Missouri Press Association MSC Board to Meet June 16
COLUMBIA -- The Missouri Sunshine Coalition Board of Directors will meet at 3 p.m. Thursday, June 16, at the Missouri Press Association building, 802 Locust Street in Columbia.
Rhoades, Cheatham honored as Sunshine Heroes
COLUMBIA — The Missouri Sunshine Coalition honored two St. Louis area residents for efforts that promote open records and transparency in government.
Jeanne Rhoades, a Creve Coeur City Council member, and Craig Cheatham, an investigative reporter with KMOVTV, received the 2011 Missouri Sunshine Hero awards in Columbia at the Sunshine Coalition’s annual meeting and celebration of National Sunshine Week.
The Missouri Sunshine Coalition advocates for government transparency on state and local levels.Coalition President Jim Robertson said Rhoades and Cheatham represent two crucial components of successful transparency.
“Jeanne’s heroic work for openness within the Creve Coeur council sets the standard for public service,” he said, “while Craig has used his investigative tools with impressive effect to shine a light on costs associated with important public activities.”
Rhoades’ council colleague Laura Bryant nominated her for the honor. Rhoades was instrumental in securing a Missouri attorney general’s opinion that brought land-use draft plans into public view statewide. She is active and vocal in her advocacy of adhering to the Sunshine Law while doing the public’s business, Bryant said.
Cheatham was nominated by St. Louis attorney Mark Sableman. Among other projects in 2010, Cheatham began a series on public schools, posting contracts, compensation and expense reports for dozens of area districts acquired through open records requests.
“These two exemplify good stewardship of open government,” Robertson said. “It’s an honor to recognize their work.”
Missouri Sunshine Coalition partners with Open Missouri for 2011 Sunshine Week event.
What: Missouri Sunshine Coalition annual meeting and Sunshine Week celebration
Where: Reynolds Journalism Institute on the University of Missouri campus, Columbia, Missouri
When: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday, March 17, 2011
Cost: Free
The Missouri Sunshine Coalition's annual meeting will take place during the luncheon session of a free special event to celebrate Sunshine Week 2011 and will include the annual board election, a report on the Coalition's statewide records audit and presentation of the coalition's nominees for Sunshine Hero awards.
MSC and Open Missouri will present a full day of discussions and hands-on training for citizens and journalists interested in transparent government and public records. This promises to be a great opportunity to learn how you can benefit from the explosion in government data.
Bill Allison, the editorial director at the Sunlight Foundation in Washington, D.C., is scheduled to deliver the keynote address about how journalists and others can tap into the rich well of government data. Trainers from Investigative Reporters and Editors will lead optional hands-on classes in finding, downloading and using state and local government data.
State and local government agencies are collecting and storing massive amounts of public information in computerized form. We're going show how Missouri journalists and news organizations already are using data for their stories, graphics and websites. Also, we have a great lineup of open-government advocates, journalists and government officials who will provide guidance about how to effectively use the Missouri Sunshine Law to get the data you need.
Registration is free:
http://www.rjionline.org/events/stories/open-missouri/index.php
The Missouri Sunshine Coalition Board of Directors nominating committee offers the following slate to the membership for election to two-year terms.
Jean Buchanan, assistant managing editor of projects at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.Jo Sapp, non-media member, writer and editor and League of Women Voters representative.
Mike Sherry, investigative reporter and director of the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting.
Jean Maneke of the Maneke Law Firm in Kansas City.
Election will take place at the Missouri Sunshine Coalition Annual Meeting March 17 at the Reynolds Journalism Institute in Columbia. Additional nominations will be accepted at the meeting. Please plan to be in Columbia March 17 for a full program on public data in partnership with the Open Missouri project.
Registration is free and can be completed at:
http://www.rjionline.org/events/stories/open-missouri/index.php
For more information, contact MSC President Jim Robertson at 573-815-1707 or email jrobertson@columbiatribune.com.
Missouri sheriff offices do not respond consistently to requests for public records
COLUMBIA — Ask for one day’s worth of arrest and incident reports from your local sheriff, and you could get all the documents for free.
