Across Missouri, public officials routinely delay, dodge, or deny access to information that taxpayers are entitled to. They charge outrageous fees, cite vague exemptions, lose track of requests, or hide behind non-disclosure agreements, treating transparency as a nuisance rather than a requirement.

Years ago my colleagues wrote about the prohibitively high fees municipalities sought just to turn over the most basic financial data—the city checkbook. That’s just the beginning.

Consider Kansas City’s downtown ballpark negotiations. Mayor Quinton Lucas indicated he was willing to share details, so I took him up on it. I filed an open records request through the city website. Having received no response for almost two weeks (state law requires action be taken within three days), I followed up only to be told that the request had been wrongly assigned and had been sitting idle. A city employee resolved the issue, adding, “Let’s keep our fingers crossed” that it works this time. Two weeks later I was emailed: “All responsive records pertaining to this request are closed records pursuant to Sec 610.021(12) because such records are related to negotiations for a contract prior to its execution.”

The Kansas City Star reports that the city is again in negotiations with the Royals to subsidize a downtown park. Elected leaders are apparently eager to make sure the deal is not only kept secret, but also that it avoids any public vote.

In August 2025, I asked the Kansas City Streetcar Authority for records about the construction costs of its new Main Street extension—reported to be the most expensive streetcar line in the country at over $100 million per mile. My request was redirected to city staff who told me the matter was under review. I followed up in late October and was told the city would contact me by the end of that week. It’s been almost three months with no update.

In one recent case, a state employee told me the data I needed would take just 20 minutes to find—but only after a formal Sunshine Request was submitted and processed. This person did not know how long that would take. I got the information five days later, and I was grateful. But it underscored a troubling reality: a process meant to promote transparency is now often used to delay it.

Then there are the NDAs. The director of Missouri’s Department of Economic Development signed one with both the Royals and Chiefs—and indicated in a legislative hearing that she may not be able to answer questions. PortKC even requires companies sign an NDA in its application. While sealed bids may serve public interest in competitive contracting, secrecy around subsidies undermines the very idea of public oversight.

Missouri’s Sunshine Law could be a valuable tool, but it needs to be refreshed and its exceptions narrowed. Doing so would not merely combat waste, fraud, and abuse, but would also encourage better public policy.

The post Missouri’s Sunshine Law Needs More than Good Intentions appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Parents play a fundamental role in their children’s education, but a lack of transparency from school districts makes it difficult for them to stay informed. Too often, parents struggle to determine how well their children’s schools are performing, how taxpayer dollars are being spent, and what is being taught in the classroom. School districts often make it financially prohibitive for parents to access the information they need to hold schools accountable.

The Solution

The fundamental right of parents to participate in and direct the education of their children should be affirmed in state law with the adoption of a parents’ bill of rights. The parents’ bill of rights would require districts to provide parents with clear information about what is happening in their children’s schools.

Key Facts

• In 2025, the Heritage Foundation ranked Missouri 45th in educational transparency among the 50 states and Washington, D.C.

• Sunshine Law requests sent in recent years by the Show-Me Institute seeking curriculum information from Missouri schools and districts were often ignored or met with demands for tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of dollars to process the requests.

Which Rights Should Be Included in Statute?

At a minimum, parents should have:

• The right to know what Missouri schools are teaching.

• The right to know how Missouri schools are performing.

• The right to know how Missouri schools are spending taxpayer money.

• The right to choose the educational option that works best for their children.

• The right to know their children’s physical and mental health and to be informed when concerns arise. This includes, but is not limited to, the right to opt out of health measures not required by state law.

Public Schooling in Partnership with Parents

Schooling works best when parents and educators work together. However, school district policies increasingly undermine such cooperation through a lack of transparency. Missouri’s Sunshine Law is intended to ensure openness in public agencies, yet many school districts routinely claim that fulfilling Sunshine Law requests is prohibitively expensive, then pass those inflated costs on to the requester. This practice effectively blocks Missourians from accessing important information, such as which curriculum materials are being used in their local schools. There is also a growing trend among public schools to withhold information about student health from parents.

The state needs to take action to expand access to information among parents. School districts that fail to comply should be subject to meaningful financial and administrative penalties. Transparency and accountability in local government, including schools, should not be optional. The law must have strong, unambiguous consequences attached to violations of its provisions.

