Bang Bang the Sunshine law’s silver hammer…

I am so proud of the Missouri Press Association member newspapers sometimes They have
clearly studied the sunshine law better than some public officials, whose job it is to know this
law. And theyare diligent in their efforts to access public records in the face of roadblocks they
encounter on the way to the public’s right to know.

Just yesterday, a paper called to discuss their efforts to access the petitions submitted to a city
clerk in an effort to call for an election on a city matter. The newspaper had requested copies of
all the petitions and had offered to pay the proper cost to obtain these copies.

We cannot give them to you, the clerk said. The Missouri Secretary of State’s office told us they
weren’t a public record.

The newspaper knew this was a ridiculous claim and said so. But they also followed up by
calling the Secretary of State’s office and, sure enough, the spokesman there said these were
clearly a public record and that they had never made such a statement to the city clerk.

When the newspaper called back, this time the clerk had a different story. This time it was some
Republican committee that had told them not to release the documents.

One cannot help but suspect the clerk was just making this up as he or she went along. In truth,
the clerk, one suspects, wanted to hold this information until it could be passed along to city
officials at a regularly scheduled meeting before it was released to the media. And THAT is
certainly not an exception to the open meetings law. Public records are public records once they
are held in a public body’s office.

And so what happens to someone who so blatantly abuses the law? Nothing.

Sometimes I think the Missouri Attorney General’s office needs a little silver hammer of their
own, to use when they go around doing their sunshine law seminars, to do a little educating of
some of the thicker-headed public officials. This law just needs teeth. And a champion of its
own to enforce it.