Jackson Jambalaya

 Y'all Politics and UMMC are engaged in a little bout of tug of war over some public records.  

The website submitted a public records request with UMC for records subpoenaed by Blue Cross.  Blue Cross sued several UMC officials for defamation in Rankin County Circuit Court.  The UMMC employees include Dr. Louann Woodward, Dr. Alan Jones, and Marc Rolph.  Y'all Politics reported earlier this week: 

Earlier this month, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Mississippi (BCBS) subpoenaed multiple individual officials at the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) over their communications specifically with two Mississippi news outlets in the current defamation lawsuit BCBS filed against the medical center’s leadership.

BCBS claims that employees of UMMC engaged in a defamatory public relations campaign against the company.

The BCBS subpoena seeks the correspondence between UMMC and media outlets, specifically naming Mississippi Today, their reporter Kate Royals, and SuperTalk Mississippi.

 In the interest of public disclosure in this matter, Y’all Politics filed a public records request with UMMC on Tuesday seeking the same information listed in the BCBS subpoena.  Doing so ensures that even if a settlement of the lawsuit is reached between the two parties, the public has the opportunity to view that information in full. Article.

UMMC struck back with a rather hefty fee request: 

I anticipate the required fee payment that must be paid in order to receive documents responsive to the request to well exceed $1,000.  I won't know a more accurate cost estimation until I convene all personnel who will be engaged in this request. 

YP didn't go away but instead challenged UMC again: 

Thanks.  Again, we literally copied a portion of the document request that we assume are in accordance with the subpoena in the civil case.  We are under the assumption that UMMC will not charge us for anything other than replication fees for something its already in the process of producing.  

If we misunderstand or if UMMC is not intending to produce these documents for the subpoena, please advise. 

UMMC's response is not a surprise.  A common tactic used to discourage public records requests in Mississippi is to charge rather high fees for the records.  UMMC is well-versed in this practice as it has charged this website nearly $100 for simple purchase agreements and $372 for 21 pages of advertising invoices.  It appears Y'all Politics is not going away so it will be interesting to see what happens in this public records showdown, right?