, that gave the council authority to replace members of the Planning and Zoning Commission and the Board of Adjustment, instead of the county executive. Struebel’s firm also represented the council in that case, which has been dismissed.
To date, the county has been billed more than $150,000 in legal fees from three law firms dealing with those cases: $6,000 from Daniel Emerson of St. Louis, who represented Waller in his suit against the council; $12,250 from Hellmich and $132,699 from the Cunningham firm.
While the bills from Emerson and Hellmich have been paid, the county has yet to pay the Cunningham firm because county officials claim that firm was hired in violation of the county’s charter. That firm withdrew from the lawsuit case on Nov. 21 “due to professional considerations,” according to court documents.
It’s almost certain taxpayers will be on the hook for even more money to defend against the Attorney General’s suit, since county counselor Tony Dorsett said it’s unlikely he would represent either Reuter, who is named as a defendant in her official capacity, or the council as a whole. Dorsett said he probably won’t be representing them because the council filed a complaint against him alleging ethics violations on his part. (See related story, this page).
“We’re going to have a closed session during Monday’s council meeting (after Leader deadline) to discuss the issues surrounding this case,” Dorsett said.
According to the attorney general’s lawsuit against Reuter and the council, an unnamed person filed a Sunshine Law request on July 13 asking for documents concerning the two cases, including billing invoices.
The suit alleges that Reuter, in a telephone conversation with Schlette later that day, directed the administrative assistant to search for emails containing the invoices and to delete each of them and to destroy any paper copies of the emails and invoices, which Schlette did.
Reuter than allegedly instructed Schlette to call her if anyone asked for the invoices.
“Reuter intended to keep the emails and invoices hidden from public view,” the suit claims.
The Leader filed a similar Sunshine Law request on July 17, requesting detailed invoices, and on July 25 received only a single-page summary of the amounts that the Cunningham firm billed the county for each of the two suits, broken down by months.
The Leader sent a second Sunshine Law request on Nov. 6 reiterating its request for the detailed invoices. It received copies of the detailed invoices for both cases on Nov. 14, after the Waller case had been dismissed.
Hawley’s lawsuit asks the court to order penalties of up to $1,000 for each knowing violation of the Sunshine Law and up to $5,000 for each purposeful violation.
The suit asserts that Reuter and the County Council are aware of the provisions of the law concerning public records since Attorney General’s Office representatives offered county officials at least two workshops about Sunshine Law compliance, in 2011 and 2013.
County officials said that if those fines are ordered, they don’t know who would be liable to pay them.
“We’re in unchartered waters here,” Waller said.