Policy Recommendations

• Pass a parents’ bill of rights into law so that schools and districts understand the rights and expectations of the parents and taxpayers who fund their operations.

• Ensure that the law includes “teeth” —real consequences for violations—so that it isn’t seen merely as a set of recommendations that can be violated without penalty by school districts.

The post Missouri Parents’ Bill of Rights appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

For some background, Festus and Crystal City—two adjoining cities in Jefferson County—are planning to sell their shared municipal sewer system. That, by itself, is a good thing they deserve credit for. However, the cities never went out for open bids on the project. They negotiated behind the scenes with only one other entity, the Jefferson County Public Sewer District (JCPSD), on the sale. They went public in June with the proposal and have entered into a formal arrangement to continue negotiations with the JCPSD. (Nobody has finalized anything yet, to be clear.)

JCPSD is offering $5 million for the system. While that may be a fair price and while JCPSD seems fully capable of running the sewer system for the community, how do the cities know if it is the best deal if they don’t accept other bids?

I filed a sunshine request with Festus last month for public records regarding the potential sale. I asked for the available records. I received the response last week. The city’s response is utterly worthless. There is nothing in it beyond copies of prior ordinances authorizing the sewer system, recent bills authorizing the city to negotiate with JCPSD, and copies of public notices. There is not one e-mail in the response, which means either no city officials or employees ever sent an e-mail on this topic over the past year—or they are claiming every e-mail is privileged. When we asked why there were no e-mails in the response, this is what they wrote me:

The City has reviewed the records within its custody which would be responsive to the requests. In response to those requests, we have provided those records which are responsive and which are open under the Missouri Sunshine Law. As noted in the City’s letter responding to the requests, certain records of the City were withheld as closed records, pursuant to Section 610.021, RSMo (1), (2), (12), and (17).

In fact, total secrecy was demanded by JCPSD and the two cities right from the beginning, despite the fact that openness, not secrecy, would have likely led to more bids and a better deal for the cities and taxpayers. Here is section eleven from the initial letter from the JCPSD to the cities dated November 17, 2022, but not made public until much later:

Without the prior written approval of the other parties, unless otherwise required by law, neither the JMUC, District, nor Cities will disclose the existence of this letter or any information concerning the transactions contemplated in this letter, to any third party, other than such party’s attorney, accountant, or professional advisor who needs to know such information to perform his or her duties in connection with this letter or intend or the transactions contemplated by this letter and who shall first agree to the confidentiality of this letter.

This has been anything but an open and transparent process. The public hearings on this matter were held shortly after the proposal was first announced, and the two city councils voted to approve the memorandum of understanding with JCPSD the exact same night as the public hearings. (Officials voting the same night is always a red flag that a public hearing is a dog-and-pony show.) The cities took no other bids or proposals, despite being well aware other entities would like to bid on the sewer systems. Now they are hiding behind legal exemptions to not share any records on the deliberations and discussions of the sale.

Festus and Crystal City selling their sewer system to a larger organization, public or private, with more resources is a great idea. Going about it all in this manner, however, is terrible government. It may be legal, but it is wrong.

The post An Airing of Grievances about Sewer Sales in Festus appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The reason the state bureaucracy resists transparency is simple: the Sunshine Law in Missouri (and elsewhere) is pretty weak, local government officials know it, and many of our state and local officials are reluctant to share information about government operations if they can avoid it. Mandatory document reporting and spending transparency resolve this kind of problem, offering notice to bureaucrats and penalties for noncompliance. I’ve pushed for that reform for a few years now and will continue to do so until it’s passed.

Of course the ideas of “mandatory reporting” and “mandatory transparency” are predicated on active policing of those laws by public officials, like an attorney general or auditor. So I read with great interest an article announcing that the state attorney general’s office had launched a transparency portal of its own showcasing what the office had found in district curricula:

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt subpoenaed seven school districts Wednesday for information on surveys given to students, and also launched a portal which gives the public access to “objectionable teacher trainings and assignments” uncovered through parent submissions and open records requests. . . .

As part of the Students First initiative introduced by Schmitt in March, the attorney general’s office also launched a transparency portal to compile parent’s submissions and open records requests sent to school districts.

