After sixteen years as Attorney General, you’d think Jay Nixon would understand and respect the Sunshine Law and government transparency. But nothing could be further from the truth.
Virginia Young of the St. Louis Post Dispatch and Phill Brooks of KMOX have both written in the last week about the lack of transparency from the Nixon administration. Also already reported today that Jay Nixon is impeding lawmakers' access to information they have requested.
More egregious examples abound. This Sunshine Law request for documents was filed in November 2011. The simple request was for documents related to a staffer supposedly responsible for board and commission appointments. The campaign was trying to find out if someone in the Nixon administration was working full-time on this important task. There are unacceptable numbers of vacancies for boards and commission appointments all throughout state government because Jay Nixon is not doing his job.
“What in the world is Jay Nixon hiding?” asked Dave Spence, Republican gubernatorial nominee. “When the staffer responsible for boards and commissions doesn’t show up to work and there are questions related to whether she is still on the job, people deserve access to records that answer those questions. The recent revelation that Jay Nixon issued an edict to all departments that they are not to respond to Sunshine Law requests without those being reviewed by the governor’s office first is another example of Jay Nixon putting politics before service to the people.”
Jay Nixon knows he was legally required to respond to the Sunshine Law Request within three days and to fulfill the records within the time period he laid out in his response. His failure to comply with the law can mean only one thing: he is hiding politically damaging information to try to get re-elected.
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