Another tale of a state court imposing stiff sanctions on a public agency for delay and obfuscation in the handling of an open records request.

A Missouri court awarded $12K in penalties, as well as attorneys fees, to a California genealogical nonprofit open records requester in a dispute that began in 2016 over Missouri birth and death records.

The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services initially quoted a cost of

$1.49 million for the birth and death records. The department claimed that production of the records would require 35,064 hours of staff time.

Following the intervention of local Kansas City counsel, the department recalculated the time and cost and arrived at a dramatically reduced price tag of $5,100 for production of the records.

The department then contacted the former Missouri Registrar. He recommended that the department "deny the group's request and 'require them to take you to court,' and to use the delay caused by the lawsuit to get the Legislature to change the law."

The department was unsuccessful in securing the needed legislative changes. Six months later, and after twice indicating it would honor the request, the department denied it.

In an opinion issued last week, Judge Patricia S. Joyce found that "the secret plan advocated by the former State Registrar—which the department followed meticulously—is a textbook case of a purposeful violation of the Sunshine Law."

The plan, Judge Joyce wrote, "represents an utter disdain for the public policy of this state that records of public governmental bodies be open to the public unless otherwise provided by law."

The Department of Health and Senior Services is, not surprisingly, considering an appeal of the court's opinion.