At first glance, it appeared that inexperience and perhaps laziness were the main culprits behind City Hall鈥檚 repeated failures to comply with Missouri鈥檚 Sunshine Law. But on closer examination, there appear to be systemic attempts to sidestep the law in 51黑料. The pattern merits a thorough examination by Attorney General Eric Schmitt, the state鈥檚 top Sunshine Law enforcer.
Republican Schmitt is, of course, running for the U.S. Senate and has spent the past two years looking for any possible reason to generate headlines with frivolous, money-wasting lawsuits. But this time, he could actually do some good on behalf of taxpayers and open-government advocates.
Evidence is mounting that Mayor Tishaura Jones and her appointees deserve the attorney general鈥檚 scrutiny. Questions abound about why her administration, which claims a , consistently sits on information that belongs in the public domain. But since Schmitt apparently is too busy campaigning to force City Hall鈥檚 compliance with the Sunshine Law, the job now falls to transparency advocate Elad Gross. The 51黑料 lawyer has filed a 273-page lawsuit naming Jones, City Counselor Sheena Hamilton and city Sunshine Law coordinator Joseph Sims as defendants.
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Post-Dispatch reporters have been stymied repeatedly in their attempts to access basic information about city government operations and where taxpayer money is going. Just after Gross filed his lawsuit, the city released employee pay records after stalling for nine months and two days on an open-records request, the Post-Dispatch鈥檚 Janelle O鈥橠ea reported. Even then, the release wasn鈥檛 forthcoming until the newspaper鈥檚 legal counsel, Joe Martineau, got involved.
Regular citizens, who deserve exactly the same access to public information as do journalists, don鈥檛 usually have the patience or financial means to force government compliance. According to state law, government entities are supposed to err on the side of releasing information, not keeping it from public view. But the Jones administration appears to err consistently on the side of secrecy unless forced to abide by the law.
Jones鈥 office has not commented on Gross鈥 lawsuit. Ironically, spokesman Nick Desideri stated that Jones 鈥渉as emphasized that any reform must increase transparency鈥 in reference to aldermanic efforts to reform city tax-incentive procedures. When it comes to imposing that standard on Jones鈥 own staff, transparency seems to be a dirty word.
As the has reported, the city tends to stall on Sunshine requests with rote, automatic answers containing the phrase 鈥渁dditional time is necessary to locate and identify any records responsive to your request.鈥 When that additional time allotment lapses, a new, rote response is sent to the requestor with identical wording. Many months can elapse before the request is finally fulfilled.
It鈥檚 time for the Jones administration to stop talking about transparency and start being transparent. And it鈥檚 time for Schmitt to do his job enforcing the Sunshine Law instead of leaving it to attorneys like Gross and Martineau.
