ARNOLD, Mo. – A state audit of the City of Arnold heads to court as the city claims it is trying to protect confidential records.

“It’s disappointing to me that the city is wasting taxpayer money by litigating this issue,” Missouri State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick said.

Attorney Bob Sweeney, who represents the city, says it has been more than compliant throughout the audit process.

“We’ve supplied thousands of pages of documents, spent scores of hours obtaining those documents and dozens of hours sitting down face to face,” he said.

The audit has to do with taxpayer funding for transportation projects through what is called Transportation Development Districts (TDD). The auditor is looking at property owned by the TDD as well as the role city officials play while serving on TDD boards.

“When we developed this TDD, we required the property owners to put city officials on the TDD board so that the city officials would have some information and knowledge of what was going on and some say so,” Sweeney said.

The TDD had collected a tax for a parkway project to run along I-55 south of 141. But that plan was eventually put on hold after people petitioned against it. FOX 2’s Chris Hayes reported last year that people wanted to know what was being done with property the city had already purchased for that project. Sweeney told FOX 2 on Wednesday that it is still looking at ways to complete the project without the portions that were objected to by residents.

The auditor says he needs to see more documents from closed city council sessions. However, the City of Arnold has filed a temporary restraining order to try and block the release of unredacted, closed session meetings, citing concerns over significant liability, potential for fraud and loss of public trust for releasing confidential records.

“We access closed records all the time and meeting minutes that would not generally be open records to the public in the state auditor’s office. It’s a routine thing that we do,” Fitzpatrick said.

The auditor is considering a counter claim if Arnold does not comply with a subpoena for the records. Sweeney said that is not necessary. He simply wants a judge to weigh in on if the unredacted records are subject to release.