Bartosh to Joplin Globe in 2015: We couldn't do our job if we had to follow the Sunshine Law

The controversy over Jasper County Presiding Commissioner John Bartosh's reposting of a racist Facebook post and subsequent calls for his resignation after its discovery is not the first brush with controversy for the long-time county official.

In July 2015, Bartosh, current Western District Commissioner Darieus Adams and former Eastern District Commissioner Jim Honey helped former Joplin R-8 Board of Education member Mike Landis administer a final insult to district patrons by appointing three board replacements.

I wrote a commentary about that on the July 5, 2015 Turner Report:

Someone needs to explain the purpose of Missouri's Sunshine Law to Jasper County Presiding Commissioner John Bartosh.

It is not designed to make things convenient for him and his fellow county commissioners. It is there so the people will know how their elected officials are conducting the people's businesses.

Weeks after the County Commission ignored the Sunshine Law by discussing candidates for vacancies on the Joplin R-8 Board of Education, the Joplin Globe, which has taken the Commission to task for skating around the law in the past, finally decided to address the issue.

Now that the issue appears to be settled, the Globe decided to weigh in.

From today's article:

Bartosh told the Globe this past week that the vote to approve the appointees took place in a public meeting, although discussions leading up to that vote weren't necessarily part of an open meeting.

"As far as I am concerned, we as commissioners, we have to talk about stuff, and there would be no reason for us to be here if we didn't talk about stuff," he said. How do you think a business could run if they didn't visit with each other within the business? There's no way we could do something without saying, 'Hey, what do you think about this?' and then we put it on the agenda."

Yes, Mr. Bartosh, there is a way it can be done. All you have to do is set aside a portion of your time to plan things that need to be placed on the agenda for discussion purposes, post them, and then allow the citizens and media the opportunity to listen to those discussions. It would take a little more work and you might not like doing it, but you can't ignore the law because it is inconvenient.

The deliberations and processes that Bartosh and his fellow commissioners used in selecting Gary Nodler, Sallie Beard and Ron Gatz to replace Mike Landis, Randy Steele and Lane Roberts on the R-8 Board of Education all took place in defiance of the Sunshine Law.