KC-area fire district’s $50 deposit rule for public records violates state law, AG warns

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An embattled Kansas City-area fire protection district requires a $50 deposit when members of the public submit records requests, a policy the Missouri Attorney General’s Office says charges illegal fees and must be reversed.

Jason Lewis, the office’s general counsel, warned the Western Cass Fire Protection District that its policy doesn’t comply with the Missouri Sunshine Law in a letter sent to the district on Monday. Lewis gave the district until April 15 to change its rules, writing that if it holds firm the decision may be future evidence of a purposeful violation of the Sunshine Law.

“We have thoroughly reviewed this matter … we insist that the District reverse course and adopt a compliant policy that does not impose unauthorized fees on citizens,” Lewis wrote in the letter, obtained by The Star.

The Western Cass Fire Protection District has faced a host of controversies in recent years centered on allegations of mismanagement and incompetent leadership. The district provides firefighting services to about 2,500 people across 16 square miles in western Cass County, south of Kansas City.

The warning from the Missouri Attorney General’s Office comes as western Cass County residents prepare to vote on April 2 whether to allow the fire district’s board of directors to raise property taxes to generate more revenue for its operations. The district’s board of directors wants the authority to raise its tax levy by up to 50 cents – an increase, it says, of about $286 a year on a $300,000 home. The 2023 levy was 38 cents.

A political action committee, Cass Citizens in Action, is opposing the measure, arguing the board refuses to be transparent and has mismanaged funds in the past. The effort to block the tax increase is taking place after lawsuits aimed at reforming the fire district have faltered in court.

Letter to Western Cass FPD by The Kansas City Star on Scribd

Kerri VanMeveren, a former member of the fire district’s board of directors who has been sharply critical of how the district is operated, said the letter from the Missouri Attorney General’s Office was encouraging.

“We’ve been trying to educate people for nearly two years on what’s going on. It’s difficult, we get that. People don’t want to have to babysit their government to make sure that the people they elect into office are doing their job and not doing things that are self-enriching their own personal situations,” VanMeveren said.

Lewis’s letter to the fire district says the Sunshine Law has been interpreted to prevent advance charges for time spent reviewing records before disclosure and that while advance payment may be required for copying costs, there is little cost associated with duplicating electronic records.

While the district policy allows for the $50 to be refunded if the actual costs of fulfilling a request are lower, Lewis wrote that refunds are contingent on board approval, which means they may or may not happen. But even if a refund is made, Lewis emphasized that the requestor at least temporarily loses access to their money.

“Indeed, the policy requires citizens to tender $50 even before the District has begun searching for records,” Lewis wrote. “The citizen has lost the time value of the citizen’s money.”

Sue Hosterman, president of the fire district’s board of directors, said in an interview that the board turned the letter over to its attorney, who was handling the response. Hosterman pushed back on the idea that the Sunshine Law policy violates the law.

“If you don’t have people pay up front, they probably wouldn’t pay if they got the information,” she said, adding that the state’s open record laws were “under interpretation of what you read in the statutes.”

Hosterman declined to comment further, directing questions to an attorney representing the district. Aaron Racine, the attorney, said in an interview that he was discussing the issue with the attorney general’s office and didn’t want to go into detail about those discussions.

But he pushed back on the office’s interpretation of the district policy.

“Every time we get a request costs money and that’s the purpose of charging the deposit,” he said. “If we’re going to engage our contractor to have to go find a document, make a copy and provide it in response to a Sunshine Law request, we’re interpreted that to be a cost of copying.”

John Webb, the board’s vice president who has consistently butted heads with VanMeveren, also pushed back on the letter. He defended the policy, noting the district pays an outside company to handle public records requests. The district’s Sunshine Law policy says the district contracts out requests at a rate of $25 per hour.

“We contract out services and in order for someone to handle an email and do the research and make the copies, we have to pay somebody to do that,” Webb said. “Missouri state statute says that the costs involved in replying to a response are chargeable to the person seeking the request.”

Webb pointed to a line in state law that states that research time for fulfilling public records requests “may be charged at the actual cost of research time.”

“First thing you have to understand is that we are a small fire district, so we have no regular employees,” Webb said.

But Lewis in his letter argues that the $50 deposit combined with the use of an outside contractor may impair the public’s ability to inspect or copy public records.

“The choice to hire an outside contractor and voluntarily assume a variable cost, rather than the fixed cost of paid employees already on the District’s payroll, should not be passed along to citizens beyond what would ordinarily be expected if a District employee were to fill that role,” Lewis wrote.

Tax levy ‘promotion’ questioned

The fire district’s Sunshine Law policy is only one part of a host of problems identified by critics of the district’s leadership. A lawsuit has previously alleged that for several months in 2022, the district had no qualified firefighters. Critics also say the district’s financial recordkeeping is deficient.

A lawsuit brought by Citizens for Transparency and Accountability, a local group that includes VanMeveren, against the fire district failed at the circuit court level. The group is appealing, and court filings are expected in the coming days.

The upcoming April election has produced renewed scrutiny of the fire district – including whether the district is improperly promoting the measure.

Missouri law prohibits direct spending by government agencies and officials to support or oppose ballot measures. VanMeveren said the board of directors in a February meeting approved spending $2,000 to promote the tax levy increase and at a subsequent meeting potentially approved additional spending.

Minutes for February board meetings aren’t available, but the agenda for a Feb. 21 meeting lists “Tax Levy Promotion” under new business. VanMeveren provided a photo showing a “VOTE YES” banner attached to the side of a district fire station. She said the banner has since been taken down.

Webb on Thursday said he did not remember how much money the district approved. However, he argued that the money was to inform residents about the tax levy, not to promote it.

“Some money was approved to provide information on the levy,” he said. When pressed on whether the money was intended to promote the tax increase, he said it’s “just information about the district.”

As of Thursday afternoon, the fire district’s official website contained instructions for how to request yard signs in support of the tax levy.