A little more sunshine in this corner of the state, please

An overzealous plaintiff’s attorney is creating a potential sunshine violation for one city council
in the state. Apparently it is in negotiations with a law enforcement employee whom it is
seeking to terminate. As is sometimes the case, terminations don’t come cheap and this one
comes with a settlement agreement and dollars changing hands, according to the word on the
street. Plaintiff’s attorney is asking the settlement and the settlement amount, large as it
reportedly is, be kept confidential. (Why wouldn’t he want everyone to know how unfairly his
client was being treated by the city? And what a wonderful attorney he is to have reached this
substantial gain for his client? Sometimes these things are hard to understand.)

Unfortunately, no one seems to have pointed out to this attorney that Section 610.021 .1
specifically states that …any…settlement agreement …SHALL be made public upon final
disposition of the matter voted upon or upon the signing by the parties of the settlement
agreement….

Now clearly a city council is a public governmental body, last time anyone checked. So perhaps
someone in this city needs to remind its members that they need to clarify this issue before this
settlement agreement is inked. Clearly the public in this town needs to be advised of how its tax
dollars, in fact, a significant pile of them, is about to be spent. The beauty of the sunshine law is
that it protects all of us, each member of the public, from actions being taken in secret that
impact our lives.