Or officials might charge hundreds of dollars and demand payment up front before sending anything.
Or they may not respond at all.
A Sunshine Law audit of Missouri’s 114 county sheriffs revealed vast inconsistencies in responses to requests for basic public information. Eighty-eight agencies responded to the coalition’s initial request for information in some form, a response rate of 77 percent. But some required large payments for records, and some never responded.
“The results of this project point to a real imperative to ramp up the
education of public officials about the Sunshine Law,” said Jim Robertson, the coalition’s president. “The law demands responsiveness by government officials to requests for information from the public and clearly mandates access to the records we requested. We found that too many jurisdictions fail to understand or follow the law.”
The audit, conducted from September to January by the Missouri Sunshine Coalition, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting freedom of information in the Show-Me State, reveals that more education is needed for Missouri’s public agencies.
How the audit was conducted
Public-information requests should be responded to within 72 business hours of receiving the request, which can be made orally. Paper copies under the law should cost no more than 10 cents per page. Search time should be billed at “actual cost of research time” using the employee that results in the lowest charges for the time involved.
“There’s a severe lack of understanding of basic Sunshine Law provisions among the sheriff departments in this state in regard to the proper way to respond to a Sunshine Law request,” said attorney Jean Maneke, a Missouri Sunshine Law expert and coalition member.
On Sept. 24, the coalition sent letters to all county sheriff’s offices requesting all incident and arrest reports — records deemed open to the public under the Missouri Sunshine Law, Chapter 610, Revised Statutes of Missouri — for the date Sept. 18. Three letters came back “return to sender.”
On Nov. 2, follow-up letters were sent to the offices that did not respond to the first request. A dozen counties responded to the second letter.
In January, coalition members called the remaining 11 counties (Barry, Dent, DeKalb, Gentry, Knox, Madison, Marion, Moniteau, St. Francois, Ste. Genevieve, and Stoddard) that had not responded to either request. Several stated they had not received the letters; Madison County was the only one that reported having fulfilled the request.
Audit results
The coalition’s audit uncovered a number of inconsistencies in application of the Sunshine Law, including:
- Access to documents: Thirty offices sent the documents. However, 25 counties required upfront payment, and three (Buchanan, Montgomery, and Worth) did not fulfill the request, saying it was not specific enough. Several other counties requested more specificity before fulfilling the request.
- Fees for copying and research: Twenty offices sent the documents for free. But some charged as much as $10 per report, and Shannon County charged $20 per report. The highest proposed charges were from Maries ($380, $10 per report), Franklin ($355, $5 per report), and Cole ($205, for unspecified administrative costs)
Several counties overstepped their bounds by asking what the request was for; requesters are not required to disclose why they want the information.
Polk County would not fulfill the request unless the requester came in person. The sheriff’s office also would not accept personal checks. Atchison County said the request requires “physical presence,” unless it is from an insurance company or legal counsel. Buchanan County called the request “vague” and “nonspecific.”
However, many counties had no problem fulfilling the request.
Some of the most accommodating were:
- Adair County: Sent five pages, and responded via e-mail saying, “We are happy to honor your request for fees to be waived.
- Lincoln County: Sent 24 pages of documents free of charge.
- Mississippi County: Sent 16 pages free of charge.
An Excel spreadsheet of all the results is available by request. is available for download at the Missouri Sunshine Coalition Web site (http://missourisunshine.org)
The Missouri Sunshine Coalition was chartered in 2009 as a nonprofit organization of citizens and journalists interested in preserving open government and access to public information.
Go to http://mopress.com/sunshinelaw.php for a complete list of county responses to the Sunshine Coalition County audit.
Sunshine Law Survey!
The Missouri Sunshine Coalition, along with the Missouri Press Association, sent surveys in late September to more than 300 candidates running for the Missouri Senate and the Missouri House of Representatives.
The topic of the survey: 10 questions about the Missouri Sunshine Law.
Below are the results of the questionnaire, through Oct. 22.
If candidates from your area are not on the list of respondents, ask them . . . . why not?
Questions? Contact Doug Crews at Missouri Press Association. SURVEY