ROLLA – A story that began with a small-town traffic stop will end with a judge deciding whether government officials tried to silence a critic by banning her from city hall.
Rebecca Varney already won one round in her lawsuit accusing the city of Edgar Springs of repeated violations of Missouri’s Sunshine Law. On Friday she got her day in court on the counts that remained. Phelps County Circuit Judge John Beger, at the end of the five hours of testimony and argument, gave attorneys a month to file final briefs in advance of his ruling.
“There was clearly a vendetta against Ms. Varney,” attorney David Roland, director of the Freedom Center of Missouri, told Beger in his summation.
City officials argue a different reason for banning Varney from city hall except for public meetings – her presence seeking records on a day in March 2019 and refusal to leave when asked. The ban was in place for almost four years.
“A lot of this is speculation, certainly when you get into the motivations of city officials,” attorney Greg Dohrman, representing Edgar Springs, said during his argument.
Varney received a ticket March 1, 2018, from an Edgar Springs officer who cited her for rolling through a stop sign. She fought the ticket in court but ultimately lost. Along the way she started digging into how often the town’s police force of one full-time chief and two...
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