NewsLeader - Governor's lawyers have lost their way - and badly


Scoop

By Press, Section News
Posted on Tue Nov 06, 2007 at 04:01:32 AM EST

by Tony Messenger, News-Leader Editorial Page Editor

One of the most remarkable things that's happened to me in two decades of journalism took me by surprise this week.
A government agency, the governor's office no less, sent me a box of material overnight about a matter of personnel. The box was full of a ream of papers, e-mails -- many of them personal -- and documents concerning the firing of Scott Eckersley.

They sent me two letters that described the firing of Eckersley, the former deputy counsel for Gov. Matt Blunt. Then they wrote me another letter describing even more reasons why Eckersley was fired. They questioned his sexuality and every element of his character they could think of. They called him a liar. They said he was a bad lawyer.

It was truly a remarkable occurrence.

Even more remarkable was the fact that while sending a box to me -- I was the only reporter I know of who had actually made an official inquiry to the state on this matter -- they also sent similar boxes to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Kansas City Star and The Associated Press.

That's more than remarkable. It might have never happened in Missouri government history.

But there's more.

In light of all of that, there might not be a more remarkable sentence ever written by an attorney than this one:

"Concerning your October 22, 2007, request under the Sunshine law for correspondence with Scott Eckersley regarding his termination and documents concerning the Sunshine policy, we believe those records are closed pursuant to Sections 610.021 (1) and 610.021 (3), RSMo."

The letter is from Blunt attorney Henry Herschel to Springfield attorney Steve Garner of the Strong Law Firm. Garner represents Eckersley. The letter was sent Oct. 26, the same day the state sent boxes of information about Eckersley to reporters all over the state.

You can read that again if you need to.

Yes, the governor of the state of Missouri -- or his top attorney, anyway -- believes it's OK for members of the public to have personnel information on a fired employee, but the lawyer representing the man? That would be against the law.

This is more than remarkable. It's astounding. It's embarrassing. It's arrogant.

Forget Eckersley for a moment. This is no longer about one man's attempt to get the government to do the right thing and being run over in the process. This is a story about the government of the state of Missouri having completely lost its way.

If Herschel is right in his letter to Garner (and that's a huge 'if'), then he's just indicted another attorney in the governor's office, Rich AuBuchon of the Office of Administration, for breaking the law. If it's illegal for Herschel to send the information to Eckersley's own attorney, then what makes it legal for AuBuchon to send the same information, and more, to the rest of the state? And let's not forget the other people the governor's office is apparently sending information to.

On the very day I called the governor's office, an anonymous Republican blog called "The Source" issued a "warning" to newspapers not to write about the Eckersley situation. And on the day after I wrote my column on Eckersley and Jo Mannies of the Post-Dispatch wrote a story on the same topic, two blogs (The Source and Missouri Political News Service) posted information that is identical to some of the documents sent by the governor's office to reporters. The blogs had one clear goal in mind: Smear Eckersley.

So it's OK to send information to reporters and others all across the state but not an attorney representing a former employee?

"It's incredible," says Garner. "They won't send Eckersley his own records but they have sent them to the press."

The governor's office -- through AuBuchon -- said it stands by Herschel's logic in his letter.

And the governor, at a news conference in Springfield, says he stands by his staff.

But the governor can't hide from this.

He can't hide from the fact that three lawyers who work for him, chief of staff Ed Martin, AuBuchon and Herschel, have been involved in an organized, taxpayer-funded attempt to make a former employee look bad, really bad. He can't hide from the fact that those attorneys sent reams of personnel information about a former employee to reporters all across the state.

He can't hide from the fact that his top attorney, meanwhile, refuses to provide the same information to the one man who should have it. Garner, of course, isn't so much worried about Herschel's letter as he is dumbfounded. Once legal action commences he'll get everything he needs to back Eckersley. The state won't be able to hide behind attorney-client privilege, as the governor did on Tuesday. In the end, the paperwork will tell the whole story.

When that happens, Blunt won't be able to hide from the incredible irony that this story started because the governor's office refused to provide e-mails from chief of staff Ed Martin in accordance with the Sunshine Law. Eckersley protested that action and got fired. Now the state is sending all sorts of e-mails all over the state to defend itself. But the top lawyer for the governor of the state of Missouri refuses to even release documents concerning the governor's policy on Sunshine Law because he mistakenly believes the Sunshine Law -- which is about government openness -- requires him to keep it secret.

