I’m interested to learn why this report wasn’t released in timely manner to the people who needed to see it. It’s not like this sort of thing has never happened before. People didn’t flip out then. The excuse that’s been posited that they would this time doesn’t make sense. Still, I’m betting it was a bureaucratic error and not something sinister.

Go_Fish

I didn’t vote for Nixon so maybe I am biased. But I am more concerned than you are. No pun on your name intended but something seems fishy. This in particular from the article that the Post linked to yesterday:

“At no point in that conversation would the Lake of the Ozarks or E. coli have come up,” said Nixon spokesman Jack Cardetti.
But that doesn’t explain why, according to two e-mails, Bindbeutel told a deputy director of DNR’s division of environmental quality that he needed the E. coli report for a meeting in the governor’s office.

Go Fish,

I am also concerned about this from the article:

Included in the News-Leader’s request for documents were notes from a June 12 meeting between Bindbeutel, Pabst and other DNR employees and members of the Lake of the Ozarks Watershed Alliance , who volunteer to collect water samples for DNR as part of a five-year study of the lake’s health funded by AmerenUE.
The minutes offer a hint that the governor’s office may have been made aware of the high levels of E. coli earlier than Nixon or his staff have publicly acknowledged. The minutes were labeled: “DNR/LOWA Meeting May Bacteria Test Results/Press Release Discussion.”
Bindbeutel is paraphrased as saying, “the recent water testing has drawn the attention of the Director of DNR as well as Governor Nixon,” according to the minutes, which were taken by a LOWA volunteer.

As the article points out the notes wer taken by a volunteer so they may not be accurate. But certainly the Senate committee should look into whether they are accurate.

What worries me is the possibility that the Governor in an attempt to avoid being blamed for failing to release the report has scapegoated the agency. Politicians seem to cover up their initial mistake by bigger ones. Let me be clear. I have no idea what occurred. It could be a bureacratic mistake. But there seem to be legitimate questions. And if someone is covering this up that is wrong.

Go Fish,

Just one more of my blabbing as I reread the article. In the article it says:

Nixon has publicly condemned DNR’s actions and has said the report “should have been released sooner.”
Nixon was asked Monday about what his administration is doing to remedy DNR’s failure to release the report sooner. “We have certainly sent a clear signal, and I have personally, that it’s important to release that information,” he said. “The bottom line is, the information should have been released and I’ve made that point eminently clear to those in charge of those departments.”

If Bindbeutals e-mail are correct and this was in fact presented earlier to Nixon’s office that really looks bad. The veracity of those emails and the meeting notes look pretty significant to me.

During the Blunt governership, there were coverups involving the Ag Director and sexual harassment, email retention, an attorney firing, fee office awards, and miscellaneous others. It’s interesting the Senate Republicans now see the need to review something… Oh, it helps that the governor is now a Democrat.

So the News-Leader has filed a request for documents. Why didn’t the Post?

Nick,

I don’t know if the Post has requested e-mails in this case but I do know they have requested them in at least one other case. Tony Messenger has a good column today which mentions this:

When the Eckersley lawsuit was settled, there was no mention of such a letter. And Cardetti twice said the governor’s office had nothing to do with such a settlement.

But e-mails obtained in a Sunshine Law request filed by the Post-Dispatch indicate that to some extent, two of Nixon’s top loyalists were involved as far back as December in talking about some form of settlement.

Again Nick I am not sure what your beef is with the Post reporters. I basically believe a reporter is doing his job if everyone is upset with him. That is a tenet of a free press in a democracy. The Blunt people most likely hated Messenger and today the Nixon people may not love him either.

Mark B - I’m with you on that. I too think that finger pointing is the name of the game here. It’s never the crime but the coverup that’s a politician’s undoing.

The water quality tests that produced the data for this report were completely routine. High levels of E coli and other nasty things from septic systems get flushed into LOZ every time there is a heavy rain in the area. This happens a lot more frequently than most people think, but in the past alerts or warnings have been issued in a timely manner with no controversy. The folks tasked with doing the testing and issuing the report followed the same protocol they have used dozens if not hundreds of times in the past. The question is whose desk did the report languish on and why?

To me this looks like a simple bureacratic blunder that’s turned into a big snowball.