"The Ohio Department of Health has spent more than $56,000 on legal bills to fight WCPO to keep the number of nursing home COVID deaths at each facility hidden from the public.

"WCPO obtained the state's legal invoices this week through a public records request. They show that the state, through the Ohio Attorney General's office, is spending $200 per hour on attorney Dale Cook of the Columbus law firm Isaac Wiles to fight WCPO's request for public information on COVID death numbers at Cincinnati-area nursing homes.

"'These are the people's records. They are not ODH's records. They belong to every citizen in the state of Ohio,' said WCPO attorney Darren Ford.

"WCPO filed a complaint against the Ohio Department of Health in August 2020 for that public information and won in the Court of Common Claims.

"Attorneys for Ohio's health department tried to argue that death information is private under state law. Special Master Jeff Clark disagreed, noting that the information is already available on death certificates, which are public records. He ruled that officials violated the state's public records law when they refused to release to WCPO the number of COVID-19 deaths at a Cincinnati nursing home. A judge later adopted that ruling.

"But the health department appealed its loss to the 10th District Court of Appeals. The appeals court heard arguments in mid-November in WCPO's case and four other similar cases that all involve the state's refusal to release COVID death information.

"'With all the misinformation out there nowadays, isn't that what we want people to do instead of making up numbers or getting it from really unreliable places? Just to ask the state how many people have died of COVID in the state of Ohio last year,' said Attorney Matt Miller-Novak, who represents a Columbus woman in her quest for basic COVID death information."