The Laclede County Commission last week awarded a local fencing contract for the sheriff’s office.
The fencing bid was not on the agenda for Tuesday’s meeting, but Presiding Commissioner Randy Angst said a public notice had been published in advance in the Sept. 30 Laclede County Record.
The commission accepted a $20,700 bid from Leo Morgan Fencing, the only bid, to install an enclosure in a grassy area next to the existing county jail for a secure inmate holding area.
The fence line will serve as an emergency evacuation zone for the jail. Currently, inmates must be held in the active parking lot during fire alarms or internal facility emergencies. The project will be paid for out of the county's inmate security fund.
“The sheriff had determined that in case inmates needed to be removed from the jail because of a fire or other issues he would need a secure place to put them outside,” Angst said.
Commissioner Angst said the bid opening was inadvertently left off the agenda but was announced in a legal notice seeking bids that was published in the Sept. 30 Laclede County Record.
“I did not catch that to get it on the agenda, but I'm not opposed to opening the bids, even with it not being on the agenda because it was published,” he said.
The Record checked with Dan Curry, a Kansas City attorney who works with the Missouri Press Association about the commission’s action to open bids when it was not on the agenda. He said he does not think the public notice changes anything about whether the meeting was in compliance with the state’s Sunshine Law, but also did not see a clear violation of the statute.
“The Sunshine law requires a ‘tentative’ agenda of what will be discussed at the meeting. How far a public body can push this requirement by adding new agenda items has not been called out by the courts yet, so I'd say it is unclear whether a judge would find the late addition of the item to the agenda to be a Sunshine Law violation,” Curry said.
In an interview after the meeting, Angst said the commission has been open in how it conducts business.
“I am extremely sensitive to that. I am extremely transparent. I’ve been challenged once with the Attorney General’s office and I prevailed,” he said. “I have nothing to be less than fully transparent about.”
Angst said he would amend the agenda and mention any voting issues at the beginning of the meetings if they are not specified on the posted agenda notice.
In 2022, citizens complained to the state attorney general’s office the commission did not provide sufficient notice that it would discuss a proposed commercial property tax surcharge that was later placed on the Nov. 8, 2022 election ballot. That issue was rejected by voters.
At that time, the Attorney General’s Office concluded, "We did not find sufficient evidence to conclude that the public meetings in which the Commission discussed the proposed commercial property tax surcharge violated the Sunshine Law." In a letter to the Commission, the Attorney General's Chief Counsel for Governmental Affairs Jason K. Lewis also said he agreed with citizen concerns that the Commission meeting minutes did not include the time or place where each meeting is held as required by the Sunshine Law. The commission has since included this information on meeting agendas.