The Students First initiative, launched by Schmitt in March, is designed to “increase transparency in Missouri’s schools” and “ensure a quality education for Missouri’s children by uncovering and eliminating curriculum and policies and practices that prioritize politics in the classroom instead of student education and success.”

You can find the attorney general’s transparency portal here.

It has been remarkable to see how resistant many school districts have been to transparency even when the inquiry has come from a state office, but I think that’s emblematic of a state governing culture that holds good governance and transparency in fairly low regard. That the attorney general’s office has had to sue districts to get documents is a testament to the need for transparency in all facets of government, and I’m glad the attorney general and his office have taken steps to increase transparency while a bumbling state legislature struggles to catch up.

The post Attorney General’s Office Starts a Curriculum Database of Its Own appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

That’s where House Bill 2873 (HB 2873) comes in.

HB 2873 would create permanent email accounts with the office of the Secretary of State (SOS) where Sunshine Law requests can be sent to local government at all times. For example, Battlefield, Mo., might be “battlefield@cities.mo.gov,” or Clay County might be “clay@counties.mo.gov.” The simplicity of the system is its advantage. Residents wouldn’t need to track down everchanging contact information for a city or school district, because these permanent email addresses will always work. Moreover, the Secretary of State would retain a copy of all requests to ensure compliance from local governments. Local governments wouldn’t be able to plausibly deny that a request was lost within the recesses of the Internet.

What if a local government already has an active Sunshine Law email address? The proposal contemplates this, too, allowing local governments to have requests sent to the new SOS accounts forwarded to an existing contact point for Sunshine Law requests. Alternatively, they could manage such requests within the state’s own email system like you or I might with our work email, or with web email. Importantly, as soon as an email request was received by the email address hosted by the Secretary of State, the three-day clock for a response required under the law would start ticking. However local government chose to field these requests, they couldn’t simply ignore them or act like the email was not received. Indeed, the state would know better.

Also included in the bill is a fix to something we encountered on a handful of occasions during our Show-Me Curricula project. Some school districts claimed that the schools they manage were not covered under the Sunshine Law. This is, of course, nonsense, but HB 2873 strengthens language around who precisely is subject to the state’s public transparency requirements, specifically around schools.

Along with the Parents’ Bill of Rights and mandatory transparency provisions dotting a handful of legislation, HB 2873 stands as one of the most important transparency ideas of the 2022 legislative session. The bill would act as a check against local government Sunshine Law failures. It leaves no flexibility for schools to deny transparency requests made under the law. I look forward to its hearing and hope that it will pass either on its own or as a prioritized amendment before the end of the session.

The post Bill Makes Government Transparency Available to All Missourians appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

THE SOLUTION: Open collective bargaining.

Open collective bargaining would allow the public to attend meetings where government bodies are negotiating collective bargaining agreements with unions to ensure that tax dollars are being spent wisely. Openness in public affairs empowers citizens to hold their government representatives accountable. The public is directly affected by policies set during collective bargaining; citizens therefore have a right to be present during such meetings. An open collective bargaining rule would not prohibit the public agency from discussing and formulating its bargaining positions in executive session.

WHO ELSE DOES IT? Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee, and Texas all require contract negotiations to be open.

THE OPPORTUNITY: A transparent negotiating process will enable the public to hold government accountable in its dealings with public employee unions and help ensure that the agreements reached between the two parties are in the interest of everyone instead of just a select group of employees.

KEY POINTS

• Open collective bargaining gives citizens the opportunity to attend union negotiations with government bodies and help ensure that tax dollars are spent responsibly.
• Missouri’s Sunshine Law allows government bodies to close meetings to the public if they relate to a negotiated contract, even though there is no compelling reason why negotiations between a union and a public body should be held in secret.
• Government unions can make campaign contributions and support candidates that they will potentially bargain with after election. This advantage makes it especially important that the public be aware of how the government and public employee unions interact.

SHOW-ME INSTITUTE RESOURCES

Policy Study: A Primer on Government Labor Relations in Missouri

Video: Government Unions: Restoring Accountability

For a printable version of this article, click on the link below. You can also view the entire 2018 Missouri Blueprint online.

The post 2018 Blueprint: Open Collective Bargaining 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.

