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JEFFERSON CITY — The challenges Sunshine Law advocates face with St. Louis and other local governments are mirrored on a much larger scale at the state, where the current administration and legislative leaders have sought to narrow access to public information.

That’s not what Gov. Mike Parson promised in 2018 when he was sworn into office, pledging to bring “honor, integrity and transparency� to an office wracked by the scandals of his sometimes secretive predecessor.

From pushing to make requests for public documents more expensive to delaying the release of information about who has won potentially lucrative state contracts, the Republican governor’s administration has not followed through on his “transparency� pledge, at least when it comes to strengthening the state’s Sunshine Law.

The Watergate-era law was designed to require governmental agencies to give public documents to the public. But through lawsuits, policy changes and new laws, access to records has become scattershot in state government.

Take the governor’s Office of Administration as an example.

In recent weeks, the office in charge of purchasing goods and services for other state agencies awarded a contract to the Hawthorn Foundation, a business-funded nonprofit that organizes overseas junkets for the governor.

The foundation operates under the premise of economic development and is run by Becky Willard, the wife of the governor’s chief of staff Aaron Willard.

Under the previous contract, Hawthorn received about $3.4 million in taxpayer money for its work.

Now, however, the public doesn’t have immediate access to the terms of the new contract because the Office of Administration has closed off the normal manner in which the contracts can be viewed.

Instead of clicking on a link, a person wanting to read the contract must file a Sunshine Law request. Once that is granted, the person must wait for the agency to review the material for possible redactions.

After more than a week, the Hawthorn document was made available on a separate state contracting website. It shows the state could eventually pay Hawthorn up to $4 million annually.

But the name of the person or persons who signed the contract on behalf of Hawthorn are blacked out.

The reason for the closed records stems from legislation approved by the Legislature and signed into law by Parson that prohibits the release of information about not-for-profit organizations.

According to OA, all documents on the state’s bidding and contracting website need to be reviewed and then redacted if they fall into the prohibited release category.

“This online database goes back to the 1990s, and an initial review estimates that there are well over 200,000 documents that will require review,� the office said in a warning to lawmakers about the proposal.

One of the sponsors of the not-for-profit privacy law says the decision by OA is overkill and should be reversed.

“I am confident the Personal Privacy Protection Act in no way prevents state government from being transparent with the way it awards state contracts,� said Rep. , R-Nixa.

The new decision by the administration is just the latest procedural and legal roadblocks erected in front the public’s right to have access to public documents.

When a member of the public files a Sunshine Law complaint against a state agency like the Office of Administration, the attorney general’s office assumes the role of legal counsel for the agency the complaint is lodged against, rather than the citizen.

That means if the attorney general’s office declines to sue, the only other option available to someone who believes that the Sunshine Law has been violated is to take the public entity to court using a private attorney.

That’s what occurred in two high-profile cases involving records dating to former Gov. Eric Greitens administration, which ended in 2018.

Both of the cases are still being litigated more than four years later.

Jean Maneke, an attorney for the Missouri Press Association, said Attorney General Eric Schmitt has had mixed results in his position on the Sunshine Law.

“There are times when his office steps up. They do send someone out to do training periodically. But the attorney general has filed lawsuits against open records. It sends a mixed message,� Maneke said.

Schmitt’s office also has used the Sunshine Law as a way to probe journalists, raising alarm bells among press advocates like Maneke.

In June, Schmitt, who is running for the U.S. Senate, filed an open records request seeking correspondence between two journalism professors connected to the University of Missouri and the executive director of a fact-checking group.

Schmitt, who faces Democrat Trudy Busch Valentine in the November general election, requested three years of emails sent and received by the professors while they worked at the Columbia Missourian, which is affiliated with the University of Missouri journalism school.

Schmitt’s spokesman, Chris Nuelle, told The Associated Press that the attorney general is “simply trying to get to the bottom of the fact checking process.�

Maneke said Schmitt appears to be using the law as a “battering ram� against the university and journalists who are housed at the university.

