After a story ran in the Post-Tribune Monday calling out the South Shore Convention and Visitors Authority for not producing documents it requested via an Access to Public Records request, the authority provided the documents.
SSCVA Attorney Scott McClure on Tuesday afternoon honored the APRA request for legal invoices regarding the lawsuit between it and former President and CEO Speros Batistatos. This was after the Post-Tribune requested on August 19 via email “all detailed legal invoices” attached to the ongoing lawsuit after the SSCVA in July appropriated $99,150 to go toward continuing legal fees in the case.
SSCVA Attorney Scott McClure acknowledged the Post-Tribune’s request on August 20 — within Public Access guidelines for electronic requests — and said he should have a response by August 30. In a separate email later that day, however, he said that because the invoices contain information that doesn’t fall under what the Indiana Public Access law considers public record, it would need more time to redact the sensitive information and provided a Public Access Counselor ruling from 2006 to explain his decision.
Under state law, written work an attorney performs for a public agency could be exempted, though it’s unclear why any of the SSCVA attorneys would include language such as strategy in an invoice.
McClure didn’t give a specific time as to when that would be, but did say he would “update (the Post-Tribune) if August 30, 2024 isn’t sufficient.”
When the Post-Tribune didn’t hear anything from the SSCVA by August 30, it reached out to McClure on September 3, providing more recent opinions regarding legal invoices. Specifically, Britt has “consistently held that any redactions to legal invoices should only include attorney-client privileged material and those redactions should be narrowly tailored to protect just that material.”
Neither McClure nor the SSCVA responded to that email, so the Post-Tribune on September 19 reached out to McClure once again to check on the status of the invoices. McClure replied five days later, on September 24, that he anticipated having the bills gone through and available by Monday, September 30th, 2024.
The Post-Tribune neither received the invoices nor a revised timeline on September 30, so the paper contacted McClure again on October 7 asking him whether the SSCVA is going to fulfill the request as required by state law. The paper then on October 18 filed a complaint with Public Access Counselor Luke Britt.
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
