You can change direction, you can change your mind…but the sun’s still gonna shine…

I was talking with the city clerk of a small Missouri community this morning for a client.  She’s new and apparently this community doesn’t see the need to help educate its clerk, the person who has responsibility for the public records, about the provisions contained in the Sunshine Law.  We talked about certain records I needed and she was most helpful and gracious to me, but she clearly had not a clue about what was public and what wasn’t. 

I give her credit that she was forthcoming, as apparently she had been told to be by the mayor, in connection with this client’s request.  But she kept talking to me about her concerns about the “privacy law.”  I happen to know she comes to this job, in part, from a position with an ambulance district.  So I know she’s thinking about the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).  You couldn’t have two laws more directly opposite each other.  This is a clerk who needs help making a mind-shift in her job.  And I hold the city council accountable for that need.   Someone on the council, and maybe that someone is the Mayor, needs to step up to the plate and help this clerk change her direction here, ’cause the wind’s blowing the other way in this case.