Sunshine in Missouri

I'll tell him someday someway somehow, But no one needs to know right now...

    About a week or so ago, a school board in the state held a closed meeting to talk with high school principals who wanted to air their complaints about a member of that board.  Apparently the board member had been belligerent toward the principals in public and had at one point threatened their jobs.  The principals wanted the board to deal with its own and requested time on the board's agenda to discuss this.  The principals arrived with representatives from the Missouri State Teachers' Association, whom should know better than to let this discussion take place in closed session.

    The board consulted with its attorneys (through Missouri School Boards Association, no doubt) and were told (again, I'm not surprised) that this could be closed because it involved a "cause of action."  Yep, it's that potential litigation issue again.  Did anyone threaten litigation here?  I doubt any of the principals said to the board that they would sue if this wasn't addressed.  But because the board didn't want to air its dirty laundry in public, it chose to use this giant loophole in the law and stuff this turkey through it.  Just because it doesn't want squawkers in public doesn't mean this constitutes a threat of litigation.  Really, now.  Who does the board think it's fooling?  Oh, I guess it must think we, the public, are the fools in this situation.  April 1st is just around the corner, but that's no excuse for this kind of behavior.

    Just one more example why we need the changes in House Bill 2210.  The General Laws Committee passed it out of committee yesterday.  This needs to get to the House floor and get some wings of its own.   This bill contains some simple, minor changes in the law, of which this is one.  Time for this legislative session is running out.  If you care about this bill, call your legislator and ask them to help it get moving.

Don't want any arrest, don't want to be the guest of the sheriff....

    A reporter called today to check to see whether information on who is in jail is a public record.  The paper understands a person arrested has bonded out and wanted confirmation of that fact.  The sheriff is refusing to release this information and has advised the paper that their information on who is in jail is not public information.

    Huh?  This one is pretty basic, folks.  The sheriff is a public body.  The county jail is, I assume, under the custody and control of the sheriff's department.  I am just certain there's a record of who is contained therein.  Those records are public records. They are open to the public unless something specific in the law closes those records.  Those are actually administrative records, not "law enforcement" records, I would argue, and therefore the law requires them to be open unless they are specifically closed under an exception in Section 610.021.

    But EVEN if they are law enforcement records, they are records of arrests, NOT "investigative reports" which are subject to closure for certain periods of time.  There is no portion of the statute that specifically closes records on who is in jail, and if a record is not specifically closed under the law, then it's open.

    Even more fundamentally, the issue of "secret prisons" is a third-world-country issue.  It's what our founding fathers left Europe to come to this country to avoid.  When we start claiming that the government has a right to arrest people and then not tell the public whether they are in jail or not, we've turned our backs on one of the basic freedoms that this country was founded upon.

    Time for this member of a law enforcement agency to do a little reading of the law!

Someone told me it's all happening at the zoo!

I don't too often let others write on my blog ... comments are a lot of work for folks who have other jobs!  But occasionally someone writes something I feel the need to share.  Today's offering is from Patrick Martin, publisher and editor of the Jefferson County Leader, in Festus.  Patrick is fed up with the email controversy.  Patrick is a dutiful student of the sunshine law and a strong advocate of openness in goverment.  You'll enjoy his thoughts!

