Two Clay County Commissioners, Jason Withington and Scott Wagner, as well as Jackson County Executive Frank White, stated publicly that Kansas City—which sits in Jackson County—made a significant offer over and above the Jackson County sales tax that changed the course of those negotiations.

What was that offer?

We don’t know. Similar open records requests to Kansas City were denied citing ongoing negotiations. Clay County leaders initially denied requests as well. However, the Clay County Commission was made aware of the records request and the dubious claims made to keep those records closed. On February 22, the commission agreed to release the documents.

The Kansas City Council should follow suit. As I wrote to all the members of the Council on April 15:

The City denied my records request (R012348-030124) relying on an understanding of Missouri statutes that allows for sealed bids to be closed. But the negotiations with the Royals were not the result of any bid responding to a city-issued RFP or RFQ. They were more likely similar to any negotiations for incentives that go through the EDC—which are all public documents. Even if they were sealed initially, the vote itself is a clear sign that those negotiations are ended. The documents are public.

Please exercise your legislative authority by directing the city to release these term sheets, any related documents and their various iterations over time. The April 2 campaign was dogged by a lack of transparency—the measure’s defeat is a clear signal that Kansas Citians should know more, not less, about these negotiations.

I’ve received no responses to that email. There is no indication that the city is in any ongoing negotiations. And even if it were, there is no reason to keep the prior negotiations secret.

The post Release Those Records, Kansas City! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

That’s right. Last week, the Show-Me institute began an updated municipal checkbook project, which entailed obtaining the spending records of every city in Missouri. Every city that had available contact information was sent a request under Missouri’s Sunshine Law. Many cities had data already organized and were happy to share, all of which is available here. Some cities, especially those without already-digitized records, requested a fee before they would gather their data. This is allowed under law, but fees are supposed to reflect only the cost of labor and copying involved, and usually did not amount to more than $100. Arbyrd’s fee was a little more than that. According to the response I received from the Arbyrd City Clerk, our request would “require a significant amount of time and resources to complete and therefore we charge $40 per page with a minimum of 500 pages. This amounts to $20,000.”

Twenty thousand dollars! With no details explaining how a single page of paper could cost $40, Arbyd was prepared to charge us tens of thousands of dollars for information about where the city is spending taxpayer money. This clearly goes against both the letter and the spirit of the sunshine law and was met with a swift reply from Institute staff.

Unsurprisingly, days after our reply explaining that what they were doing violated the Sunshine law and that we would be contacting the Attorney General’s office, Arbyrd backed down. The mayor sent a revised offer, promising a digital copy of their spending information at no charge (we received their information on July 19). As it turns out, Arbyrd’s spending data was available in digital form, but for whatever reason their response to our initial request was to decline to provide it.

The bottom line is that all citizens, not just the most dedicated or persistent, should be able to see how their tax dollars are being spent. Cities should strive to make this information easy to access, without the need to resort to state law. Taxpayers should not have to fight for a $20,000 discount to have transparency in government.

The post The $20,000 Discount: Municipal Checkbook Hall of Shame appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

And as often happens with the Missouri Legislature, there is some irony with how the bill in question has “evolved.” Senate Bill (SB) 741 originally only established a “Personal Privacy Protection Act”—new provisions that would protect citizens’ private records from the government and, if the government had such private records, protected them from disclosure to the public. After it was amended in the Senate, SB 741 became a wide-ranging bill that now primarily protects government and government records from citizens.

How so? The revised bill now has a bevy of transparency-denying provisions, among them:

• The bill excludes many so-called “transitory records” drafted in the process of government policy development but not finalized government policies
• The bill grows the list of excuses to close public records and meetings to the public
• The bill removes many records relating to the “legislative process” from the purview of the Sunshine Law
• The bill extends the time allowed to respond to a records request

Suffice to say, if the House even bothers to take the bill up (time in the session is ticking down), it should amend this legislation dramatically, stripping out any language that protects the government from its people rather than vice versa. The “personal privacy” of constituents is an important priority, to be sure, but government doesn’t have “privacy,” and the legislature shouldn’t act like it does.

