The Metropolitan Council on Wednesday sought to keep KSTP-TV from getting Metro Transit videos of drivers and passengers.

The Met Council argued before the Minnesota Court of Appeals, seeking to reverse a lower ruling that favored KSTP-TV under the state’s Government Data Practices Act.

The dispute involved Metro Transit’s rejection of KSTP video requests. In fall 2013, KSTP reporter Jay Kolls sought surveillance tapes of two Metro Transit employees in separate incidents. That July, a bus driver, Andrew Solovjos, veered off the road and crashed near Lake Calhoun with passengers on board. Three months later, a transit driver had an altercation with a bicyclist while on his route. KSTP also requested video access based on reports of criminal behavior by riders.

The Office of Administrative Hearings in October ruled in KSTP’s favor.

Metro Transit called the videos “private personnel data,” according to a complaint filed by KSTP last summer before the administrative hearings office. The incidents were investigated internally and no disciplinary actions were taken against either bus driver, the Met Council said.

Mark Anfinson, KSTP’s attorney, argued that the videos were public upon creation. Removing the files for investigative purposes results in “very serious problems in the realm of public information,” he said.

According to the Data Practices Act, the state’s Freedom of Information Act, “state and local government records are accessible to the public, unless a statute or rule provides otherwise.” As a regional government agency, the Metropolitan Council is subject to the law.

The three main points of contention Wednesday:

— Does potential disciplinary action of an employee affect the classification of a video?

— What would warrant data to be reclassified from public to private?

— Who is the subject of the video data?

David Theisen, deputy general counsel for the Met Council, which runs Metro Transit, said that “if there’s no discipline” for the bus employees, the data becomes private and can be released only with the consent of the driver, who he argued is the subject of the video.

But Anfinson contended that, if this was the legal standard, it would “be routinely manipulated and abused.”

“All you would have to do is pull records into an investigative file and they would be gone,” he said. “What you do when you allow this public data to suddenly become private is you incentivize employees acting improperly and management acting inadequately because nobody gets to find out what happened.”

Anfinson called the statute “ambiguous” and in need of fine-tuning by the state Legislature.

Ben Bartenstein can be reached at 651-228-5488.