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Speaking Personally, Transparent is as transparent does

If I seemed a bit scarce last week, that's because I was in Jefferson City for the Missouri Press Association (MPA) Day at the Capitol. 
 
The MPA is the statewide trade association for newspapers, and one of its big goals is to lobby the legislature to keep public notices in newspapers. In Howell County, we have both a new representative and senator in the state legislature, so I went to bend our new officials' ears on the subject.
 
After some good visits with State Sen. Brad Hudson (R-33), State Rep. Lisa Durnell (R-154), State Rep. Matthew Overcast (R-155), State Rep. Bennie Cook (R-143) and State Rep. Keith Elliot (R-153), I settled in to hear the speakers scheduled as part of the MPA Day program.
 
Newly elected Secretary of State Denny Hoskins and Lt. Gov. David Wasinger spoke and answered questions from my colleagues. Speaker of the House Jon Patterson was next, and his brief remarks stick in my mind because he said a phrase that my nervous system reacted to before my brain did.
 
"We want to be as transparent as we can," Patterson said.
 
Bitter experience has taught me that phrase usually kicks off a struggle between the press and the agencies we are tasked with watching. Spoken to the press, that phrase is a red flag. If you want to be "as transparent as we can," you talk to the press instead of only saying you want to do so.
 
Transparent is as transparent does.
 
Like a sleeper agent awakening, my nerves reacted to those words, adrenaline rising and preparing me for the fight.
 
It took a while to understand my reaction because I don't have a fight with Mr. Patterson (yet), but I do fight week in and week out to get the information that appears in this newspaper. I say "fight," because that phrase is usually spoken to me by someone who disagrees on the finer points of what is and isn't public record.
 
Talking to the folks in Jeff City last week, I said, "I can't lift the ink from the page." That's a two-sided coin for print media. When I make a mistake, I can't lift the ink from the page. My face red, I must publish a correction and acknowledge it. Likewise, public notices need to stay in print because we can't lift the ink from the page. Once it's in this newspaper, there are 2,300 physical copies of that record, retained by me and others. It cannot be changed.
 
If public notices migrate online, what's to keep them from being amended surreptitiously? What's to keep them from being hacked and falsified?
 
Again, this is not some hypothetical scenario. On Jan. 13, as I sat in the Willow Springs R-IV Board of Education meeting with the meeting's agenda pulled up on my phone, I watched in real time as someone rearranged and amended the online agenda to reflect what took place in the meeting.
 
The originally posted agenda had events in a different order, and the agenda currently online has been amended to reflect the order in which the items actually took place that night.
 
That's what meeting minutes are for — to record what took place and in what order. Deviating from the order of items in a meeting is not a problem, but amending the agenda in real time is absolutely a problem. The posted agenda of a meeting is supposed to advise the public what to expect, and unless it is amended, marks the boundaries of what the agency can discuss in that meeting.
 
Do these changes happen every month? The implications are pretty troubling.
 
To be clear, published meeting notices are not the kind of notice under threat to be removed from newspapers. They aren't required to be in a newspaper in Missouri, although they are required in many other states. However, they must be physically posted and sent to the media where requested. The laws governing the transparency of public meetings aren't even a question for the legislature in any session I can recall, but I still have to fight for public agencies to follow the law.
 
This isn't my only example. It's just the most recent one.
 
This is why it was vitally important for me to be there in our state's capitol city fighting for information guaranteed to you by Missouri law to stay in newspapers. Every legislative session, there is a push to put notices like county and city financial statements online. I wanted our lawmakers, and you my readers, to know that an attack on transparency is not some distant threat. Laws on the books now don't keep tax-funded agencies transparent or even translucent. I have to argue, cajole, and pester every week to shine light onto our local proceedings.
 
In that same aforementioned meeting, I showed the school board a statute that used the word "immediately" to describe when fiscal-year audit summaries should be released to a newspaper. Not only did I not receive a copy of that summary when I first requested it 14 days prior to the meeting, but I did not receive a copy that night ... or the next day. I received it four days later during the follow-up meeting I scheduled with the superintendent.
 
If lawmakers begin to undermine newspapers as the place you look to hold public agencies accountable, how do you expect us to do it? Saying newspapers are the wrong place for public notices is tantamount to saying newspapers aren't the right way to get your news.
 
Obviously, I disagree. 
 
If you're reading this, I'll bet you do, too.
 
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