The post Privacy Is for People, Not Government appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

One argument we have heard from skeptics of checkbook transparency is that small cities like Battlefield (population 5,590) cannot afford to provide spending records at a low cost. Certainly, different cities have various staffing levels and challenges, but responses like Battlefield’s should raise concerns. And while we do not expect small cites to have the same resources as the City of Saint Louis, several cities provided us their expenditure records free or at very little cost, and some of those cities are smaller than Battlefield.

Consider the example of Winfield (population 1,404), which stands out not only because it shared its expenditure records free of charge, but also because of its commitment to transparency. When I spoke with the mayor, he said that while he loved our Municipal Checkbook database, his city could not afford to host its checkbook on its own website.

But after I told him we planned to put the city’s records in our database, he said that he would provide a link to our website so citizens could see how Winfield is spending its money. And if you check out Winfield’s website today, you’ll see that link. He also said the city was in the process of updating its transparency portal on the city website—not bad for a city of fewer than 1,500 people.

Cities, no matter their size, should provide easy access to information about how they’re spending our money, and modern accounting software used by most cities allows for quick generation of accurate reports. In Winfield’s case, the city saw in the Checkbook Project a tool to increase its own transparency. I applaud its commitment to promoting a culture of municipal accountability and good governance.

The post Why Can’t They All Be Like Winfield? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Let me re-set the stage. Missouri’s Sunshine Law (RSMo 610) requires municipalities and other public bodies to provide records of public interest, with some exceptions. It also states that if there is a charge billed to the requester, the municipality fulfilling the request should use employees of the public body that will result in the lowest amount of charges for search, research, and copying time.

Obtaining records of city expenses over the last five years is central to our project, and because there are so many cities in Missouri, it has been interesting to see the wide variety of reactions we have received from our uniform request (available below). As my colleague Scott Tuttle has noted before, responses to our inquiries have been uneven, with many cities promptly providing us the information we requested for reasonable fees, while others were less responsive and charged more.

For instance, the city of Festus took several days, waived their fees (as they are allowed to do) and gave a detailed Excel spreadsheet of their spending, which can be filtered and easily searched. Smithville took one day to fulfill the request and charged $20.00 for its records in PDF form. Meanwhile, Manchester—which to be fair is a city larger (population ~18,000) than either Festus (~12,000) or Smithville (~9,500)—told us it would cost approximately $1,200 and take up to four weeks for its staff to complete the response to my request.

Why the huge discrepancy in cost? The law does not specify the format in which information should be kept, or what a reasonable fee to charge is. To some degree this ambiguity makes sense, because the law has to be flexible enough to address situations and requests not considered when the statute was written. But should that gray area allow locales to drag their feet or (arguably) overcharge for documents that should be easy to access, while nonetheless complying with the law?

Although the responses from these three cities fulfilled statutory obligations, Festus and Smithville’s responses seemed to be most faithful not only to the law, but also to its spirit. As for Manchester’s response, you can judge for yourself.

It is puzzling with the technology available today why our cities and counties don’t simply publish their “checkbook” information online. There are plenty of free or low-cost platforms to keep these records up-to-date and accessible (look at what Manchester’s neighbor Ballwin is doing), and given the taxpayer interest and treasure involved, why should obstacles get in the way of accessing that information?

Click on the link below to see the request we sent out

The post How Easy Is It to Get a Sunshine Request Fulfilled? It Depends. appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Kansas City and Saint Louis, for example, upload full spreadsheets of city expenditures on their websites for anyone to download at no charge. For many other cities, getting data was as easy as sending an email request and, occasionally, paying a small service fee.

On the other hand, some local governments ignored my request entirely or said their software does not have this reporting capability, as was the case with Independence. At the far end of the spectrum, a Jefferson City employee said the process would take about 40 hours and would cost $936.

The goal of the government checkbook project is to allow all Missouri residents the same level of access to information that those living in places like Kansas City and Saint Louis currently enjoy.

As it now stands, public records on city expenditures are not always kept in a way that can be shared easily. Though Missouri’s sunshine law requires state and local governments to disclose their documents upon request, it does not prevent these governments from charging fees, nor does it obligate them to generate new documents. As a result, what might seem like a simple request can result in fees of thousands of dollars when the data are not user-friendly, as analysts working on previous Show-Me Institute projects have discovered.

