By the Editorial Board
Missouri’s Republican management likes to tout its supposed conservative effectivity and sober guardianship of the taxpayers’ cash. Why, then, did the Missouri Home’s prime Republican official, and a number of others in his caucus, just lately embark on a concerted effort to steer virtually $800,000 in public cash to a personal firm to supply providers already supplied by the state?
And why did they accomplish that with such decided zeal {that a} nonpartisan staffer’s job was allegedly threatened for questioning it?
And why did the FBI discover the entire thing fishy sufficient that it despatched an agent to sit down in on a legislative listening to concerning the difficulty final month?
We’ll acknowledge up entrance that we’ve got extra questions than solutions about Home Speaker Dean Plocher’s odd (and in the end unsuccessful) obsession with hiring a personal agency to deal with constituent data for lawmakers.
Persons are additionally studying…
However what’s illuminated by the murky story — and never for the primary time — is the outsized and troubling position that skilled lobbyists play in most of what occurs in Jefferson Metropolis.
As reported by the Missouri Unbiased and the Submit-Dispatch’s Kurt Erickson in current weeks, Plocher, a Des Peres Republican, earlier this yr launched into a months-long effort to get state authorities to contract with the software program firm Fireplace for providers already supplied in-house.
The corporate gives web-based software program that assists politicians in speaking with constituents. The proposed contract was for greater than $775,000 over two years. This although the state this yr already revamped the in-house software program obtainable to lawmakers for that very goal.
The trouble to outsource these providers included a number of lawmakers submitting just about similar type letters advocating the contract to a key committee chairman. The Missouri Unbiased obtained a duplicate of the letter through the state’s Sunshine Legislation and decided that it originated with Fireplace lobbyist Bardgett and Associates — a strong Jefferson Metropolis lobbying agency whose different shoppers embrace Anheuser-Busch and the St. Louis Cardinals.
Dana Miller, the nonpartisan chief clerk of the Home, reviewed the proposal and expressed issues in a memo. She warned that transferring constituent data from the interior state laptop system to a web-based non-public vendor may depart it weak to hacking, and to abuse by lawmakers who may use the information for marketing campaign functions.
“Backside line, this program is value prohibitive, redundant and it’s an pointless expense,” Miller wrote. But, she added, lobbyists for the corporate have been so “aggressively selling” this system “that it’s giving me trigger for concern.”
One other staffer wrote that the strain being utilized to approve the contract was “insanely inappropriate,” including: “The Home isn’t on the market, and if we don’t cease it right here there shall be (lots of) extra lined up on the door to get in as nicely.”
Miller additionally alleged in an electronic mail to a different Republican lawmaker that there have been “threats made by Speaker Plocher regarding my future employment” due to her resistance to the proposed contract. She wrote that she had “rising issues of unethical and maybe illegal conduct,” and hinted that the difficulty is likely to be related to Plocher’s marketing campaign for lieutenant governor subsequent yr.
The controversy reached a head at a legislative listening to final month, which an FBI agent attended. The company hasn’t commented on why it was there.
Maybe because of the controversy, the proposed Fireplace contract was in the end rejected in committee. As one witness testified, “One thing doesn’t really feel proper about this.”
Plocher informed the Missouri Unbiased his effort to get the contract permitted was pushed by a need to “determine potential efficiencies and cost-savings in authorities to guard taxpayer sources.” Voters ought to demand greater than that up-is-down reply earlier than handing him the keys to a statewide workplace subsequent yr.
