Dear Platte County Commissioners:
The Platte County Commission’s 2025 budget reveals an alarming trend in county legal spending. The line item for legal services has risen from $50,000 in 2024 to $180,000 in 2025 — including a new $60,000 category labeled “Legal Svc – Sunshine Law.” This represents a 260% increase in one year, far outpacing inflation or any other departmental growth.
Despite this escalation, citizens have seen no improvement in transparency or administrative efficiency. Instead, the county clerk’s core Sunshine Law responsibilities—duties she is both paid to perform and legally obligated to fulfill under §610.023, RSMo.—are being outsourced to private counsel. The cost of this outsourcing now rivals the clerk’s own annual salary, effectively doubling taxpayer expense for a single function of government.
This practice is indefensible. The Sunshine Law designates the clerk as the custodian of records, not outside attorneys billing $300 per hour. When outside counsel are inserted into the Sunshine process, it delays citizen access, adds unnecessary legal expense, and creates the appearance that the county is paying lawyers to obstruct disclosure rather than facilitate it. Regardless of what outside counsel may advise, the legal authority and duty to respond rests solely with the clerk.
Given these facts, the commission owes taxpayers a clear explanation:
*What specific matters justify the $130,000 year-over-year increase in legal appropriations?
*Why is the county continuing to outsource statutory Sunshine duties to private law firms at premium hourly rates?
*How much of this spending has gone toward resisting disclosure rather than facilitating it?
It may now be fiscally and ethically prudent for Platte County to internalize its legal counsel. The commission itself recognized this option in 2023 when it issued an RFQ for county counselor services noting that it was “exploring the possibility of switching to an in-house counsel.” At the current spending rate, the county could fund a full-time salaried attorney—complete with benefits—for less than what it is projected to spend on outside legal bills in 2025.
Bringing counsel in-house would:
Reduce costs associated with hourly billing and firm overhead,
Increase day-to-day accessibility and institutional continuity, and
Restore public confidence that county legal advice serves the taxpayers—not private billing interests.
Fiscal responsibility and transparency are not opposing values; they rise and fall together. Outsourcing core public functions erodes both. The commission should revisit the in-house counsel option and justify to taxpayers why legal spending is ballooning while transparency continues to decline.
--Andrew Champlain
Platte County