"We used to get a lot of letters to the editor written the old-fashioned way, on lined paper or nice stationery, in handwriting that you could read.
Not so many come in that way anymore. Now we get about 80 percent of them on e-mail, which is faster than a letter, costs nothing and best of all, is typed so we don’t have to guess when writers have shaky penmanship.
For example, in a handwritten letter, the word “orange” might look more like “orangutan.” That makes quite a difference.
So e-mail, for the most part, is good. It saves time, saves the writers money and the possibility of having their letters turn out to be about large zoo critters instead of citrus fruit.
Now, would someone tell the state of Missourah that e-mail, like most modern conveniences, is supposed to save us time and money – not cost us?
The boys and girls in Jefferson City, in a never-ending attempt to posture and embarrass each other, have latched onto e-mail as their latest weapon to prove to voters that the (fill in the party you don’t like) are a bunch of secretive and probably criminally bad people who don’t respect your right to open government.
Meanwhile, the (fill in the party you do like) are the champions of freedom and openness and all that is right in the world.
And that large sucking sound in the background is tubloads of our money being thrown down a rathole while they dance their little election year dance.
It began with the man who would be governor, Attorney General Jay Nixon, a Democrat, appointing an investigative panel which demanded that the man who no longer wants to be governor, Republican Matt Blunt, turn over e-mails sent and received in his office because they are public records.
The gov responded that it will cost Nixon (and us) about $540,000 for Blunt’s staff and lawyers, some of whom bill at $300 per hour, to comb through the e-mails and edit out the things that are exempted from public scrutiny.
When this began, of course, Nixon figured he was running against Blunt this November. Now that the gov has announced he won’t run again, it would be too transparent to drop the case, so the Jaybird soldiers on. And lame duck Blunt, with no voters to answer to anymore, can be just as in-your-face to Nixon as he pleases.
Asking for a half a million bucks to produce public records is a pretty serious in-your-face maneuver.
The Republicans, in a completely unrelated but highly coincidental request, now have asked Democratic Secretary of State Robin Carnahan for her e-mails. Carnahan, perhaps sensing these are hard times, replied that information would cost only $91,000.
Both parties are outraged that Missourians should be gaffed for access to records which should be public!
Let’s come back to the planet Earth for just a minute. As a long-standing member of the press, I can tell you that Missouri’s Open Meetings Law, which was established and subsequently tweaked over the years by both parties, has holes in it you could drive an ocean liner through. Sideways.
For example, there is a provision that says meetings and records may be closed if they involve litigation. I have seen numerous meetings and discussions closed because “we might get sued.” The Missouri Press Association attorney, Jean Maneke, who knows more about this law than any living person, has said she believes the “threatened lawsuit” is not a legitimate reason for closing a meeting or record, but open meetings advocates lack the case law to prove it.
“It is frequently used because they think they can get away with it,” Maneke said.
The public’s (or a newspaper’s) only recourse is to sue, which is very time-consuming and expensive. Even if the suit is successful, the Open Meetings Law has no meaningful penalties to levy against offenders. So the winners are really losers and the offenders are winners!
This watery law, with the splendid-sounding name, was passed by none other than the Democrats and Republicans who now thunder for justice and openness in its name!
Good luck to them. It’s like going to war with a waffle iron.
Closed government, back-door decision-making and insider trading of favors have been  long-standing traditions in this state. The Open Meetings Law is window dressing to distract from those traditions.
Now that they have to apply that weak-kneed statute, it’s pretty funny to see the top people in state government fuming about openness. Funny, except that they are throwing our money out the car window as they drive around the state telling horror stories about each other.
Somehow, their strategists think the public is going to buy all this. They must think we are orangutans."

Tale as old as time, tune as old as song, learning you were wrong...

    I don't usually name names in this blog...I always give the benefit of the doubt to the public body.  But when it happens to me, I never hesitate to name names, so today the award goes to the Springfield, Mo., Police Department.  A woman on their front desk desperately needs some sunshine law training.

    I walk in last Thursday to request an incident report, and request the specific report by number.  You can see her call it up on her computer screen and look at it, then she turns to me.  "Your name is?" she asks.

    Immediately I'm not a happy camper.  I could tell her the report involves my son.  I could tell her the report involves my client.  Both are true and I know they would generate immediate cooperation. But I choose to do neither, because, as you can imagine, I am always incensed when I find a public governmental body flaunting the law and harassing private citizens for asking for a public record which they have every right to ask for.  Nothing in the sunshine law allows a public body to ask the name of the person seeking the record!  So I reply, "Oh, my name isn't in it."

   You can immediately see her freeze up.   "So then, why do you want it?" she asks.  I can't believe those words came out of her mouth!  Wrong response again, sweetie.  It doesn't matter why I want it, because again, it's a public record!  So, feeling more and more the need to drive this point home, I frankly tell her, "Because I'm a member of the public and this is a public record."

    She is not going to back off.  "It's an ongoing investigation and I can't release it to you," she says.  By now, I've decided it's time to give this woman a lesson in the law.  "I don't want the investigative report.  All I want is the incident report and it's a public record," I respond.  I demand she talk to her supervisor.  And she goes to get an officer.

       Another woman comes out and also inspects the report.  This spokesman for the department then again says to me "It's under investigation and I can only give you the incident report."

       "That's all I have asked for," I respond, "and it's a public record."  So then she hands it to me, at last.  I ask if there's a charge and they say no.  I'd have given them a dime for the one-page report, if they'd insisted, but they spent more time arguing with me over whether I had a right to a public record than they did searching for this report.

    Springfield is the third largest metropolitan area in the state.  Its police department has an excellent website, with a wealth of information available.  The department says it is committed to providing quality service to the community through "personal integrity, fairness, open communication and a helpful attitude."  I am sure it strives hard to achieve all of those things.  But perhaps a little sunshine law training is in order for its front desk personnel, so that it doesn't find itself violating the law on a regular basis. 

    Citizens shouldn't have to enforce the law against the local law enforcement.