The Missouri State Auditor's office has discovered poor compliance with the state's sunshine law, Auditor Nicole Galloway announced Tuesday.
"My office regularly receives complaints related to access of public information, which is exactly what the sunshine law is designed to address," Galloway said. "For this report, we sent public records requests to hundreds of local governments across the state. The results were extremely disappointing and demonstrate that we have a long way to go in improving transparency and citizen access to information in Missouri government."
The 56-page report showed that only 30 percent of local governments fully complied with transparency laws. Galloway's staff sent open records requests to 309 government entities chosen at random without identifying themselves as auditors.