With Gov. DeWine in Iowa for Reds-Cubs, Fight Over Super Bowl Travel Expenses Heats Up
The Enquirer wants to know just how much Ohio spent to send DeWine's security and staff to Los Angeles.
Tonight, the Reds and Cubs will meet in an Iowa cornfield to play the second iteration of Major League Baseball’s “Field of Dreams” game.
Gov. Mike DeWine will be there. He is known to be a big Reds fan, though the below video calls into question whether he has ever actually seen “Field of Dreams.” (Asked if he has a favorite line from the movie, he said: “No, you know, the movie has great lines.”)
It’s Gov. DeWine’s second sports related trip of 2022. The first one led to a lawsuit that is now before the Supreme Court of Ohio. Here’s that story.
In February, according to the Enquirer, 19 members of the DeWine family were in attendance for the Bengals’ appearance in Super Bowl LVI. It’s not clear how much the DeWines spent on the trip (tickets alone might have cost $95,000, given that the get-in price never seemed to dip below $5,000). But we know, based on the Enquirer’s reporting, that the family paid its own way.
What we don’t know, and what the Enquirer has sued to know, is how much the State paid to send troopers and staff with the DeWines. A reporter requested that information in February. The next month, a lawyer for the Ohio Department of Public Safety denied the reporter’s records request, classifying the expenses as security records, which are not considered public records under Ohio law.
In April, the Enquirer sued Ohio Department of Public Safety Director Thomas Stickrath in the Supreme Court of Ohio. (Cases do not typically begin at the state supreme court, but Ohio permits individuals harmed by alleged violations of public records law to file there.) The Enquirer asserts that the trip expenses for DeWine’s detail are not security records protected from disclosure.
The Supreme Court referred the case to mediation, but efforts to resolve the case appear to have been unsuccessful. Tuesday, the Court returned the case to its docket and ordered Director Stickrath to respond to the Enquirer’s complaint within 21 days.
My analysis
I believe the Enquirer is likely entitled to the records it seeks.
The test is whether the trip expenses contain “information directly used for protecting or maintaining the security of a public office against attack, interference, or sabotage.”1 If so, they are non-public security records.2 The Department has cited to a case in which gubernatorial documents were found to be non-public security records, but the documents in that case chronicled investigations into threats against the governor.3
The records the Enquirer wants chronicle…airfare? Hotel stays? Restaurant meals?
Maybe the Department of Public Safety is just anticipating needing to protect Gov. DeWine or Whaley during future Super Bowl trips by the Bengals. But that’s viewing the Department’s position charitably.
Thanks for reading!
R.C. 149.433(A)(1).
R.C. 149.433(B)(1).
State ex rel. Plunderbund Media v. Born, 141 Ohio St.3d 422, 427 (2014).