BANGOR – Bangor Publishing Co., parent company of the Bangor Daily News, is suing the U.S. Department of Labor alleging a lack of timely written response to a request for the release of public records concerning the employer of 14 foreign workers who drowned in a van accident last year.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday under the federal Freedom of Information Act in U.S. District Court in Bangor, seeks the disclosure and release of documents the publishing company says are currently being withheld by the labor department’s Wage and Hour Division.

On May 14, the Bangor Daily News submitted a two-page request for documents pertaining to Peter Smith III, the owner of Evergreen Forestry Services, which employed the 14 Central Americans who drowned last September after the van they were traveling in plunged into the Allagash Wilderness Waterway.

Smith, in a recent interview, said he did not renew his farm labor contractor license with the Labor Department, which the federal government was in the process of revoking before it expired. He said he did not renew his license because he wanted time off after the accident.

In the interview, Smith acknowledged he is a 40-percent or majority investor in Progressive Environmental LLC, which is employing about 300 foreign workers to plant or thin trees in Maine’s woods this summer.

He said the Labor Department has notified him he can be an investor in a company that employs foreign workers for the thinning or planting of trees, but he cannot recruit or transport the workers.

The Bangor Daily News is seeking copies of public records relating to Smith’s eligibility to operate as a farm labor contractor, regardless of whether the federal license is issued under the name of Evergreen Forestry Services or Progressive Environmental, according to Julie Murchison Harris, NEWS’ managing editor.

According to Bernard Kubetz, an attorney representing Bangor Publishing, the Labor Department did not respond in writing to the FOIA request within 20 business days of receipt of it, as required by law.

John Chavez, a spokesman for the Labor Department’s regional office in Boston, said last week the wage and hour division was reviewing the request. He said the volume of information requested and where it’s physically located have “complicated this response.”

Chavez said the wage and hour division would send the Bangor Daily News a letter on the status of the request.

The Labor Department did not specify when the FOIA request would be honored, and its letter had not been received by press time Wednesday, Harris said.