What to Say When the City Attorney Tells the Mayor and Others to Withhold Info From Aldermen

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By Pauline Masson –

I have to tell you right up front, I’ve been at sea over what to write in my local news/personal opinion page after last Thursday’s post, BOA Unanimous: No More Secrets.

ACoratorium on secrets about a data center that an obscure firm wants to build on the Phelan Road farm south of town is a sticky act to follow.

As anyone who reads local social media knows, the post really touched a nerve – upping the local pulse to a throbbing hum like the never ending hum predicted from a data center.

Some 3,000+ readers logged on to read it., which is big. The number of readers on each Hometown Matters post ranges 700 to 2,700. It seems clear, this is a big story.

A few readers took issue with my take on the post. They just couldn’t believe that anyone at city hall was keeping secrets from anyone else. Trust me.

To quote former president George W. Bush, “this ain’t my first rodeo.”

My Hometown Matters post, which was accurate. is a successor of a weekly column that I formerly wrote as editor of the erstwhile Pacific section of the Washington Missourian.

The Millers, who owned the newspaper, gave me a rare opportunity to write about anything I wanted to write about in my column titled I Have to Tell You . . . 

Over some 20 years, I wrote about things that really sang to me, or rankled me. The response, like my current Hometown Matters posts was varied

The most readers I ever had on my post was in October 2021 when favorite son  Prentice Cawley, came home to give the eulogy for his grandmother Marie Adams’ funeral. Some 6,800 people read the post the first day. It grew after that and more than a hundred paid tribute to Prentice, a local scholar-athlete who traveled the nation for a firm called Dessert Holdings, as a food engineer.

“Yes, there really is such a thing as a food engineer,” he told me. “Everything has to be weighed and measured.”

Prentice gave a spectacular – and spectacularly humorous – stand-up homage to the lady who raised him. It was the most laughter I ever heard at a funeral.

She could be tough, he said, but could be as canny as an illusionist in persuading a growing brood to stay on the straight and narrow. One witty anecdote told how she used a special batch of oatmeal to outwit her children who vowed to never put a drop of goat milk in their mouth. Another one covered a little green house that she bought and sold to individual family members depending on their current finances.

“One day when Prentice’s brother Corey was bemoaning his money problems, Marie said she could help, she would buy back the green house. She offered him $1,800. He accepted the offer. That was the house she sold him for $4,000,” Prentice said.”I think it was my brother’s first experience in flipping houses and today, he has a successful real estate business.” 

The most appreciative response I ever received was an interview with 20-something year old Marine Sgt. Stephen Flannery III when came home from a tour in Iraq after serving from 1999 to 2007.

He was remarkably unimpressed at being interviewed by the newspaper. I quoted him as saying he was glad to be home but he was a bit sad that he had to leave his buddies on the battlefield. What happened next was an avalanche.

It was my first experience at fan mail – lots of fan mail. Everybody loved the young Marine who came home from the war and missed his comrades in arms. One elderly lady who lived in Union dialed my phone number that was at the bottom of my column to thank me for the story. I could tell she was crying.

“I wanted you to know how lovely it is for us Americans to see that our young people are growing up to be like this wonderful young man,” she said. 

I wouldn’t claim that he read my column but Congressman Blaine Luetkemeyer – who was allowed only one guest – invited young Mr. Flannery to attend president Barak Obama’s address to joint session of Congress.

I once wrote a full page essay on Mickey Malbeau, a tiny lady who could build anything you wanted out of wood, who had lost her home in the 2008 flood. Mickey and her dog Charlie came to live with Bob and me for 40 days, while Bob recovered her belongings that survived the flood and helped her find a new home.

 Mickey, who was already well known among her south side neighbors, became semi famous while she was our house.

Once the three of us walked into a restaurant in Union and one man exclaimed “Mickey’s here,” which prompted the other diners to turn and applaud.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should say it wasn’t all sunshine and roses. I probably made more people mad than those I pleased. My buddy Bill McLaren once said to me, “You’re an equal opportunity offender. Sooner or later you tick everybody off.”

Which leaves me with the responsibility of how to report on the saga of a much feared data center that we have all been pondering.

I should be upfront. I’m on everybody’s side here. Almost everybody!

The property owners have a right to sell their property and a right to privacy while they negotiate a fair price. 

The developers have a right to ask for variances to building codes in the form of a planned unit development (PUD). They can ask and they have a right to be heard.

But the most important right here belongs to the citizens. They have a paramount  – guaranteed in state law – right to know how the city does our business. That includes the details of a project that will alter our community and impact our neighbors and our city. 

The possibility of a data center in our community is a colossal happening. Anybody who believes the administration – mayor, city administrator, city attorney and economic development – was on solid ground when they worked together to keep this from the r of aldermen, and ultimately the citizens, is on ground as sloshy as quicksand.

I use my computer every day. I do internet searches on myriad – hundreds of – subjects. And I understand the wish for more speed. I would like to get my information faster. I don’t fear a data center. 

But I am dismayed beyond description that our officials and staff would enter into a collective strategy to withhold valuable information from the board of aldermen, the people we elect to take care of our business. They (the administration and staff) worked on this scheme. They talked about it in emails.

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Answering an email question,  who should sign the NDA that Beltline Energy was requesting – requiring according to Economic Development Director Tiffany Wilson, CityAttorney Stephanie Karr responded to the economic development director cc the mayor on Dec. 5.

“If they refuse, then we don’t disclose any confidential information to the Board.”

This is the city attorney, telling the mayor, city administrator and economic development, in writing, how they will withhold knowledge of the data center from her client, the board of aldermen.

The onus on how to respond to this scheme to keep information from the aldermen is now on the citizens. 

We need to learn how to proceed on the planed data center, obviously endorsed by the mayor, city administrator and economic development director, and craft responses that offer effective reasons in favor of or against the proposed data center. We need to think deeply about it and act, if not calmly, at least civilly.

Oh. And Keep reading.

Author: paulinemasson

Pauline Masson, editor/publisher. View all posts by paulinemasson