It’s Sunshine Week in the U.S. of A.
But you’d hardly know it in Missouri.
Sponsored by the American Society of News Editors, every year, Sunshine Week celebrates America’s right to know, highlighted by freedom of information and state Sunshine Laws that require government business to be conducted in the light of day.
On this Sunshine Week, Missouri government is operating under a cloud of darkness.
Last week, a House committee led by state Rep. Jay Barnes, R-Jefferson City, started the important and unprecedented action of investigating Gov. Eric Greitens, also a Republican, for allegedly committing crimes or actions that could lead to his impeachment. The committee was formed by Speaker of the House Todd Richardson, R-Poplar Bluff, after Greitens was indicted last month by a St. Louis grand jury on a felony charge of invasion of privacy. The charge stems from an incident in March 2015 in which the governor is alleged to have taken a nonconsensual photo of his semi-nude lover while she was tied to an exercise machine in the basement of his family home.
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The second and third meetings of Barnes’ committee were held not in the House but in the Jefferson City police station. Windows were blacked out. Reporters were left outside, camped out on the lawn, wondering what was going on inside.
Barnes, an attorney, has said the secrecy is necessary to protect witnesses. At the heart of the case is Greitens’ former lover, who has been identified by initials in court documents, and her ex-husband. The press has not identified either by name.
In a vacuum, Barnes would have a point. The House is, in effect, retracing the steps the St. Louis grand jury took, a process that was done in secret. If Greitens goes to trial in May, as is currently scheduled, that will take place in open court. Similarly, if Barnes’ committee determines that impeachment proceedings are in order, the governor will eventually have an open trial before judges appointed by the Missouri Senate.
Still, the intense secrecy serves as an appropriate metaphor for a political system in Missouri in which residents and taxpayers are often on the outside looking in.
It starts at the top.
From the moment he was elected, Greitens has been awash in dark money, giving residents little opportunity to make judgments as to whether the governor is being influenced by his biggest donors. From his secret inaugural donations to his A New Missouri dark-money committee, nearly everything the governor does is tainted by secrecy. Now he has a new nonprofit set up to allow secret donors to fund his legal defense. His staffers have a similar fund, even though its very existence flies in the face of the governor’s first executive order, which forbade his staff members from accepting lobbyists’ gifts.
Besides his criminal and impeachment legal entanglements, the governor is being sued for using the Confide app on his mobile phone, which destroys text messages before a determination can be made under Sunshine Law or records retention laws as to whether the records should be retained.
Thanks to a mostly whitewashed investigation into the destruction of texts by Attorney General Josh Hawley, we now know the governor’s staff most definitely discussed public business while using Confide. That’s a point attorney Mark Pedroli makes in his amended petition in his lawsuit in Cole County Circuit Court:
“ ... five ‘high level staff members’ inside the Office of Governor admitted using Confide to destroy communications relating to public business. The Office of Governor’s admission goes to the heart of this case.”
But the secrecy in Missouri hardly stops in the governor’s office. Hawley recently filed an open records lawsuit against St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger, arguing the Democrat has violated the Sunshine Law multiple times. Hawley has his own Sunshine Law problems, having argued as a law professor at the University of Missouri that his records should be hidden from public view.
The university is currently embroiled in a separate lawsuit brought by animal-rights groups accusing it of breaking the law for trying to charge egregious fees for records that should be easily accessible.
Cities, counties and other government agencies throughout Missouri are constantly in violation of Sunshine Law, by not posting meetings, closing meetings without justification, or denying the public access to records that would allow them to hold elected officials accountable for their actions.
Kansas City attorney Bernie Rhodes, who is currently suing the state of Missouri over Sunshine Law violations and is a statewide expert on the law, says the Show-Me state has a problem. Two months ago he pointed the finger of blame squarely at the culture of politics in a state that doesn’t think twice about hiding behind black draping to keep prying eyes away.
“We have lost track of the perspective that the government is supposed to be working for us,” Rhodes said. “Too many public officials view everything they do as none of our business. It’s the exact opposite of what the Sunshine Law says.”
It’s Sunshine Week in America, but in Missouri, the skies are cloudy.
