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For several months, the Columbia Missourian has requested documents regarding the operations and finances of Boone Health following major layoffs, program cuts and reported losses of $112 million from the hospital in 2021-22.
Hospital officials, including members of the publicly elected board of trustees, have denied numerous requests by Missourian reporters for operational documents. Missourian investigative editor Mark Horvit filed a lawsuit Oct. 10 against the Boone County Hospital Board of Trustees on behalf of the newspaper in order to access these documents.
“The reason that we’re filling this lawsuit is because we believe that vitally important information, that the public has a right to know, is being withheld from the public,” Horvit said.
Hospital officials claim that Boone Health operates as a private, nongovernmental corporation. As a result, Boone Health has claimed previously that it must protect its financial documentation from competitors, like MU Health Care.
Additionally, the publicly elected board of trustees created a nonelected board of directors to conduct business operations. All elected members of the board of trustees are also members of the nonelected board of directors. They have claimed that their actions on the board of directors are removed from their publicly elected positions, and thus do not fall under Sunshine or open record laws.
The board members claim that this allows them to avoid providing documents, as they were not operating within their role as trustees when they obtained them.
Boone Health did not respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit.
Horvit’s case claims that because the board of trustees is a publicly elected body, the hospital should be considered a public or quasi-public organization, requiring it to follow Sunshine laws.
As such, Horvit’s case argues that the board members are in violation of the Sunshine laws.
There is no language within Sunshine laws regarding how a document must be obtained, but simply whether a public official or officials have possession of the public document. The case claims that regardless of their position at the time of obtaining the record, board members must produce the records because they have possession of them. Since they have not produced the documents, the case claims that they are in violation.
The filing references a 1998 state appellate court ruling. North Kansas City Hospital denied a Sunshine request from St. Luke’s Hospital System. The hospital claimed that the organization running the hospital was separate from its elected board of trustees.
The ruling in the ensuing North Kansas City Hospital v. St. Luke’s case determined that corporations created to operate municipal hospitals while remaining under the authority of the hospital’s public board of trustees are considered “quasi-governmental” bodies. This puts these organizations within the state’s Sunshine Laws.
This story originally appeared in the Columbia Missourian. It can be republished in print or online.