TOBACCO LAWYERS' BILLS ARE PUBLIC RECORDS

So they are public records after all.

Prodded by a group of five state senators and by this newspaper, Attorney General Jay Nixon announced week before last that billing information related to the outside counsel he hired to represent the state in Missouri's tobacco litigation is a matter of public record. In so announcing, Nixon was really following the only path he could.

Nixon's concession that any billing submittals by the outside counsel are in fact public records within the meaning of Missouri's open-records law follows more than a little stonewalling by his office. His written replies to the senators' letters, when they weren't arrogantly dismissive, were incomplete. When repeatedly queried by a reporter for this newspaper, Nixon's official spokesperson expressed some exasperation, saying, "You are the only newspaper that seems to think this is an issue. You're the only one that continues to ask us about it!"

Whether that be the case or not, we believe this is vitally important public business. Consider what we have here. An attorney general is engaged in the questionable practice of essentially privatizing government litigation. To whom does he privatize this case? To friendly attorneys who are campaign contributors of his. And what is at stake? According to original reporting done by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the attorneys in question stand to reap hundreds of millions of fees for a few months' work. Until recently, calls for disclosure have mostly elicited a big shrug from many observers and from far too much of our state's Big Media.

We are glad that the attorney general agrees with us, and with legal counsel for the Missouri Press Association, that billing requests for his handpicked outside counsel are public records within the reach of our open-records law. We intend to watch this one closely, and encourage other elements of the news media to join us in zealously pursuing information on this new frontier in Missouri's legal and political history.