Sunshine law needs upgrade

By Jay Nixon

For the past 30 years, Missouri's Sunshine Law has served our citizens well. But in those three decades, technology has changed the way we communicate. We must upgrade the Sunshine Law to continue to reap its benefits.

The Sunshine Law gives the media and the public access to meetings of governmental bodies and records documenting the daily business of government. The growing use of computers, e-mail and Web-hosting threatens to undercut these rights. This technology allows public officials to discuss public business in cyberspace, hidden from view of the media or the public. If we allow our law to lag behind, e-mail's benefits -- communicating ideas instantly and to many -- will be wiped out by secrecy in the form of elected officials who choose to work out issues behind the privacy of their home computer screens rather than in full view of the public.

Now is the time to give our Sunshine Law a technology upgrade to ensure that the public continues to have access to its government's discussions and decisions, regardless of the mode of communication.

I am asking the Missouri Legislature to pass the Sunshine Upgrade Act, legislation that would:

Require that e-mail correspondence between a majority of the members of a public body be transmitted to the custodian of records and, upon request, be made available to the public.

Prohibit voting on public business by the use of a phone tree or e-mail tree where a public body attempts to, by avoiding group discussion, take votes without the benefit of a public meeting.

Allow a public body to respond to requests for records in the format received. For example, a public body would respond to an e-mail request by e-mail which, in many cases, would save the public body time and money because computers have made it much easier to sort and access records.

Require that, if a public body has a virtual meeting over the Internet, that the body post a notice of that meeting on its Web site in addition to the physical notice at its office.

These commonsense changes will ensure the Sunshine Law remains in step with how government works in today's information age.

We live in a world where government is capable of storing the contents of a file cabinet on a few CDs.

The public is becoming more likely to surf the Web for information about an upcoming meeting than to drive to city hall. As technology leaps forward, upgrading the Sunshine Law is critical to giving Missourians the access to government they deserve.

Jay Nixon is the attorney general of Missouri.