Assessing Nixon's transparency and communication

In the midst of the Ferguson unrest last summer, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon was noticeably absent. The silence was interrupted by a seemingly vanilla response to the rioting.

The governor (assuming it wasn't a staffer assigned to do it) sent out a tweet:

"Situation in Ferguson does not represent who we are. Must keep the peace, while safeguarding rights of citizens and the press."

It was a predictable, stale and safe response from a government official. But it wasn't well-received.

The state senator who represents the people in Ferguson replied: "You don't know sh -- bc you never communicate. F--- you, Governor."

The tweet was sensational. It was off-the-cuff, raw. It was real, even if harsh and stoked by the crisis' tenacity. Still, these were shocking words coming from a public official.

But forget the profanity for a minute, and look at the message. What was she saying?

When you strip away Maria Chappelle-Nadal's profanity, you're left with this: You don't know because you never communicate.

Later, according to a Huffington Post report, Chappelle-Nadal told Fox News, "[Nixon] has still yet to come to ground zero. He has not spoken to the people who are the victims of this crisis that we're dealing with now, and that is why I have called him a coward."

I contacted Chappelle-Nadal's office multiple times last week, asking for an interview with her. I let a staffer know I was seeking insight about her comment and the governor's communication style. A representative from Chappelle-Nadal's office told me the senator would call me Thursday afternoon, but the call never came.

Background

Two weeks ago I wrote a column about the governor's claim, through a communications staffer, that Nixon doesn't use any digital forms of communication to conduct business, except via Twitter and his website. I strongly believe that if our state's top public executive doesn't use email or texts, it's because he doesn't want to be held accountable; he wants the communication controlled and out of public view until it has been polished into positive sound bites for mass consumption. Let no politician claim he values transparency if he doesn't use his official email to conduct business.

But Nixon is hardly the only politician who doesn't want scrutiny. He and so many other public officials don't want us to see how the sausage is made, and they use all sorts of gimmicks to control messages.

Last week I wrote that when presented with a Sunshine Law request for detailed text message data and corresponding times and phone numbers provided by cellphone bills, the state instead sent me a generic summary that included data usage and costs for Nixon's cellphone. Not what I was looking for. I sent another request Thursday, worded differently.

At one point I believed the governor had to be using email or texts somewhere, somehow; it was just a matter of finding it. Now, I'm less convinced. The more I dig, the more I believe Nixon operates in a vault, and only a few people know the combination.

I explained last week that how our officials conduct public business is important to the media. Because without knowing the methods, journalists don't know what records to ask for. And if our public officials can avoid records, they can avoid public inspection. It's an essential point.

But it's not the only point.

Access to people

Accessibility is a key part of communication and transparency to people inside and outside of journalism. I don't expect to speak with the governor directly (I'm more concerned about his transparency as it deals with the media), but I believe he should communicate directly with people in state government.

The governor can't speak with everyone, I get that. Communication has to be managed. There are 4.2 million registered voters in Missouri. They can't all expect to call the governor and speak to him directly.

The rap on the governor is that he won't even communicate with lawmakers. The knock is he uses his veto pen rather than persuasiveness to govern. The General Assembly is dominated by Nixon's opposing party. That makes for less than ideal conditions, if you're the governor. Still, there should be room for compromise. So is the governor disengaged in the process until the bills cross his desk?

I reached out to Missouri House Speaker John Diel, and was surprised by what he said.

Diehl told me Nixon has been accessible in the past year-plus. Diehl has been in a leadership position for quite some time. Before becoming Speaker, he was chairman of the House Congressional Redistricting Committee, the House Rules Committee and was the House Majority Floor Leader. Before becoming Speaker, Diehl was quick to decry Nixon's lack of communication.

"Prior to this year, I probably had two or three direct conversations with him," Diehl said. "Since I've become Speaker, I've been able to establish a direct line of communication, and we speak on a fairly regular basis."

Diehl said he nearly always meets with the governor face-to-face. He said typically he and the governor try to work out technicalities that could be problematic on bills that would have Nixon's support. Having the governor available for such communication has been helpful, Diehl said.

I was pleased that the governor is bending a listening ear. That's healthy for Missouri.

Nixon has had problems communicating with past House Speakers. I reached former speaker Steve Tilley by phone on Thursday, and he explained he is now a lobbyist and wouldn't talk to me unless he had a chance to approve the quotes I used from the interview. I told him I could read back his quotes, but I wouldn't let him decide which ones would be used for my column. He requested that I email him some questions. So I did, but Tilley hadn't responded by noon Friday.

It's a small sample, but based on that exchange, if there were communication problems between Tilley and Nixon, I would say they were not all Nixon's doing.