In November, Missouri’s State Auditor’s office ran a test.  It randomly delivered 309 letters to political subdivisions in its database.  Each of these public entities (cities, school districts, special taxing districts, etc.) was sent a very simple, anonymous sunshine request, and the responses were then monitored.  The results were dismal.  More than two-thirds of public entities failed to fully comply, and roughly one in six failed to respond at all. 

A few political subdivisions even refused to provide information unless they were told who was requesting it, even though nothing in the Sunshine Law requires that proof of identity accompany a request for information. 

The point of the exercise was to learn what the average citizen deals with when checking on a public body, and the results show that the process is often overly burdensome.  Some responses asked for payments as high as $80 for easily attainable documents like minutes from 2015 meetings. Show-Me Institute analysts have submitted our fair share of sunshine requests and have at times been met with outrageous demands.

It’s possible that some of these failures come from a lack of understanding of the law. If this is the case, then public servants need to be brought up to speed on their duty to the public. When government entities aren’t open to public scrutiny, there is reason for concern.  There’s nothing unreasonable about demanding that public information be public.

The post State Audit Reveals Transparency Problems appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Luckily, in Missouri, we have the Sunshine Law, which requires public bodies and public officials to disclose, among other things:

“…records, regardless of what form they are kept in, and to all meetings, regardless of the manner in which they are held.”

Our first step was to call the MTC, hoping that someone would simply send us the proposed changes. The MTC’s response: we have no such document. The MTC’s “custodian of records” claimed to have no knowledge of any proposed code changes.

To make matters clear, the document containing draft code changes certainly existed. A commissioner was given a draft at a public meeting, and even posted sections of the draft on the internet. Thus ignored, we sent an official sunshine request to the MTC, asking for any documents regarding the code changes, or if the custodian did not have the documents, contact information for the person who did. The MTC’s response to the message was a prompt: “We are not in possession of any records that match your request.”

The next day, we again called the MTC, asking how we could contact the Chair of the MTC, who almost certainly would have access to the document. Representatives at the MTC refused to divulge any contact information, and instead had us call the MTC attorney, who provided no information.

To make a long story short, MTC commissioners (who are members of the MTC), circulated a document that is almost surely subject to a sunshine request. But because they did not give the document to their custodian of records, and they instructed that custodian to not disclose contact information, the MTC does not have to divulge the information? That’s a neat trick, and, if legal, makes the Missouri Sunshine Law a joke. It is to suggest that government officials are immune from Sunshine requests, as long as they don’t give their documents or contact information to their custodian of documents. I’m not a lawyer, but I hope that this is not the case. As for the MTC, it’s disappointing that the organization refuses to be open with the public.

The post Taxicab Commission Refuses to Respond to Sunshine Request appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

We actually went back about eight years and found that there was over $25 million paid in stipends either unapproved, unauthorized or improper. I have to say, with all the money paid in stipends, the district would not be in the condition it’s in if it were under control.

This quote comes from the late Missouri State Auditor Tom Schweich, in remarks about his report on the St. Joseph School District. In the same story, Schweich reported, “There were significant other problems with payroll, overtime hours, summer school credits, nepotism issues and other questionable spending.”

The St. Joseph District is not alone in wanting to spend more money. The Kansas City Public School District has been putting “trial balloons” in the air for some time seeking to increase the taxes that fund schools. Many education advocates want to spend more money on teachers and in the classroom. But in Kansas City, the amount spent per student, approximately $16,000 per pupil per year, is already very high. The likely problem, as highlighted by Schweich’s audit in St. Joe, is that the money is often not making it to the classroom; it is being eaten up by administrators through bad policy and perhaps even fraud.

In his 2011 audit of the Kansas City School District, Schweich found lots of similar problems. According to a story by KCTV:

The district could not account for $4 million in food costs and student incentives, repeatedly failed to competitively bid projects and monitor contracts, has excessive overtime and failed to properly oversee its closed buildings, the audit found.

The state audit said a principal at Lincoln College Preparatory Academy made $58,000 in unauthorized purchases and cash withdrawals. Jamia Dock is no longer at the school and has been charged in Jackson County Circuit Court with stealing more than $25,000 in district funds. She has pleaded not guilty and the case is still pending.

The Kansas City School Board was also faulted for repeatedly violating the Missouri Sunshine Law.

