Blunt signs bill, urges officials to ignore part of it

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Even as he signed it Wednesday, Gov. Matt Blunt urged government officials to ignore a new law that would keep the addresses and telephone numbers of public officials and law officers from being posted on the Internet without their consent.

The new law would impose the ban beginning Aug. 28. But Blunt said he hoped legislators would repeal it during a September special session.

Noting the ban contained no penalty for governments that post the information, Blunt suggested that officials simply not implement the law while waiting for its repeal.

"It would be a very exaggerated response for state and local officials to allow the enactment of this bill to alter in any way their Internet sites," Blunt said.

Some county officials had expressed concern that the law could force them to pull down government Web sites.

For example, the Boone County recorder of deeds said the law could have halted the county's practice of posting real estate records on the Internet, because the records contain home addresses and she would have no way of knowing whether they mentioned a local public official from somewhere else in the state.

The Missouri Press Association had urged Blunt to veto the bill because of the provision.

Blunt said he signed the bill because it also contained other provisions, including one expanding the circumstances that would prohibit a foster child from being returned to the home of a convicted sex offender.

Senate President Pro Tem Michael Gibbons, R-Kirkwood, said the provision shielding information about public officials had been added in response to the February murder of a federal judge's husband and mother in Chicago.

U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow's home address had been posted on a white nationalist Web site in 2003, but authorities have not said if that is what led the killer to her home.