Editorial

Secret ethics?

The Missouri Ethics Commission has been given a task it never wanted: to decide what should happen to campaign contributions given earlier this year before the state's new law that removed caps was struck down by the Missouri Supreme Court. The commission plans to tackle this issue, perhaps before its next regularly scheduled meeting Oct. 4.

It should be of more than passing interest to Missourians that the commission has indicated it may attempt to have this discussion in secret. If it does, it would appear to be a violation of the Missouri Open Meetings and Open Records Law, also known as the Sunshine Law. For the state's ethics commission to flagrantly violate the law intended to keep government business open to the public would be ... well, unethical.

The task of deciding about those campaign contributions fell to the ethics commission after the Supreme Court ruled that a provision in the new law, which took effect Jan. 1 and imposed a blackout period on campaign fund-raising while the legislature is in session, was unconstitutional. The court ruled that legislators had linked the blackout to another major provision, which removed contribution caps. So if the blackout is unconstitutional, the court said, the other provision had to be thrown out too. The ruling put the previous caps on contributions back in place.

But the court did not rule on what should happen to the millions of dollars that were donated before it made its ruling. Instead, the court said that decision should be made by the ethics commission. The commission met last week, and before the meeting a commission spokesman said it would discuss the matter in closed session but probably wouldn't make a decision. Indeed, the only discussion about the campaign contributions last week was to agree that any discussion was premature, since the Supreme Court's ruling hadn't yet taken effect because of the period allowed for appeals.

However, the commission spokesman, executive director Robert Connor, said the commission might still want to discuss what happens to the contributions in a closed meeting. If it does, Missourians should holler. There is no justification for having that discussion in secret. And of all the state's agencies, the ethics commission should know better.

This is a good example of why the Sunshine Law is so important. If the ethics commission meets behind closed doors to discuss this matter, the attorney general's office should be prepared to step in on behalf of Missourians who have a right to know what's what with millions of dollars at stake.

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