DNR hires private attorney to handle Katy bridge lawsuit

The natural resources department will have Jay Nixon's legal expense fund pay the bill.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- The department of natural resources has hired a private attorney to do battle with Attorney General Jay Nixon in a dispute over whether the agency can legally relinquish the state's rights to an old Boonville railroad bridge.

The department said Friday that it will be represented by Kent Lowry, leader of the tort litigation group at the Armstrong Teasdale law firm.

Lowry will be paid $275 an hour, which the department intends to bill to Nixon's legal expense fund, said department director Doyle Childers.

The Armstrong Teasdale firm not only is a big legal power, but also a political one. In 2003-2004, its employees and affiliates contributed $55,100 to Gov. Matt Blunt and fellow Republicans and $84,600 to Democrats, including gubernatorial rivals Claire McCaskill and Bob Holden, according to the Center for Ethics and the Free Market, which tracks campaign contributions.

Lowry gave $1,500 to Blunt. Childers, a former Republican senator, said Lowry's political affiliation played a role in his selection.

"When you're dealing with something as politically charged as this issue seems to be, it would make sense to have someone who philosophically agrees with you," Childers said.

Nixon's office had authorized the department to use in-house attorneys, but Childers said their workload made that impossible.

The attorney general's office will pay the bill for the private attorney, said spokesman Scott Holste, but "we are surprised that he had to seek outside counsel, because he has made earlier public statements that he was confident the agreement to remove the bridge had been examined by competent legal people."

Lowry was not available for comment.

The Democratic attorney general sued Childers and his department last month, seeking an injunction preventing the agency from giving up the state's right to use the former Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad bridge as part of the Katy Trail State Park.

A federal law allows unused rail lines to be converted to trails, as long as they are preserved for potential railroad use again in the future.

Under that law, Missouri paid $200,000 for 200 miles of an MKT rail line between St. Charles and Sedalia in 1987. The agreement specified that the railroad would still own the Missouri River bridge near Boonville and would keep it available for future transportation use under the federal trail law. But the agreement gave the state the right to use the bridge for a trail, if it assumed liability.

Shortly before leaving office in December, Democratic governor Bob Holden's natural resources director, Steve Mahfood, claimed the bridge for state trail use. But Childers, Blunt's new director, reversed that decision in April, permanently relinquishing the state's right to the bridge.

Union Pacific Railroad Co., which obtained the bridge when it bought the MKT Railroad in 1988, plans to dismantle the bridge and float part of it downstream for use on a second Osage River railroad bridge.