KC Star editorial: It's time for governor to clean house

The fallout from the governor's office policy (or lack thereof) on retaining e-mails as public records, and the subsequent firing of a state attorney who claimed he was let go because of his stance in favor of releasing state e-mails, continues today with an editorial in the Kansas City Star.

After Scott Eckersley was fired, all of a sudden people in the governor's office were releasing e-mails right and left, Eckersley's e-mails, to prove that he should have been fired:

Then there is the sordid treatment of your former deputy counsel, Scott Eckersley, who was fired in September. Eckersley says he advised your staff that deleting e-mails without backup violated the state’s open records law.

Your aides say he didn’t. But Eckersley has the edge in credibility because — Guess what? —there are e-mails to support his claim. And where did these e-mails come from? Your office.

Yes, about the time your aides were telling the press they didn’t keep e-mails, they were assembling packages of printed e-mails and other documents to send to reporters for the purpose of smearing Eckersley.

A court may have to decide whether Eckersley was fired for cause, as you contend, or because he raised concerns about Sunshine Law violations, as he claims.

But Missourians don’t need a lawyer to know that making unsubstantiated allegations about an employee’s character is shabby and unprofessional. It’s demeaning to everyone involved. And that, Gov. Blunt, includes you.

Your office needs a clear policy that acknowledges the public’s right to have access to communications by state employees, e-mailed or otherwise.

Your office also needs a housecleaning. The governor’s staff should represent Missouri’s best, not its tackiest.

Please consider this e-mail a public document. We certainly do.

While I have always been a firm believer that government documents belong to the people, I have been just as concerned about the continuing effort being made by Gov. Blunt and the people he has hired to turn the governor's office into a simple extension of his political operation.

It started right from the beginning when Spence Jackson was issuing news releases of the like this state has never seen, at least in my memory. Jackson was in attack mode right from the beginning. It would be naive to believe that politics can be completely kept out of news releases, but when so many of the news releases contained not just news, but undisguised attacks on the governor's enemies.

The pattern has continued throughout the governor's term, including this most recent mess, and almost anything connected with Blunt's chief of staff, Ed Martin.

A governor's office should be a place where the public can expect dignity and decorum. During the Blunt Administration, it has had neither.