EDITORIAL: Unreasonable delays in Blunt e-mail scandal | North America > United States from AllBusiness.

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EDITORIAL: Unreasonable delays in Blunt e-

mail scandal
Mar. 9--ASIDE FROM THE PUBLIC INTEREST -- and forget about that! -- the administration of Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt clearly has no interest in
helping investigators get to the bottom of its scandal over deleted e-mail.

Nor are Mr. Blunt and his minions particularly interested in helping the governor's former deputy counsel, Scott Eckersley, recover the good name
they stained when they slimed him for blowing the whistle on their e-mail plot.

Delay and dawdling are time-honored legal tactics. The Blunt administration can't be blamed for hiring expensive lawyers to use such tactics and
others. But they shouldn't ask taxpayers to pay the bill for long, drawn-out legal battles that will thwart rather than serve the public's interest.

The Post-Dispatch's Jo Mannies reported Friday that Mr. Blunt and four of his current or former staff members each have hired different law firms to
defend them in the lawsuit brought by Mr. Eckersley. The state is being billed at rates of up to $370 an hour.

The others getting state-paid legal help are Ed Martin, the governor's former chief of staff; Henry Herschel, the former general counsel; Rich
Chrismer, the communications director; and Richard AuBuchon, the deputy commissioner of the Office of Administration, which runs the state e-mail
system.

Ms. Mannies also reported that the governor's office wants to charge $540,940 for producing documents requested by the special task force looking
into the e-mail scandal. The task force, appointed by Attorney General Jay Nixon, wants records going back to Aug. 17 from 43 state e-mail
accounts. Mr. Blunt's lawyer estimated it would take 14,620 hours of staff time to comply with the request.

A staff member earning $37 an hour would have to work eight hours a day, five days a week for seven years to rack up 14,620 hours worth
$540,940. With due respect to the great tradition of legal overbilling, that estimate is absurd.

So is the idea that one agency of state government -- the governor's office -- would charge another entity of state government -- an attorney
general's task force -- to produce documents.

The bottom line is that the public is being deprived of its right to see records that, under the Missouri Sunshine Law, it has the absolute right to see.
This, of course, is precisely what got the governor's office in hot water in the first place.

The battle began in August when Tony Messenger of the Springfield [Mo.] News-Leader filed a Sunshine Law request for e-mails written by Mr.
Martin, then Mr. Blunt's chief of staff. Mr. Martin said they had been deleted, which set off a furious internal battle within the governor's office. Mr.
Blunt made at least two conflicting statements on the question of whether state e-mails are, indeed, public records.

Mr. Eckersley argued correctly that e-mails are public records. For his efforts, he was fired in mid-September. Then the governor's staff spread a
cover story for his firing, alleging among things that he'd misused state computers to conduct private business and to visit an X-rated website.

In November, shortly after Mr. Nixon appointed an investigative panel to try to determine the facts of the matter, Mr. Martin resigned under pressure.
In December, Mr. Herschel, who had been Mr. Eckersley's direct supervisor, was transferred to another administration job. In January, Mr. Eckersley

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 EDITORIAL: Unreasonable delays in Blunt e-mail scandal | North America > United States from AllBusiness.com

sued his former colleagues, alleging that top aides had ordered all departments to regularly delete e-mails and to destroy the state's backup
computer tapes.

Twelve days after the suit was filed, Mr. Blunt announced he wouldn't seek re-election this fall, although he said the e-mail scandal had "zero" to do
with the decision. He still had $4 million in his campaign treasury. Here's an idea: Let the contributors who wanted Mr. Blunt to stay in office pay his
lawyers. Missouri taxpayers should not be on the hook for his legal bills.

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