The Kansas City Star and two other Missouri news organizations asked Wednesday to intervene in a lawsuit to obtain copies of e-mail messages to and from members of Gov. Matt Blunt’s staff.  

   The Star, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Associated Press filed a joint motion to join the lawsuit filed by independent investigators appointed by Attorney General Jay Nixon. The three-member investigative team is trying to determine whether Blunt destroyed public records that the law says must be retained.

   The governor’s office had previously refused to disclose to the three news outlets many of the same documents now sought by the independent investigators.

   The governor’s office last year either denied the news outlets’ requests outright or demanded thousands of dollars in fees before the requests would be considered. The motion says the denial and demands for excessive fees violate the Missouri Sunshine law, which gives the public access to government records with limited exceptions.

   “The Sunshine law ensures taxpayers’ basic right to keep an eye on officials they elected,” said Steve Shirk, The Star’s managing editor for news. “When that law is circumvented, democracy takes a huge hit. It is absolutely essential that news organizations challenge these kinds of breaches.”

   Blunt's office issued a statement saying he was disappointed that the two newspapers “would join forces with the campaign of Jay Nixon, the Democrat candidate for governor.”

   “The credibility of these three media outlets has been further and deeply undermined by this decision, especially since the governor’s office is (now) saving every e-mail,” the statement said.

   The lawsuit was filed May 5 in Cole County Circuit Court after months of fruitless efforts to obtain copies of the governor’s e-mail messages through the Sunshine law. The investigators accused the Blunt administration of deleting e-mail messages that might have been politically damaging.

   When the governor’s staff realized that copies of the deleted messages existed on computer backup tapes, Blunt or his top aides ordered the backup tapes scheduled for deletion, the suit says. However, two supervisors in the state’s computer technology division refused delete them because they were subject to requests under the Sunshine law.

   John Holstein, the former Missouri Supreme Court judge who Blunt hired to fight the investigation, has moved to dismiss the suit, arguing that the independent investigators have no right to sue the governor. He also argued that copies of deleted records are exempt from disclosure under the Sunshine law. And he argued that scheduling the backup copies for destruction was permissible because the government is required to preserve records only if a lawsuit has been filed to obtain them.

   Holstein said Wednesday that he was still reviewing the motion to intervene and had not decided whether to oppose it.

   But he questioned how the three news organizations could justify intervening in a lawsuit over another person's Sunshine law request. If the media wants to challenge the denial of their Sunshine requests, they probably should file their own lawsuits, he said.

   Holstein also criticized the media for trying to jump into the middle of a fight between the governor and one of his political opponents. 

  “This is so politicized that I would think the media would want to avoid it,” Holstein said. “It seems to me that this could be some kind of contorted effort to endorse Mr. Nixon's odd lawsuit.”

   The newspapers’ motion to join the lawsuit recounts how all three organizations requested access to e-mail traffic from the governor’s office in October and November 2007.

   After few documents were produced from the request, reporters learned that the governor’s office routinely deleted e-mail messages that that law requires to be maintained as public records. They also learned that the governor’s office did not have a proper records-retention policy in place.   

   “In fact, staff in the governor’s office acknowledged that the e-mails were retained ‘not for very long, if at all,’ ” the motion says.

   When copies of the e-mails on the backup tapes were requested, the governor’s office claimed to the The Star that the records were exempt under the Sunshine law. The motion argues that the governor’s response violated the Sunshine law because the exemptions used to justify withholding the documents were inapplicable to The Star’s request

   In response to similar requests from the AP and the Post-Dispatch, the governor’s office sought to charge each organization $26,000 to retrieve the e-mails and have an attorney review them.

   The motion argues that the Sunshine law allows the government to charge for retrieval and copying of public records, but does not allow charging for legal review. It also does not allow the government to charge for retrieval costs that result from the government’s failure to follow the law by deleting records that should have been retained.

    The newspapers argue that they are entitled to join the lawsuit because the independent investigators’ role in the suit could end when a new administration takes over the attorney general’s office next year.

   “This is an unusual move for The Star,” Shirk said. “But this started with news organizations’ request for public records. By intervening, we would have a voice in making sure the litigation reaches conclusion.”