Sunshine Law

Edgar Springs in Phelps County has refused to pay $80,000 in damages and court costs to woman who it banned from city hall for four years.

The public is often forced to wait for months — even up to a year — for simple requests that historically take just a few days to turn over. The attorney general insists wait times for new requests are down to just 60 days.

The Missouri Western District Court of Appeals upholds finding that the state's Department of Corrections was “knowing and purposeful” in refusing to release records of inmate who committed suicide to his mother.

Edgar Springs, a town of 200 in southern Phelps County, must now pay Rebecca Varney $750, plus almost $80,000 in attorney fees, to satisfy a November court decision that found it violated Varney’s First Amendment rights and the Missouri Sunshine Law.

In a 2-1 decision, the Western District Court of Appeals ordered the dismissal of a case challenging rules written in 2019 to limit legislative records subject to the Sunshine Law.

After clearing a backlog of public records requests by his predecessor, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey told lawmakers his office expects to finalize all sunshine requests submitted in the last year by May.

A Missouri law passed in 2022 deletes the names of victims and witnesses in court documents, which experts say has made Missouri courts the least transparent in the nation.

It’s taken Attorney General Andrew Bailey his entire first year in office to work through a backlog of requests he inherited from his predecessor.

The attorney general’s office says it has five staffers working on the Sunshine Law backlog and a policy of not charging fees for processing requests. But the first come, first serve strategy has meant hundreds of requests wait in limbo for months — even years.

A county judge has given attorneys 30 days to file final briefs after the trial which alleges Sunshine Law and civil rights violations in Edgar Springs — about 20 miles south of Rolla.