Schweich’s 2011 audit grade for KCPS was “Fair,” of a four-point scale including “Excellent,” “Good,” “Fair,” and “Poor.” According to the auditor’s office, most of these findings assume that district spending numbers are correct, which means they don’t do the time-consuming work of digging into expenses. Even still, for Kansas City to score in the bottom half is an indictment.

Many parents and teachers want to see more money making it to the classroom. As Schweich’s comment at the top of this post suggested, efficient money management means that more money can be made available where it matters most. If the Kansas City School District wants to build trust with parents, teachers, and taxpayers, they should invite a thorough and recurring examination of their books and remain transparent in all their expenditures.

The post Audit the Kansas City Public Schools appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This week marks the 10^th Anniversary of Sunshine Week. It’s a time to celebrate freedom of information, but also serves as a reminder that there are still some dark corners of government in need of transparency. In a recent study, the non-profit organization, Better Together, tried to obtain financial and operational information from municipalities using the state’s Sunshine Law.

The report found that some cities responded quickly and at low cost, while others did not. Deputy director of community based studies Marius Johnson-Malon was quoted by Saint Louis Public Radio:

“Sometimes we were met with different requests for money up to $2,000 to provide the information we were looking for. Sometimes people would say it was going to take up to six months, and that is in contrast to some municipalities that got us the information on the same day they received the request and provided it for free.”

Johnson-Malon’s experience with varying transparency is not rare. I encountered a similar issue while requesting information regarding public school collective bargaining agreements. Some districts emailed the information within minutes at no cost. Others referred me to the district attorney or offered to retrieve the information at costs of up to $100.

Collective bargaining in public schools should be transparent, but as SMI Policy Researcher John Wright has pointed out, a legal loophole allows collective negotiations between school districts and teachers’ unions to remain behind closed doors.

Last month, a bill was introduced that will open collective negotiations to the public. Parents and taxpayers have the right to know what demands unions are making, especially if those demands affect the education of children.

The Missouri Sunshine Law may be nothing like a subscription to the Jelly of the Month Club, but as Eddie in Christmas Vacation famously said, it’s “the gift that keeps on giving all year round.” Happy Sunshine Week!

The post Happy Sunshine Week! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

That’s why recent, troubling news out of Saint Louis County should concern anyone interested in good, effective, and financially secure government. I’ve spoken to a number of firefighters in Saint Louis County recently, and the stories I’m hearing are not good: self-dealing, intimidation, fire district board members using bulletproof vests in their meetings. Something has gone awry.

In response to this strife, some fire districts are trying something new. At Monarch Fire Protection District, instead of holding collective bargaining meetings behind closed doors, the board has decided to open up the process to the public, as Missouri’s Sunshine Law requires them to do with most other meetings. So far the results have been promising.

So why isn’t this already standard practice with government collective bargaining? After all, collective bargaining meetings are deliberative processes where public officials set public policy, including employee compensation, work rules, and grievance procedures.

Missouri Sunshine Law (a.k.a. Open Meetings and Records Law) provides that public government bodies may close meetings, records, and votes to the extent they relate to a negotiated contract until that contract is executed or all proposals are rejected. Hence, government bodies close collective bargaining sessions with government unions under the theory that collective bargaining is a contract negotiation.

Collective bargaining is a contract negotiation of sorts, but it is not the same as contracting with an outside firm. Collective bargaining is a negotiation between staff and management over internal operations. Because policy can be set in these bargaining sessions, exempting government collective bargaining from the Sunshine Law is a mistake, especially when the public is concerned about labor relations at a government entity upon which they depend.

U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Louis Brandeis famously wrote,

Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.

Expanding the scope of Missouri’s transparency laws to cover collective bargaining meetings and access to government records would be one good way to alleviate the labor relations problems we’re seeing in the public sector.