Is there any reason why a digital-age society that values government transparency and accountability should not make public information easily available?

The post The Cost of Government Transparency in Missouri appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Here’s a rather uncontroversial idea: public information should be public. That is, information, records, and data collected and maintained by public entities should be open, accessible, and affordable. For example, if citizens want to know how their mayor spent public funds during a business trip, that information should be available upon request.

But some public entities don’t want their records and data to be open, accessible, and affordable. Or at least not when they can charge exorbitant fees for their data.

Show Me Institute analysts have written about instances when public agencies have tried to charge huge fees for public information. A recent case involved the University of Missouri asking for more than $80,000 for documents related to university researchers blinding and killing a half-dozen puppies.

I write this because we’ve come across two more instances (thankfully less grisly) of ridiculous fees being charged for public data.

The current culprits are Clay and Platte counties. I recently requested a simple data pull—one that would require an hour or two of time from a single clerk—and was told that it would cost me thousands of dollars. Clay County wanted $2,399 for the data, and Platte’s going rate was $1,263!

Yet Jackson County, just south of Clay and Platte counties, fulfilled an identical request for just $25. Clay and Platte counties don’t incur any more costs than Jackson County does in reproducing the data, so why do they charge 9500% and 5000% more, respectively?

The requested data is geospatial in nature (it’s about property values), and state law allows public entities to charge fees for it. Unfortunately, some public entities have used the law to impose massive and seemingly unnecessary fees on taxpayers in search of basic (and digitally available) information—information that should be easily accessible and affordable under Missouri’s Sunshine law..

There is no good reason why public entities should make nonconfidential, public information effectively inaccessible. If government is going to be accountable to residents and taxpayers, its data and records need to be readily available to those it serves. We’re grateful that Jackson County complied with the spirit of the open records laws and are hopeful that Clay and Platte counties will do the same. 

The post Public Information: If You Have to Ask, You Can’t Afford It. . . . appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

My own experience with Nixon’s office corroborates the reputation. Several months ago I submitted two public records requests for a contract held by an agency under the governor’s authority. I submitted one of these requests directly to the governor’s office; the other I sent to the agency bound to this contract. The agency responded promptly. In less than two weeks, a full copy of the contract appeared online, and the agency sent me a copy. The governor’s office was not so prompt. After the full contract had been publicly available for at least a month, I received a copy of the contract with blanks in place of key information, including dates and signatures.

These problems occur at the local level as well. A couple years ago, former Grundy County assessor Don Stotts refused to comply with a simple records request from David Stokes of the Show-Me Institute. While Stotts demanded over $9,000 to complete the request, dozens of other county assessors provided the same information at little or no charge. The dispute was finally resolved when the attorney general weighed in and Grundy County complied with the request.

I’ve handled plenty of open records requests, and I see two attitudes toward the Sunshine Law: one of compliance with the letter of the law and one of observance of the spirit of the law. When I send a sunshine request to some public agencies, the request is viewed as a burden. The people handling these requests seek to provide the bare minimum to avoid violating the law. They resent the scrutiny that can come from open government, and hence they follow the letter of the Sunshine Law while trying to avoid disclosing anything useful.

On the other hand, there are some public agencies that value feedback from the people they serve. When I send a request to an agency that shares this “spirit of the law” attitude to the Sunshine Law, I get a prompt and full response to my request from people who really try to be helpful. Agencies like this see open government as a public service and are happy to honor the public’s right to know how their public institutions operate.

Public officials, from the governor to employees of cities and counties, should keep in mind both the letter and the spirit of the Sunshine Law when interacting with the citizens they serve. Government provides a set of services on behalf of the community, and in a democracy, part of that service is transparency.

John Wright is a policy researcher at the Show-Me Institute.

The post Two Approaches to Open Government appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The mayor of Kansas City, Mo., disclosed that the city is ponying up another $65,000 to woo the 2016 Republican convention. Jackson Co., Mo., Wyandotte Co./Kansas City, Kan., and Johnson Co., Kan., also are chipping in an additional $65,000 each. This $260,000 total is in addition to the $100,000 that Kansas City, Mo., already spent. We participated in a KSHB TV story about the spending and asserted that taxpayers ought to be told what is being promised in their name.

