The war against open government

Two news items show just how hard it is for Missouri's elected and appointed officials to grasp the concept of open government.

On Thursday, the Missouri Ethics Commission ruled that candidates have to return any extra money they received during the six-month period in which contribution limits were no longer in effect. Because of an odd caveat to the Missouri Supreme Court ruling, candidates can keep the money if they demonstrate "hardship."

The Ethics Commission also ruled Thursday that the meetings in which candidates and their representatives plead their cases for hardships will be closed to the public. The public is also not being told what criteria the Commission will use to make these decisions. So much for the group which is supposed to be maintain openness in Missouri's elections and campaign fundraising.

(Of course, the whole idea that candidates should have to return money that they raised under the laws that were in place at the time also seems to go against any idea of fairness, but that is another matter entirely.)

The second news item was a proposal by Rep. Jeff Roorda, D-Barnhart, to make all elected officials take mandatory classes in the state's Sunshine Law. This stems from the continuing controversy over the Blunt administration's apparent destruction of e-mail messages:

“Public officials have been able to claim ignorance for too long,” Roorda said. “Some elected officials are making a mockery of the Sunshine law. The law is intended to be a protection for our citizens against a corrupt government; instead, it has given them one more thing to be corrupt about.”

Roorda said the case of Scott Eckerlsey, who claims he was fired by the governor's office after giving legal advice than ran counter to its publicly stated postion on keeping e-mails, showed the need for education about the state's open records and open meetings laws. He also pointed to a recent case of deleted e-mails in the city of O'Fallon as proof of the need to better inform public officials.

While Roorda is correct, his idea is not the solution. What we need is a Sunshine Law with teeth. What other law requires prosecutors to determine if it was "knowingly" violated. And that is what keeps most people from pursuing these violations. They will have to spend their own money if they pursue these violations, and the odds against them winning are astronomical. The solution is a simple one:

-If you violate the law, you have committed a crime, whether it was done knowingly or not.

-Make the fines heftier and even add the possibility of jail time in egregious cases.

Take those two steps and you would see a miraculous sudden understanding of the Sunshine Law. Why spend taxpayer money on classes? The law is available to all public entities and is online. Let them read it and when governmental bodies have any doubt about whether they can close a meeting or document, they should err on the side of openness.

For too long, we have allowed the legislature to trumpet its no-teeth Open Meetings Law and watched in frustration as elected officials on both sides of the aisle have violated it with alarming regularity.

If we are serious about open government, it is time to take the necessary steps to make that a reality instead of a campaign slogan.