The post Finding Balance Through Transparency appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The report includes numerous violations of public records and public meeting requirements. The following government bodies failed to abide by the proper procedure for making meetings closed to the public:

• Gentry County
• City of Savannah
• Ste. Genevieve County
• City of Liberal
• Southern Dallas County Fire Protection District
• Daviess County
• City of Brentwood
• Department of Public Safety/State Emergency Management Agency
• City of Buckner
• City of Diamond
• Cedar County
• Caldwell County
• McDonald County
• Lake Lotawana Community Improvement District
• Vernon County
• Montgomery County
• Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners
• Clark County
• Stone County
• The School District of Springfield, R-XII
• Monarch Fire Protection District
• Natural Resources/Soil and Water Conservation Program
• Higher Education/Southeast Missouri State University
• Madison County

Most of the government bodies that failed to keep meetings open were cities and counties, but some of these bodies, including the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners, the Department of Public Safety/State Emergency Management Agency, and the Southern Dallas County Fire Protection District, are charged with ensuring public safety. The Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners, for example, failed to comply with the provisions of Missouri law that require a body in a closed meeting to properly document issues discussed, to discuss only authorized topics during the closed meeting, and to properly disclose the final disposition of matters discussed in closed sessions.

Government bodies have the power to deprive us of life, liberty, and property. They are charged with providing public safety and education services that Missourians depend on. They are given the power to extract payment for these services whether an individual wants them or not. The open government requirements of Missouri’s Sunshine Law are essential safeguards against abuse of government power.

The post Ain’t No Sunshine: What’s Going On Behind Government’s Closed Doors? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The audit noted that many students in St. Louis public schools are reading more than one grade below their grade level. Yet, the vast majority of these students are being passed on to the next grade without having the prerequisite skills. This social promotion, the auditor noted, may be in violation of state law.

District officials recognized they may not be in “full” compliance with state statutes, but lamented that they just “don’t have the resources to follow this law.” Complying would simply “put undue financial hardship on the district.” In the eyes of the auditor, however, “students who can’t read should be the highest financial priority.”

In essence, the auditor was saying that schools should be about educating students. That is their goal. That is their mission. The St. Louis Public School District spends more than $15,000 per pupil and they should figure out how to use those resources to make sure that students can read at grade level.

If educating students creates an “undue financial hardship” for St. Louis, or any other school district for that matter, then it’s time to let students take their education dollars to a school that can meet that demand. What is the cost of not educating students? What is the cost of passing students on year after year who cannot read? Think about the undue hardship that puts on students.

Watch the video of Schweich’s presentation here:

The post What Is The Cost Of Not Educating Students? 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.

For teachers, pay is pretty simple. Missouri public school districts have “teacher salary schedules” to determine each teacher’s salary. Generally, there are two factors: relevant experience and education. Think of each level of education as a ladder, with years of experience as rungs. When a teacher comes into the district, he’s placed on a ladder rung, and moves up in pay each year he stays with the district. For example, at Waynesville School District (linked above), a teacher with a Master’s degree and three years of experience earns $40,634, while someone with four years of experience earns $41,164.

Those salary schedules are hyper-public. Many districts, such as Lee’s Summit, also post online salary schedules for other employees, such as custodians.

Notably absent is a superintendent salary schedule. Unlike teacher pay, those figures aren’t standardized within a district. Instead, salaries are negotiated when a superintendent is first hired, and usually amended each year at school board meetings. The contracts vary widely. Sure, superintendents tend to earn more at larger districts than at smaller ones. Other things, like whether a superintendent has an advanced degree, and the number of years he has worked at the district, play a role.

But, sometimes, the district just might have more money to spread around.

For example, let’s look at two public Missouri school districts, District A and District B. The superintendent at District A made $185,000 during the 2007–08 school year, while the superintendent at District B will make a little more than half of that, $94,245, during the coming school year.

Why the difference? Well, it’s not district size. Both are nearly identical in terms of student enrollment — in 2007, District A had 788 students, while District B had 787.

Nor is it a gender issue, or a question of who has a higher degree. Both superintendents are male and hold degrees advanced enough that they go by “Dr.” And, as for experience, both superintendents have worked five years for their respective districts.

Still, there is a major difference between the two. District B, the one that pays its superintendent about half as much, is a school district where nearly 60 percent of its students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. More bluntly, District B is a low-income district, while District A, with only 20 percent of its students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunches, is a higher-income district.

It’s the money. District A has less, and spent about $8,000 per student in 2007, while District B spent a little more than $14,000 per student.