At the time, the mayor and the convention committee refused to tell taxpayers how much money the city was spending, where it was going, or how much more was promised. According to the Kansas City Star:

The Star filed a Sunshine Law request with the city and the Kansas City Convention Visitors Association asking for information from the proposal on the potential public cost of the convention.

Both declined, citing state law — and a concern about revealing details of the bid to competing communities.

“We will not be addressing specific questions related to the Finance section of our response,” said an email from Julie Sally, a spokeswoman for the Kansas City convention task force.

City spokesman Chris Hernandez also declined to provide the requested information, as did Mike Burke, the attorney for the KCCVA.

Now that there is no risk of compromising the bid, the city and the KCCVA should reveal what commitments they made, where the money went, and to whom. Their economic impact projections for the convention were pretty wild, too. We would like to see who generated those, and how.

The post Tell Taxpayers Where Their Money Went appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Unfortunately, many counties do not track the land and improvement data separately in their software systems, so they were unable to provide us the requested info. (I think they should be required to track the data in that manner, but that is another issue.) Some counties that do track those valuations separately in their software quickly sent over the requested information for free. Other counties requested small amounts of money for the work. No problem there.

So far, so good. I was disappointed in the success rate of the information request, but at least every county was straight with us or sent us a reasonable estimated bill. Every county, that is, except Grundy.

The Grundy County Assessor demanded $9,000.

It was $9,382, to be exact. One dollar per parcel in that north central Missouri county, even though we did not want parcel data, just cumulative data. We pointed out to the assessor that we are a research institute and requested that he waive the fees. He declined and wrote, “I have a very large investment to protect.” And then it got good.

We noticed that most of the counties that provided us with the information used the same software, and the software company’s name was at the bottom of those replies. We went to that company’s website looking for public customer lists, etc. (This was not about Grundy County at this point. We realized that we needed to find all the counties that used this assessment software so we could make sure we at least had their assessment data.) The software company’s website lists client testimonials, and who do you think was listed among their clients? That’s right, Grundy County.

So, the Grundy County assessor was demanding more than $9,000 to provide us with public information that he could have gathered from their software in a matter of minutes, if not seconds.

About a dozen Missouri counties using this system provided us with the public information we requested quickly and at no charge. When we pointed this out to the assessor, and asked him to justify the demand for $9,382, he got angry and wrote, “I don’t want to do business with you anyway,” and added that we should “get the information you need somewhere else.” This, of course, ignored the fact that we are a charitable research organization, not a business, and that there is no place to get Grundy County assessment data except from the Grundy County assessor’s office. Also, just whose investment did the assessor think he was protecting?

Our initial request was on June 4, 2012. We filed a Sunshine Law violation complaint with the Missouri Attorney General’s office on July 2. Over the ensuing months, we heard some vague promises that we would get the information. To their credit, the AG’s office stayed on it. Finally, we received it, for free, on Tuesday — March 19, 2013. Even though the original project we wanted it for has been completed for a long time, the data is still helpful for another project I am working on. Plus, it was the principle of the thing . . .

It took more than nine months for us to receive a simple request of public information that probably took the office 2 minutes to send us once they realized they had no choice. The Sunshine Law is important. Keeping public information hidden by obscene fees is immoral and wrong. Apparently, Grundy County Assessor Don Stotts does not feel that way. Thankfully, however, he (or at least his assistant who sent us the data) finally changed his mind.

By the way, 25 percent of the assessed valuation in Grundy County is land, and 75 percent is improvements. This entire nine-month controversy was about us being able to write the preceding sentence.

The post Grundy County Shenanigans appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

access to and a copy of all e-mails sent to, from, and within the governor’s office containing the words “aerotropolis” or “china” since May 1, 2011. I also request all e-mails referencing legislation related to aerotropolis or the china hub. I also request any and all emails or correspondence from or to Speaker Steven Tilley or one of his representatives regarding the possibility of a special session, including any discussion of legislators calling a special session independently of the governor.