Lieutenant governor

I also reached out to Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder.

Kinder was more willing to talk. The lieutenant governor is perhaps the antithesis to Nixon on communication style. Kinder is very outspoken and often controversial. He can be combative, too, and a grandstander. But as a statewide elected official, his voice matters, especially in the topic I'm investigating.

Kinder is the man who would step in for Nixon if the governor could no longer lead. You would figure that, despite political differences, the lieutenant governor would have access to the governor, if for nothing else than emergency planning.

According to Kinder, he has only spoken to the governor -- not counting a handful of committees they both serve on -- two times since Nixon took office in 2009. Once was about the Tour of Missouri cycling race and the other was about Cottonwood Residential Treatment Center in Cape Girardeau. Kinder said his office has at times felt compelled to send written communications to Nixon via certified mail, to require a signature. It's the only way Kinder says he can be certain Nixon is receiving his communications.

What about when the governor travels out of the country? Nixon has taken several such trips, including Afghanistan four times. at least one trip to Iraq and another trip a couple of weeks ago to Europe.

Kinder said the transfer of power from the governor to lieutenant governor is completely up to the governor, a ruling established by the courts. To date, Nixon hasn't seen reason to transfer that power. I asked Kinder about how the governor communicates with him when he exits the country.

Kinder said he finds out about out-of-country trips "in the news media or someone who found out about it will tell me."

The trips present another question. If the governor is out of the country, how is he keeping tabs on what's happening in Missouri if he's not using email? Perhaps that's why the governor brings his press secretary with him on these trips: so the press secretary can check emails and tell the governor what he needs to know, and the governor can respond verbally and the press secretary can pass on the governor's thoughts.

Recently, I sent an email to the press secretary in response to his nonresponse to a question I had about the governor's communication practices. The email bounced back saying he would be out of the country on business for a week and I'd need to contact another spokesperson, still stateside. The spokeswoman in Missouri got back to me a few days later with the answers to questions I had been asking.

Ferguson

The behind-the-scenes picture of Nixon's communication style is a mixed bag. Maybe Nixon is evolving as a communicator. I'd like to think so. But unfortunately for the governor, his communication during Ferguson is the one that will stick with him going forward. It will leave political scars.

In fairness, Nixon faced a daunting challenge in Ferguson. No matter what he did or said, he would be criticized. It was a nightmare for the insulated governor. This was not a crisis he could manage from a vault; he couldn't run communication through filters and deliver it exclusively through news releases and news conferences. He needed to be seen, engaged and responsive.

But mayors and state lawmakers couldn't get through to him as a St. Louis community descended into frightening, near-anarchic chaos. When Ferguson so badly needed a leader and clear communication, our governor couldn't be reached by those who needed his power put to good use. During Ferguson's most violent night, the city's mayor -- according to a story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch -- "tried multiple times through multiple conduits to reach Nixon, without success."

Nixon made himself an easy target simply by not being accessible.

The New York Times took note. The newspaper quoted Steve Glorioso, a Democratic political consultant in Kansas City, who said the communication issue was the symptom of a larger problem, "sort of the chickens coming home to roost."

My view

I don't cover state politics. Our newspaper relies on The Associated Press to provide that. The AP journalists are very busy covering the daily happenings, hitting the high notes on the legislation that is debated and passed. But occasionally what is decided in Jefferson City has an acute impact on what happens locally. That was the case with Cottonwood.

As I began to unravel our Sunshine Law request for communications involving the pending closure and ultimate privatization of the center, the more I perceived that the governor was avoiding accountability in how he communicated. I began to examine the issue holistically. What kind of communicator is our governor? How transparent is he?

The Investigative Reporters and Editors organization, founded in 1975, awarded Nixon its dubious "Golden Padlock" award in 2014. It recognized Nixon as one of the most secretive public officials in the country. This was based on the state's refusal to release the maker of Missouri's execution drug, and officials began redacting all identifying information in response to a freedom of information request.

Journalists eventually learned the name of the suppliers, then learned the company wasn't licensed and, according to the IRE, "was paid thousands of dollars for its services in cash deliveries by a high-ranking state official." The state refused to name its new supplier as well.

"Being named the most secretive government agencies amid competition this fierce requires an unwavering commitment to undermining the public's right to know," said IRE board member and Golden Padlock committee chair Robert Cribb, clearly somewhat tongue in cheek in a story posted to the organization's website. "The creativity and innovation behind their cloak-and-dagger efforts have distinguished them for this unique honor."

A culture of transparency and communication in government starts at the top. Missouri isn't making it a priority.

Bob Miller is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.