Sunshine in Missouri

Doctor Doctor give me the news...I've got a bad case of sunshine law blues!

    A letter from a general counsel of a privately-owned hospital crossed my desk last week.  The institution holds a special place in my heart...it's where I started life a few years ago (How many?  Doesn't matter to this story!).

    He was responding to a newspaper's sunshine law request.  The newspaper wanted access to certain records relating to the contract the hospital has with a local county to provide ambulance service.

    The letter raises a lot of issues and the newspaper is in the process of addressing those issues further.  But one sentence in the letter just stands out.  If it reflects the quality of the work this general counsel does, the hospital better check itself into its emergency room, because it needs emergency care.  "...[T]he ambulance district is a quasi public governmental body..." the letter says, referring to a county's ambulance district.

    I believe, unless I'm mistaken, this county's ambulance district is an entity created by Missouri statute.  If I'm right, then for this attorney to say it's a "quasi" public body makes me wonder about the quality of the rest of the legal conclusions he's reached.

    Maybe the hospital better keep the phone close.  It may need to call 911 sooner than it thinks!

A, B, C. Easy as 1, 2, 3. Simple as do, re, me. A, B, C, 1, 2, 3, Baby You and Me

    It is time for a university board in the southwestern part of the state to go to school -- sunshine law school, that is.  Perhaps some of these bills being filed in Jeff City to require mandatory sunshine law training can specify that the bill especially applies to institutions like this fine one.

   The board is busy looking for a new chief administrator.  Perhaps they are asking him or her if he or she is capable of performing the duties of the job.  Perhaps what they should be asking the candidates is if they have ever heard of the Open Meetings/Open Records law and could take a few minutes to explain its basic principles to the board members.

    Today's story is that they met to select a firm to investigate the backgrounds of the candidates.  (Again, let me suggest they add the sunshine law issue to their list to be investigated.  Seriously, folks!  You've made this blog before.  It's time you dealt with this problem you have!)  They selected a firm to do this task in closed meeting.

    Pray tell me what exactly the hiring of a private investigator has to do with "Hiring, firing, disciplining or promoting of particular employees by a public governmental body when personal information about the employee is discussed or recorded"?  Do you see anything in that proposal that involves "personal information about the employee"?  Seems to me to be pretty clear that we're talking about a private investigation firm, NOT a potential employee.  But then, what do I know?  Maybe there's some secret code contained in that sentence that only highly educated members of the board of governors of an institution of higher education can decipher that I can't. 

    You know, perhaps it's time we re-wrote the sunshine law in English that most of the rest of us can understand.  More akin the lines of "See papers.  See people who pay for papers.  See people who want to see papers.  Give them to those people.  They paid for them."  Or perhaps "I need to talk to you.  We need to talk to you.  You pay for our meeting.  You should be there.  He should be there.  She should be there.  Everyone should be there."

    This institution needs a little higher learnin' of its own.  "You went to school to learn boy, the things you never never knew before."  Perhaps start with this fact: It is the public policy of this state that meetings, records, votes, actions, and deliberations of public governmental bodies be open to the public unless otherwise provided by law.