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ST. LOUIS — A few years back, Julian Bush taught me some old-school Bible.

It was during the second phase of the city’s dabble in airport privatization. Former Board of Alderman President Lewis Reed, with the backing of carpenters’ union leader Al Bond, was proposing a voter initiative to accomplish what financier Rex Sinquefield and his well-paid consultants had failed to accomplish.

Two aldermen, Jack Coatar and Cara Spencer, asked Bush whether Reed’s proposal was legal. Bush was the city counselor. It has long been common for aldermen to ask the city counselor to weigh in on proposed legislation. It’s not much different than when ÁńÁ«ĘÓƵ officials ask the attorney general for a legal opinion on legislation or other matters. Those opinions are posted online for all to see. There is a state law that requires it.

In writing back to the two aldermen, Bush pulled out his King James version of the Bible. What Reed was proposing wasn’t legal, Bush said, because he was trying to accomplish it in the wrong form.

“Indeed, the petition contains nary a jot or a tittle of a proposed ordinance, let alone an ordaining clause,” Bush wrote.

The “jot or a tittle” was a reference to the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus explained to his disciples that Old Testament law wasn’t going away, even as God created a new covenant with his followers.

Bush’s letter had a direct impact in scuttling the Reed proposal and killing airport privatization. A lot has changed since then. Reed went to prison on unrelated bribery charges. Bond was fired amid accusations of spending issues in the union.

And three years later, it’s not clear that such a letter from the city counselor would land with the same impact. That’s because Sheena Hamilton, the city counselor appointed by Mayor Tishaura O. Jones, has created a new covenant of her own, decreeing that city counselor opinions are now closed records.

Last week, I filed a Sunshine Law request for Hamilton’s opinion on a bill sponsored by Spencer, who is seeking to regulate the open carry of guns in the city, particularly by juveniles. My Sunshine Law request was denied, citing an exception in the open records law related to legal discussions. Jones’ office told me that Hamilton believes the law requires all such legal opinions to be closed.

That’s just not true, says Kansas City attorney Jean Maneke, one of the state’s foremost experts on the Sunshine Law. Multiple attorneys across the state offered similar reactions about closing legal opinions by the city counselor.

“It’s definitely a stretch,” said David Roland, the director of litigation of the .

What governmental bodies regularly get wrong about exceptions to the Sunshine Law is that the law presumes openness. It allows — but doesn’t require — records to be closed.

“Technically, it can be closed,” Maneke says, but “the exceptions are all discretionary, not mandatory. They could give it to you if they wanted to.”

Indeed, that’s what happened. A source — not Hamilton’s office — gave me the records. The source and several aldermen believe those opinions help inform public debate about important issues, as they have in airport privatization and so many other matters.

But now the mayor, or at least her city counselor, wants those opinions secret?

It’s a troubling pattern for a mayor who campaigned on operating a more transparent government. And it’s not just legal opinions where there are issues.

Earlier this year, I was in federal court when it was revealed that the city’s police department conducted an audit of several years’ worth of Force Investigative Unit probes into officer shootings. The city denied my Sunshine Law request for that audit, calling it a personnel record. The Post-Dispatch has now intervened in a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by former police Officer Milton Green, seeking to unseal the audit in court records. The city is fighting to keep the audit secret.

Janis Mensah, who was appointed by Jones as chairperson of the Detention Facilities Oversight Board, says the lack of transparency is so bad that the board can’t even operate. The director of the corrections department, Jennifer Clemons-Abdullah, has conspired with Hamilton to hide records even from the board that is supposed to examine them. The city counselor has given Clemons-Abdullah legal cover to keep those records under wraps.

“By denying oversight visits and withholding use-of-force reports as well as internal complaints, the warden makes sure the conditions of the jail are a well-kept secret,” Mensah says.

Members of the oversight board have called for Clemons-Abdullah to resign.

“The city counselor’s office hides Clemons-Abdullah’s obstruction behind legal opinions, attorney-client privilege, and confidentiality,” Mensah says. “The public demanded oversight and accountability. There is none.”

When Bush wrote his legal opinions on airport privatization, there was “nary a jot or a tittle” of a reference to confidentiality and attorney-client privilege on the letters he sent to aldermen. The same is true for numerous other city counselor legal opinions over the years.

Hamilton, on the other hand, types the words “confidential and attorney-client privileged” in all-caps atop her letters and supplements them with a footnote justifying her lack of transparency.

In 1973, Missouri became one of the first states in the nation to pass an open records law that clearly established a presumption of transparency in government. Fifty years later, the Jones administration is turning its back on that policy, choosing secrecy and locking St. Louisans out of their government.