Ideally, superintendents (and other school employees) would be paid more based on how difficult their jobs are. The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education acknowledges that it takes more money to teach lower-income students; when calculating how much funding to give to schools, the department pays 25 percent more for each student eligible for free or reduced-price lunches, above a threshold.* By that measure, the superintendent for the poorer school district should receive a higher salary.

But, because the richer district has more money, it pays its superintendent much more. And superintendents know this. The superintendents at poorer, generally rural, school districts tend to joke that they’d like to see their better-paid counterparts come over to their poorer district and watch them “push a mop around.” They’re the ones that tease over the phone about their super-secret non-salary benefits, which are … none.

Is this fair? After all, if a district has more money, why shouldn’t it pay its superintendent a share of the excess? That’s how it works with CEOs of private companies — and it’s a decision for the school board, not for the state, or something that district voters can weigh in on directly. In fact, superintendent salary negotiations take place at closed school board meetings. The public can’t attend, and minutes of those meetings aren’t available under the Missouri Sunshine Law.

I think school board members are forgetting something. There should never be an issue of excess in any public organization. And board members shouldn’t vote to pay far above and beyond what’s necessary under the cover of a closed meeting. Every district’s budget is a direct grant from local taxpayers, the state, and the federal government. Just because a school district has more money available doesn’t mean they should spend more than they need to.

* The free and reduced-price threshold is, according to state statute, “calculated by dividing the total free and reduced lunch pupil count of every performance district that falls entirely above the bottom five percent and entirely below the top five percent of average daily attendance, when such districts are rank-ordered based on their current operating expenditures per average daily attendance, by the total average daily attendance of all included performance districts[.]”

Please let me know what you think. Leave a comment below, or — as always — feel free to email me.

The post What You Pay For appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Collecting voter turnout data from Missouri’s 114 counties and the city of St. Louis has proven difficult. If you read my first post, this might surprise you. After all, I reported a success rate of more than 50 percent in obtaining records from county clerks. But getting the records is just the first step.

The Sunshine Law is meant to promote transparency in Missouri government, but the voting records I have received are anything but clear. Although I only requested the last nine years’ worth of data for school district elections, numerous county clerks struggled to fulfill my request. In fact, some didn’t even come close. Many times, information was missing because of a new computer system.

What struck me first was the abundance of missing data. County clerks often omitted years completely. When I contacted them, many became defensive or tried to skirt the issue.

As far as general trends, gaps in election results seem to be most prevalent in 2000, 2004, and 2007. The gaps often coincide with the implementation of new computer systems for tracking election results. For several counties, even those that compiled otherwise exemplary information, the registered voter totals for some years read zero.

Many counties were able to sort this out as soon as I brought it to their attention; several read me the numbers over the phone from their hard copies in cases where it was missing from their computer files.  However, there were some who couldn’t find the numbers. They often pointed out that they were not required to keep data longer than 22 months. Most, however, were reluctant to say the earlier records had been destroyed. Instead, they gave noncommittal responses, saying the information just wasn’t available.

While they’re not required to keep the results for more than 22 months, if the records still exist, they are required to make them available to anyone who asks. They are not allowed to destroy records in order to avoid a Sunshine Law request. I have no way of knowing for sure if or when this happens.

Computer system changes aren’t the only reason data goes missing.

The Mercer County clerk mentioned that an archivist had updated the records before she took office and that much of the data I had requested was unavailable. (What exactly did that archivist do?) After I emailed to request any remaining data, I waited for two weeks without a response. When I called, I finally got results: two handwritten numbers for 2008.

New Madrid County‘s clerk said he couldn’t give me the exact number of registered voters in the county for the indicated years. He sent me an average figure for the nine-year span. When I told him I needed more precise information for my research, he suggested that I check the Secretary of State’s records. (The Secretary of State’s website does list voter registration, but only for even-numbered years. For any other questions, or for more in-depth information, the website suggests contacting — you guessed it — the election authorities.) After another phone call, New Madrid’s deputy clerk is now working on my request. I did not mention her boss’ refusal to collect the data.

In essence, I met with some pretty cloudy results and stormy reactions from county clerks. The idea behind the law is good, but in practice: Don’t expect sunshine.

If you would like more information about which counties were missing information because of computer system changes, don’t hesitate to email me.   

The post Sunshine Requests, Cloudy Responses appeared first on Show-Me Institute.