Schmitt also has used open-records laws to seek copies of handouts, emails and other resources that address race from school districts as part of a push targeting “critical race theory.� He also opened a “transparency portal� to allow parents to see his efforts. Meanwhile, Dave Roland, director of the Freedom Center of Missouri, which advocates for open government, gives Parson low marks for compliance with the state’s Sunshine Law.

“I don’t think Gov. Parson has been particularly transparent,� Roland said.

But, he adds that Parson is not alone in his attempts to limit public access to public records.

“The problems we see with government transparency are nonpartisan. I don’t view this as a Republican or Democrat issue at all. This is about people in power,� Roland said. “They do not like other people looking over their shoulders.�

The Legislature

Attempts to shore up the public’s access to public information are rare in the Missouri House and Senate.

But, in 2018, partially in response to Greitens’ use of a text-destructing mobile phone app, a House panel debated two proposed laws that would increase penalties for violating the state’s Sunshine Law and record retention law. The plan would also have created an office of transparency within the attorney general’s office and give that office subpoena power.

The end result could have been the creation of a Sunshine Law ombudsman used in other states. Illinois, for example, has a system to handle open records disputes that can issue formal opinions in certain cases.

The Illinois law, approved in 2010, creates a Public Access Counselor who can issue advisory opinions on records requests and mediate disputes between members of the public and governmental agencies.

The office also can issue binding opinions on Freedom of Information Act requests.

In its first decade, the office received 45,531 inquiries for review, and approximately 96.5% of those matters were closed, the Illinois Attorney General’s office said.

In 2019, the Illinois office received 3,575 formal requests for assistance, an average of nearly 298 new matters per month.

The proposed legislation in Missouri was triggered by then-Attorney General Josh Hawley’s probe into use by Greitens and his staff of the messaging app called Confide.

Hawley wanted to find out whether Greitens and his staff illegally destroyed public records by using Confide, which erases text messages after they are read.

The attorney general’s office doesn’t have subpoena power in Sunshine Law investigations, so the probe relied almost entirely on interviews with Greitens’ staff.

The measure did not advance to the governor’s desk.

In 2021, Parson began mulling changes to open records laws that would permit government agencies to withhold more information from the public — and charge more for any records that are turned over.

The changes included a proposal to allow government agencies to charge fees for the time attorneys spend reviewing records requested by the public.

The fee plan was floated as a way to reverse a Missouri Supreme Court decision that found that the governor’s office couldn’t charge people who make records requests for the time an attorney spends reviewing documents.

Lawmakers also have pressed for less transparency.

Sen. , R-Manchester, introduced legislation this year that would shield personal identifying information in public records of any student younger than 18, information regarding a governmental body’s security measures, contact information of Missourians who’ve signed up for some form of government communications, and public utility bills or usage records.

The measure also would have blocked out some wider categories such as communications between constituents and state lawmakers and information on proposed legislation or the legislative process kept by lawmakers or staff.

Rep. , R-Chesterfield, sought to remove “transitory� documents, including early drafts or materials “not related to decision-making,� from the list of available documents.

The proposals also included Parson-backed provisions making the requestor liable for any attorney fees that go into reviewing the materials.

Roland said it is unlikely that reforms to the Sunshine law will come in the form of legislative action because lawmakers themselves could be forced to become more transparent with their documents.

“I don’t think there is any political will in the Legislature to expand the Sunshine Law,� he said. “I think that they are gun-shy.�

One option would be to put a question on the ballot asking Missouri voters to amend the Constitution to require more transparency from government officials.

Maneke has spent 20 years trying to enhance the state’s Sunshine Law to encourage transparency in government.

And, with the 50th anniversary of the law coming next year, Maneke is discouraged.

“There are days when I feel we haven’t made progress,� Maneke said. “You would think after 50 years we would have gotten things right.�

“It is an unending battle,� Roland added.