SUNSHINE LAW NEEDS ATTENTION TO EDUCATION

Missouri is among many states with laws that are intended to make government more accessible to the people. Missouri's law, officially called the Open Meetings and Open Records Act, is more familiarly known as the Sunshine Law.

In recent years, newspapers in other states have tested compliance with similar laws. Several newspapers in area states have asked various public entities for public documents. Among the states that have conducted this test are Illinois and Arkansas. In every instance, compliance has been less than ideal. Stories about the failure of government to comply with open-meeting and open-record laws have revealed the shortcomings.

A similar test hasn't yet been conducted in Missouri. But State Auditor Claire McKaskill has done her version of an audit on Sunshine Law compliance. Randomly selected governmental agencies around the state were sent written requests for various public documents. McKaskill summarized her findings at the recent annual meeting of the Missouri Press Association.

What McKaskill found isn't surprising: Based on her statistical sampling, she concluded that only 1,649 of the state's 3,459 political subdivisions or 47.6 percent would voluntarily comply with requests for information considered public under the Sunshine Law.

Attorney General Jay Nixon's office publishes and distributes a booklet that includes the law, notes about what the law means and citations of legal cases in which Sunshine Law precedents have been set. This helpful information is widely used by newspapers around the state to train reporters and editors. Although the booklet is available to them, many political subdivisions don't request it, either because they either don't know it exists or because they are so unfamiliar with the law that they don't know they should be interested.

Too many efforts to assess compliance with the law result in heavy-handed bashing by the news media of political subdivisions whose understanding of the law is limited.

In an effort to remedy that situation in this area, the Southeast Missourian last month sponsored a three-hour seminar on the Sunshine law. Elected and appointed officials from school districts, city governments and county governments were invited to learn about the Sunshine Law along with reporters and editors of this newspaper.

The seminar was conducted by Jean Maneke, a Kansas City lawyer who specializes in media law and who is one of the most knowledgeable legal experts on the requirements and limits of the law. Her evenhanded review proved to be informative both to public officials and to newspaper folks.

The intent of the Sunshine Law is to give the public access to government. From the comments at the local seminar, it is evident that local officials are just as interested in letting the public know what's going on as the news media are. With this attitude, the best interests of taxpayers are being well-served.