In a letter dated July 27, the governor’s deputy counsel informed us that it would take 14 business days — about three weeks — to determine “the approximate time needed to complete processing” and the estimated cost of getting the information. Last week we were informed it would take an additional 30 days to receive these e-mails, meaning we would not receive the requested information until late September — well after the special session has begun — or if it’s in fact 30 business days, well into October.

If this sounds familiar, it should. From just two weeks ago…

We reported yesterday on the National Center for Beef Excellence’s Beef Study That Wasn’t, and last night KMOV reporter Andre Hepkins, who’s been covering the NCBE “meat feasibility” story since last week, sent along this latest development concerning the Beef Center’s elusive meat report:

KMOV’s Craig Cheatham is having his own devil of a time getting China Hub documents, and this part in particular jumped out at me. (Emphasis mine)

On Thursday, the day after the Hub Commission insisted that I refile the request under the Missouri Sunshine Law, I interviewed Mike Jones, the group’s Chairman. Jones admitted that it was his decision to make me refile the request. I told him it was an “abuse” of the process, and that any request for information must receive the same attention as one identified as a “Sunshine” request. He disagreed and stands by his decision.

And now we hear from Cheatham,

I filed a #Sunshine Law complaint today against Midwest #ChinaHub Commission. Is this how you sell #Aerotropolis ? http://tinyurl.com/3zeqh5g

Throw in that our most recent request for information from the China Hub has been referred to the Hub’s lawyers, and all of the sudden, we have the makings of a major problem. Are government record holders trying to run out the clock?

The post Has the Public Records Runaround Begun? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This openness is crucial to individuals who care about good government. For example, reporters can search campaign contribution reports for evidence of quid pro quo arrangements. The past three papers I have written at the Show-Me Institute relied entirely on information obtained from government entities: school superintendent contracts and salary information, meeting minutes for the Saint Louis land bank, and internal correspondence among public officials regarding the Aerotropolis tax credit proposal.

But open public records are important to others, as well. Consider the number of government records needed to say, start a business. You might want information about who owns property in your area, which would come from the local assessor’s office. You might want to know what zoning restrictions are in your area, information you could get from the local planning and zoning department. And so on.

So, I was shocked to learn that county governments routinely charge thousands of dollars for a single dataset.

For example, the Kansas City government charges $6,595 for its property database. This file is necessary in order to determine who owns what property in Kansas City, where properties are located, how much owners pay in taxes, and what land parcels are used for. This information is the most basic information necessary for someone interested in local tax or development issues.

But it doesn’t cost Kansas City $6,595 to make a copy of its database. And the state sunshine law says that charges for computer files should only include duplication costs.  So how does Kansas City justify charging so much for this data?

When it comes to public information that can be mapped, local governments can license that public information, making it no longer public, and can then charge an exorbitant amount for that information.

Here’s how it works, broadly:

1. State law allows local governments to close and then license public information if that information has a geospatial component — that is, if the information describes where the property is located.

2. The local government agency then “closes” the previously public information and sets license fees.

3. Individuals or companies who pay the license fees agree to terms that prohibit them from providing that information to others. For example, I had to sign a data licensing agreement with an assessor in order to receive information that, except for the state’s weird licensing law, is unarguably public. The agreement states that “…data obtained…may not be reproduced, for any purpose, without the prior, express written consent…”

So, this state law restricts public information so that local governments can charge exorbitant fees. What could possibly be the argument for such a policy?

The argument for charging such large fees is that the software used to maintain this data is expensive. I won’t argue that point. But this data would be maintained by local governments even if developers, engineers, reporters, and yes, think tank policy analysts, weren’t requesting it.

Maintaining geospatial data is a standard task of local government. Arguing that the associated costs should be included in the cost of providing data that can be easily copied with a few clicks of a mouse is akin to arguing that building and utility costs be included as well. The cost paid for information should reflect only the cost of reproducing that information — not infrastructure costs that are already paid for with tax revenues.

The law should be changed. There is no good reason for this law, and it serves only to stall or otherwise stop efforts to promote good, transparent government.

The post Local Governments License Public Information In Order To Charge Exorbitant Fees appeared first on Show-Me Institute.