Carnahan's records slow to turn up at state archives

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Nineteen months after Gov. Mel Carnahan died in a plane crash, few of his official records have been turned over to the state archives.

Instead, thousands of pages of documents, correspondence and notes amassed in Carnahan's seven years and nine months as Missouri's chief executive remain in boxes tucked away in various parts of the Capitol.

That worries Ken Winn, director of the Missouri State Archives, who fears the records will be accidentally destroyed, forgotten or lost -- depriving state workers, historians and journalists of the opportunity to glean from them greater understanding of policy decisions.

Tradition, not law, prompts the transfer of most of a governor's records to the archives, which has documents from every governor since 1836, Winn said. But they are no less critical for the fact that they are produced voluntarily.

"We are the government's memory," Winn said. "If the records don't exist, you as a politician don't exist. They are evidence of your service to the state."

Typically, the staffs of outgoing governors prepare records for the archives during the final two months in office.

For Carnahan and his staff, that work would have begun following the election on Nov. 7, 2000, in which Carnahan was the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate seat then held by John Ashcroft.

But on Oct. 16 of that year, Carnahan, his son Roger Carnahan and aide Chris Sifford died in the crash of a small plane piloted by the younger Carnahan en route to a campaign appearance.

It then fell to Gov. Bob Holden's administration, a blend of new faces and Carnahan staffers, to sort through the records and determine what items should go to the archives for public use.

Time-consuming work

The work is time-consuming, all agree. About 115,000 pages have been delivered to the archive so far, Winn said.

"Their attitude is 'Yes, we want to turn over things to the archives.' But what would you want to do: Work on the your transportation bill or fool around with records from an administration that's not yours? So, it goes to the bottom of their list," Winn said.

June Doughty, general counsel for the Office of Administration, received the assignment to sort through the Carnahan records while also performing her normal duties.

She must decide which items are suitable for public viewing, which are duplicated or unneeded and which might be legally sensitive.

"An attorney has the obligation to protect privileged material. We want to make sure we are not sending something over there that exposes the lawyers to claims that they violated a responsibility," Doughty said.

Doughty estimates that she has sent 32 boxes to the archives. While no deadline has been set, she expects to eventually send over an additional 100 boxes.

An eight-year governor amasses far more than 115,000 pages of documents, Winn said.

Send about everything

When Ashcroft, now the U.S. attorney general, left the Missouri governor's office after eight years, he turned over 190,000 pages. U.S. Sen. Kit Bond sent "hardly anything" after losing a re-election bid as governor in 1977, but turned over about 380,000 following his second gubernatorial term in the early 1980s, Winn said.

Joseph Teasdale, who served as governor between Bond's two terms, offered 488,000 pages after his four years in office. And Warren Hearnes, upon completing two terms in 1973, turned over 675,000 pages.

Some governors send just about everything to the archives, leaving it to the archives staff to sort through such things as cocktail napkins with scribbles and multiple copies of the same document, Winn said.

For the Carnahan administration, the plane crash and its aftermath drew time and attention away from the activities that would normally take place during the final months in office. Lt. Gov. Roger Wilson stepped in as governor with just three weeks left before the election.

'Radically refocused'

Carnahan's staff "would have been in the mode to wind down the administration, but at that point their lives were radically refocused," said Roy Temple, a former Carnahan chief of staff who at the time was the head of the state Democratic Party.

"Folks who would have been doing that kind of work would probably have been pulled into helping Roger" Wilson, said Temple.

A lot of the governor's official records were boxed up. Some were stored in the Capitol basement; others were stuck under desks and stacked in offices.

Doughty said Holden's administration intends to deliver the records but that the sorting is a demanding, time-consuming job.

"We just all know it's the right thing to do," Doughty said. "It's an important piece of our history. It's what we want to do to honor him."

But going through the late governor's belongings is emotionally difficult, said Holden's spokesman Jerry Nachtigal, who worked for Carnahan.

"I've got a box of photos ... I've been meaning to go through them," Nachtigal said. "And I can't figure out why I haven't gone through them. Part of it is difficult memories."