The Joplin Globe, Joplin, MO

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December 5, 2007

Missouri: Auditor looking into Blunt e-mails, Sunshine Law

The Associated Press

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — State Auditor Susan Montee has obtained e-mails related to a fired governor’s office attorney as part of an examination into whether Gov. Matt Blunt has complied with Missouri’s open-records law.

Montee says she requested the information as part of a wide-ranging, regularly scheduled audit of the governor’s office. But Blunt’s administration claims she is trying to score political points.

A document obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press shows the governor’s office gave Montee e-mails related to former employee Scott Eckersley on Nov. 26. Eckersley claims he was fired for alerting Blunt’s office that e-mails must be treated as public records under the Sunshine Law.

Blunt denies that and has asserted that Eckersley instead was fired for using his state office for private sector work, among other things.

The AP recently submitted a Sunshine Law request to Montee for any correspondence between her office and Blunt’s office relating to her audit of the governor. The only document the AP received was a letter to Montee from Blunt’s deputy commissioner for administration, Rich AuBuchon. The auditor’s office said all other correspondence was exempt from disclosure under the open records law because it was part of its confidential audit work.

The letter from AuBuchon says the e-mails related to Eckersley were provided as a courtesy to the auditor because they are public records. But AuBuchon’s letter claims the e-mails actually were beyond the scope of an official audit.

“There is no legitimate audit-related reason to seek and obtain the e-mails regarding Mr. Eckersley,” AuBuchon’s letter states. “All indications point to you attempting to achieve some sort of low-scale political gain by requesting and reviewing the e-mails regarding Mr. Eckersley.”

Blunt is a Republican; Montee is a Democrat.

Montee said auditors always review whether agencies and officials are complying with Missouri’s open records and meetings law. The audit of Blunt’s office is no different, and the request did not ask only for e-mails related to Eckersley, Montee said.

“We were looking at all e-mails and the whole e-mail policy,” Montee said. She declined to elaborate, citing the confidentiality of ongoing audits.

“We’re not in there auditing, trying to find things to be used in a political way,” Montee added. “We’re just trying to do our job and get out of there.”

Montee said she hopes to conclude the audit of Blunt’s office by the end of the year.

Blunt has acknowledged that he and his staff routinely delete some e-mails, though the governor has denied that his office has violated the state Sunshine Law. E-mails are considered public records just like paper documents, but the state’s document retention policies allow some records to be disposed of sooner than others, depending on their nature.

Democratic Attorney General Jay Nixon, who is challenging Blunt in the 2008 gubernatorial election, also has opened an investigation into whether Blunt’s office is complying with the Sunshine Law and document retention policies.

Nixon has appointed a three-person team that he says will conduct an independent investigation. Blunt’s office also has claimed that probe is political.

Blunt’s office notes Nixon’s staff also has acknowledged deleting some e-mails, though Nixon’s staff says none of those were required to be kept under state law.

Blunt spokeswoman Jessica Robinson said she believes the e-mail documents provided to the auditor’s office about Eckersley already had been made public. AuBuchon provided the media with a large stack of e-mails related to Eckersley in late October, just as Eckersley was going public with his claims.

The last audit of the governor’s office was released in March 2005 and covered the latter part of Democratic Gov. Bob Holden’s administration. That audit found that some of the costs of airplane travel and of employees working in the governor’s office had been covered by the budgets of other state agencies.

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