Ruling on records denied

Appeals court: Central paper can inspect CH2M files

An appellate court Friday threw out a Baton Rouge judge’s ruling that said a weekly newspaper cannot inspect the records of CH2M Hill, which once contracted to perform a large portion of Central’s public services, because the private engineering firm is not a public body.

The state 1st Circuit Court of Appeal sent the case back to state District Judge Kay Bates for a hearing on the issue of whether the connexity between CH2M Hill and the city of Central rendered the firm an instrumentality of the city’s government and thus makes it subject to the state’s public records law.

Central City News Editor Louis “Woody’’ Jenkins called the ruling a big victory for the paper’s ongoing efforts to obtain the records under the argument that privatization cannot be used to shield records from public view.

“We think that principle is very important in the era of privatization,’’ he said.

Lloyd Lunceford, an attorney for the Louisiana Press Association, which filed a brief in the case on behalf of the LPA and in support of Central City News, labeled the 1st Circuit ruling a “victory in the making for government transparency and accountability.’’

“The Court rejected CH2M Hill’s contention that because it is a private corporation it cannot be a ‘public body’ for purposes of the Public Records Act,’’ he said in an email. “The Court held that CH2M Hill may nevertheless be an ‘instrumentality of municipal government’ that is subject to the Act’s disclosure requirements if it has a sufficiently close connection with the City of Central.’’

The CH2M Hill attorney who argued the case before the 1st Circuit last month could not be reached for comment.

CH2M Hill administered city services in Central from 2008 until last July, when the nonprofit Institute for Building Technology and Safety took over those functions.

CH2M Hill came under fire during the 2010 Central mayoral election after it paid for an advertisement that ran in The Advocate under the caption “We Are Central,’’ defending the cost of City Council-set permit fees.

Jenkins filed a public records request with the city for all documents relating to the ad’s publication, citing concerns that CH2M Hill was running ads on behalf of the city without permission.

CH2M Hill fought Jenkins’ request, saying it was a private company and thus not subject to the request.

Bates threw out Central City News’ resulting public records lawsuit against CH2M Hill, ruling in mid-2010 that the paper cannot inspect internal documents related to the ad because CH2M Hill is not a public body.

The 1st Circuit ruling vacating that decision was issued by Judges Vanessa G. Whipple, John Michael Guidry and James Kuhn.