It took eight years, but I finally won an argument with David Steelman.
The debate started when Steelman, a former Missouri state representative, was a member of the University of Missouri Board of Curators. At the time, in early 2016, the curators were beginning a search for a new president. This was after the resignation of President Tim Wolfe in the wake of student protests over the university’s commitment to diversity and equity.
As the curators have done for as long as I’ve written about them, they conducted their search in secret. I took issue with this, pointing out that several states have laws requiring a public process during such a search, at least once there are finalists. Missouri State University has conducted open presidential searches that involved the community. Why couldn’t the state’s flagship university, I asked Steelman.
People are also reading…
“The best candidates probably have a job,†Steelman told me at the time, justifying the secrecy. “If word gets out that they are looking for another one, they become a lame duck.â€
That particular round of secrecy had a delicious irony. Steelman and other Missouri elected officials had been highly critical of a professor who, during the protests, kept the media away from a public area on campus to give the protesters a “safe space.â€
Steelman, a Republican, chuckled when I pointed out that his wife, Sarah, herself a former state senator and state treasurer, disagreed with him when it came to government secrecy. In 2003, Sarah Steelman proposed a change to the state’s Sunshine Law that would have required public bodies, including the Board of Curators, to release the names of three finalists for key positions at least eight days before a decision is made.
The bill never became law.
“She’d probably be with you on this one,†David Steelman told me then about his wife.
So would David Steelman circa 2024.
Recently, Steelman, an attorney in private practice, has been representing Speaker of the House Dean Plocher.
Plocher faced a multi-pronged ethics investigation over his improper reimbursement for travel costs and alleged interference with a state contract. Plocher reimbursed himself from state funds for a variety of trips, including one to Hawaii, that had already been paid by his campaign funds. He later reimbursed the state and called the payments an “accounting error.â€
Last Friday, Steelman went on the radio show on KSSZ-FM to criticize the secrecy of the House ethics process.
“Secrecy never works,†Steelman said.
He’s right, as I was eight years ago, and Sarah Steelman was before that. I’m glad we’re finally on the same page.
Here’s the thing about government secrecy: It’s nearly always bad from the outside looking in. But when elected officials are in power — be they Republicans or Democrats — they often are lured by the easy decision to discuss difficult topics behind closed doors. The law sometimes allows it. It rarely requires it.
Missouri has a crisis when it comes to government secrecy. In the ºüÀêÊÓƵ region, things are so bad that aldermen in some municipalities, most of them Democrats, are having to go to court because their mayors won’t give them information.
A big part of the problem is that Missouri’s last three attorneys general, all Republicans, have given lip service to the Sunshine Law. One of them, current U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, was fined $250,000 by a Cole County Circuit Court judge for violating the state’s open records law. Taxpayers picked up that tab.
The very House that Plocher leads passed a rule that allows lawmakers to evade the requirements of the Sunshine Law. A lawsuit challenging that rule is before the Missouri Supreme Court.
On Monday, state Rep. Hannah Kelly, the Mountain Grove Republican who is the chairperson of the House Ethics Committee, put an end to the secrecy. She held an open meeting in which the ethics report on Plocher was voted down 6-2, so that the entire report would be made public.
Steelman has said his client, a former municipal judge, did nothing wrong, and now he’s got a public vote to hang his hat on. But the public also has a full and open accounting of the investigation, and the ways in which the attorney hired by the House to conduct the probe accused Plocher of “obstructing†the investigation.
“I have not encountered more unwilling witnesses in any investigation in my career,†wrote ºüÀêÊÓƵ attorney Beth Boggs in the report.
For better or worse, Plocher’s actions and his multiple explanations are all out there for the public to see. That’s good government.
Meanwhile, Steelman’s former board, the curators, are conducting another secret search, this time for a new athletics director.
Perhaps the board would do well to take the advice of an old colleague.
Secrecy never works.