All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth…
Soon we will reach the end of the first year for Missouri’s top executive officials. For some of them, particularly for our Attorney General, it’s been a year of learning the ropes and getting the proper staffers in place. One has to be patient and give these folks time to get the resources in place they need to do the work they promised to do when campaigning.
But something happened recently that raises a question which deserves some consideration. How do these duties of these top state officials intersect? Are there instances when the performance of one official’s duties reach a point where it should trigger the intervention or involvement of another state official to complete the task? Are our state officials properly interacting with each other for the greater public good?
I don’t need to tell you, of course, that I’m thinking about a sunshine law issue. Recently, the State Auditor’s office released a report detailing a variety of problems within a fire district in this state. The audit report is online. In it, the Auditor’s office releases a number of conclusions about the actions of those district members, including:
• Reasons for closing meetings are not specifically indicated in open meeting minutes or notices posted of closed meetings. The Board regularly conducts closed meetings. While the notice of regular closed meetings refers to a district resolution, which lists 15 reasons why the Board may go into closed session, the minutes of open meetings do not indicate the specific reason for closing the meetings.
• Minutes for closed sessions are not prepared.
• The district did not document how some items discussed in closed sessions complied with state law. For example, the Board discussed and voted to send the Board of Directors, Legal Counsel, Medical Officer, and Community Service Officer to a seminar during a closed session. This was documented in the open minutes.
• Some meeting minutes do not include sufficient detail of matters discussed. The July 3, 2007, meeting minutes indicated an oral report of the Fire Chief was received by the board, but does not describe what was reported, and the June 17, 2008, meeting minutes stated a director read some correspondence, but did not state who the correspondence was from or that was included in the correspondence.
The audit concludes, “The Board should restrict discussion in closed sessions to specific topics listed in Chapter 610, RSMo, and clearly document which section of law the meeting is being closed under and how items discussed comply with state law.”
Lovely. So the audit studies the improprieties and recommends changes. What really matters, however, is that the report documents that the board was breaking the law. When a law enforcement agency studies actions and prepares a report documenting improper actions, what does one expect those charged with enforcing the state’s laws to do? Prosecute, of course.
Is this any different? When a state agency charged with documenting improper and illegal actions creates a report detailing those improprieties, is it not proper for the state’s top prosecutorial agency to react?
Why isn’t the Attorney General’s office filing a civil suit over these improprieties?
If the Highway Patrol investigated a meth laboratory in the state and issued its investigative report saying it documents illegal action, would the report simply be filed away and forgotten?
If the Ethics Commission investigates illegal actions by state legislators and/or political candidates and documents improper activity, the Attorney General’s office prosecutes.
There appears, to me, to be a piece of the broader picture missing here. Why do these reports simply appear and no one takes any action? I think it’s time that audits which show results such as this generate some action to put teeth into our state’s sunshine law!
I’ll add that to my wish list….. Maybe Santa will bring me a surprise!
(PS: The Maneke Law Group is looking for fans on Facebook!)