JEFFERSON CITY — Missouri’s attorney general says his office will fulfill a more than year-old backlog of requests for public records sometime in May.
Republican Andrew Bailey, who was appointed to the post by Gov. Mike Parson one year ago, told members of a House budget panel Tuesday that his office has hired four employees to help process hundreds of Sunshine Law requests he inherited from his predecessors, U.S. Sens. Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt.
The office has cleared 779 requests, while 275 are still in the queue.
“Our anticipated date is no longer than May,†Bailey said.
The slow pace of compliance with open records law has put a spotlight on Bailey’s management of the office as he runs for a full term. The former general counsel to Parson faces an August primary challenge from former Assistant U.S. Attorney Will Scharf, who previously worked for former Gov. Eric Greitens.
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As attorney general, Bailey is supposed to enforce Sunshine Law violations by state and local governments.
But, in an example of how the backlog has caused a logjam for the public seeking records, the Post-Dispatch requested office organization charts last year.
In a June 2 letter, the attorney general’s office told the newspaper that the earliest possible date for the records to be made available was Dec. 5, 2023.
As of Tuesday, more than two months later, the records have still not been turned over.
Rep. Peter Merideth, D-ºüÀêÊÓƵ, who is the ranking minority member of the House Budget Committee, credited Bailey for responding to old cases, but suggested he may need to hire more people to get the job done.
“It’s taking longer than a year to get a response for public records,†Merideth said. “In the private sector, you have deadlines so you have to hire up. It feels like we’re slacking on the job.â€
Bailey said each Sunshine request is different, with some being easy to fill and others resulting in searches of thousands of documents.
“It takes time to find the records that are responsive,†Bailey said.
Merideth said he is concerned that the office has spent time clearing off the old requests at the expense of leaving new requests unfulfilled.
In November, his office told the Missouri Independent that the there were about 300 requests filed in 2023.
The delays in Bailey’s office come after actions by Hawley to limit the release of records cost taxpayers more than $256,000 last year.
During Hawley’s 2018 campaign for U.S. Senate, his office “knowingly and purposefully†violated public records laws when officials failed to release emails between Hawley’s taxpayer-funded staff and his political consultants during his 2018 campaign for U.S. Senate, a Cole County judge found.