It doesn't take a lawyer to see what's going on here.

Ed Martin thought he could intimidate Eckersley by threatening him. When that didn't happen, he tried to intimidate the media through more threats. Now that he's completely lost control of the situation, Martin is using every attorney and anonymous blog at his disposal to smear whoever gets in his way.

And meanwhile, the governor's office still doesn't believe in following the Sunshine Law.

At the end of Herschel's letter to Garner, he suggests the state is in the process of hiring private counsel.

That's a good idea.

It's obvious from Herschel's letter that the attorneys who work for Blunt are not up to the job.

Source

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NewsLeader - Governor's lawyers have lost their way - and badly | 1 comment (1 topical, 0 hidden)
For Reference (none / 0) (#1)
by Press on Tue Nov 06, 2007 at 04:07:09 AM EST
From Sunday's Springfield News-Leader and St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

------------------------------------------

Attorney speaks out about being fired
Tony Messenger, Springfield News-Leader
Sunday, October 28

Scott Eckersley didn't have to be a particularly experienced attorney to figure out that the business of the state of Missouri was intended to be conducted in public. 

That Eckersley had to point out this concept to his co-workers at the governor's office, however, makes his situation particularly unique. 

Eckersley is the former deputy counsel for Gov. Matt Blunt. Until a few weeks ago, he was in charge of responding to Sunshine Law requests made to the governor's office. 

Eckersley received such a request from me in early September. I asked for e-mails that Blunt's chief of staff, Ed Martin, had sent from his work e-mail account seeking to rally private groups' support for kicking Attorney General Jay Nixon off a case defending a lawsuit against the state. I had one of these e-mails, so I was surprised that my Sunshine Law request came back from the governor's office saying no such e-mails existed. The column that followed spurred weeks of stories across the Missouri press because Martin admitted to deleting e-mails, the governor himself was quoted as saying that e-mails weren't public records, and a governor's office that talked a big game about openness ended up with egg on their faces. 

It didn't have to be that way. 

Around the time Blunt, Martin, and spokesman Rich Chrismer were publicly telling the press that e-mails are not public records, Eckersley says he was privately pointing Martin and anybody who would listen to the governor's e-mail retention policy. That policy says e-mails are public records and indicates a schedule for how long they are to be maintained -- at least a year in most cases. It's clear from the public statements made by Martin, Chrismer and Blunt that the policy wasn't being followed. 

Eckersley read the policy. He read the contradictory public statements. He didn't understand why nobody would listen to him. 

Now he does. They didn't want to listen. Within weeks of pointing out the governor's own policy to those he worked with, Eckersley was shown the door by the governor's chief of staff.

"I kept pushing it," Eckersley says now. "There's no question in my mind that I was retaliated against as a result of that." 

Through a spokeswoman, Martin refused to comment for this column, but the state has plenty to say about Eckersley and his firing in documents provided to the News-Leader. 

Read the full article

Blunt lawyer claims fired because questioned office handling of emails 
Jo Mannies, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Sunday, Oct. 28 2007 

A former lawyer in Gov. Matt Blunt's office says he was fired last month after he raised questions about how the governor's staff was handling office e-mails and public records requests.

Scott Eckersley's dismissal came at a time when the governor and his staff were under fire for saying e-mails on state computers were not necessarily public records. They also acknowledged that office e-mails were being routinely deleted.

The stance seemed to contradict Missouri law, which requires that many state government communications, paper or electronic, be stored for up to three years. Legal experts say e-mails are a vital record of how government decisions 
are made.

Eckersley, Blunt's former deputy counsel, said in an interview Saturday that he had researched state law and emphasized verbally and in e-mails to Blunt's staff that the governor's office had a written policy specifying how electronic messages and other public records were to be saved.

E-mails from Blunt staffers have been the subject of records requests from news media outlets, and they have sometimes been rejected because, staffers say, the e-mails were deleted.

"I believed I was fired for pointing to written office policy which ... contradicted how the office was handling record requests," Eckersley said. 

Read the full article
NewsLeader - Governor's lawyers have lost their way - and badly | 1 comment (1 topical, 0 hidden)
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