Sunshine Law

Edgar Springs in Phelps County has refused to pay $80,000 in damages and court costs to a woman who it banned from city hall for four years. Now, a judge has ordered the town to put a tax increase on the ballot in order to cover those costs.

Sunshine Week, observed each year in mid-March, aims to shine a national spotlight on these regulations that entitle Americans to information about government at all levels.

The attorney general’s office says it has five staffers working on the Sunshine Law backlog and a policy of not charging fees for processing requests. But the first come, first serve strategy has meant hundreds of requests wait in limbo for months — even years.

St. Louis argues that Missouri legislators violated the state constitution by creating an unfunded mandate. The 2021 law requires cities to give officers written notice of an allegation before starting an investigation, and limits misconduct investigations to 90 days.

The lawsuit paints a picture of a city government that resists releasing public information and takes requests for records as an affront. It also outlines several instances where Kansas City Hall failed to promptly release records or even respond, as they're required to under Missouri law.

Missourians seeking public records from the office of Attorney General Andrew Bailey face delays that can stretch up to a year. The situation is especially problematic for the office in charge of enforcing Missouri’s Sunshine Law, which ensures the public has access to government records and meetings.

A judge ruled that the Missouri Attorney General’s office “knowingly and purposefully” violated the state’s open records law while it was being run by now-U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley. The motivation for breaking the law, the judge concluded, was concern that releasing the records could harm Hawley’s campaign.

Missouri's Sunshine Law was written to ensure that the public could have access to all sorts of government records — including emails, meetings, votes and deliberations. But do the use of self-destructing text-messaging apps sidestep the reach of the state's open records law?

The state of Missouri is defending itself with an argument that could deliver "fatal blows" to the Sunshine Law: As long as officials don’t bother to keep records in the first place, they can’t be held responsible for refusing to turn them over to the public.

The Missouri Attorney General's office often refuses to enforce a law designed to ensure government transparency because it considers state agencies like the Department of Health and Senior Services "a client." That leaves complainants with few options to obtain public records.

Until now, many state agencies have charged for "attorney review time" to determine whether requested records contain privileged information or information otherwise exempt from disclosure.