The Sunshine Law’s Power is the People’s Power
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No Missouri law is more important to holding government accountable than the state’s Sunshine Law. As a newspaper editor, I had a deep appreciation of the impact of the law as a reporting tool. But the Sunshine Law exists for ordinary citizens, not just journalists. Every Missourian should value the power of this law, which protects access to public records and meetings.
When the Sunshine Law took effect 52 years ago, it was broad and simple. It made clear that citizens have a right to know how their government operates, in large and small ways. In essence, any record the government kept or maintained was a record that should be considered open to the public’s view. And the contents of meetings, with few exceptions, also were to be open to the public.
Over the years, though, legislators have passed dozens of exemptions — narrowly construed exceptions that allow public officials to keep certain documents secret. While the legislators who have pushed these exemptions often seem to be well-meaning, the net effect of all these exemptions is to chip away at this important law, diminishing the rights of citizens to look inside their government and its processes.
The efforts to create new loopholes around this law continue to this day.
After retiring last year as a journalism professor, former MPA Director Doug Crews invited me to speak out on bills affecting public records access, and I had the chance to testify against two such bills earlier this year. In both instances, the sponsors of the bills were trying to close access to records under the guise of providing privacy to citizens.
One bill would close records regarding people who make reservations in state parks. The sponsor said information about park users needs to be private because criminals could discover when people would be camping, leaving their homes at risk of burglary. I asked the sponsor of the bill if this had ever happened. No, he said — but it could! I doubt the burglars in my community have the patience or stamina to file public records requests to identify potential targets.
The other bill would protect the identities of farmers and ag companies who are mega-users of water — those who pump 500,000 gallons of water or more from lakes, rivers or wells. The sponsor of this bill also was trying to provide privacy — in this case to the farmers who were mega-users.
We live in a state that struggles with drought conditions nearly every year. Drought and water shortages affect some portions of Missouri every year, and severe droughts have been experienced multiple times. It’s hard to imagine a resource of higher public interest than water.
The public has a right to know about major water users — in any industry.
The state requires ag interests who pump more than 500,000 gallons of water a day to file reports about that use. Those records should not be hidden from taxpayers and citizens under a cloak of secrecy.
The way this bill was written, it would protect operations like Denali Water Solutions, which raised a literal stink last year when it spread a sludge made up of meatpacking waste mixed with water on farmland in several southwest Missouri counties. Why should we grant secrecy to an operation like that?
Aside from the interest the press may have in a public issue like the Denali story, private citizens have an interest in obtaining information about mega-users of water. If I’m a small farmer and my well runs dry, shouldn’t I be able to find out which of my neighbors is pumping from the water table we share?
These two bills are examples of this continuing effort to close more records — an effort that needs to be challenged.
Transparency is vital to the effective functioning of government. Citizens of Missouri have a right to know how taxpayer dollars are spent and who is using public resources.
Transparency is essential to accountability, which lead to better-informed citizens — people who care and will be engaged in their government and the decision-making process.
The Sunshine Law is a valuable tool that should be protected from the addition of well-meaning exemptions that will remove public information from the public’s view.
Mike Jenner is a retired newspaper editor and journalism professor. He spent 36 years working as an editor at seven daily newspapers around the country. He left the industry in 2010 to join the faculty of the Missouri School of Journalism, where he worked for 14 years as an endowed chair and professor. He retired in 2024.
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