The Missouri House and Senate need improved personnel policies and better definitions of which records are open to the public and which ones are closed, State Auditor Nicole Galloway's staff said Monday in separate audit reports of the two legislative chambers.
The two reports noted both chambers revised their intern and sexual harassment policies following last year's resignations of House Speaker John Diehl, R-Town and Country, and state Sen. Paul LeVota, D-Independence. But, the reports said, both chambers still need to improve personnel policies.
For instance, auditors said, neither chamber has a policy to provide whistleblower protections to employees from retaliation for reporting abuse of authority, or from reporting violations of the law witnessed in the workplace.
In their responses, both the House and Senate said they would "consider" a whistleblower policy.
The audits also recommend both chambers comply fully with the federal Family and Medical Leave Act and provide employees with leave to care for service members returning from deployments - especially if they've been injured.
The House said its current policy covers the issue, but House administrators will review to see if clarity is needed. The Senate said it already is reviewing its policies and will add the FMLA issue to the review.
The auditors said both houses currently give days off to employees that other state government workers don't get and urged the House and Senate to end that benefit.
But in their responses, both chambers noted the auditors don't understand the different working schedules legislative employees face.
"While the vast majority of Executive Department employees work a regular, set schedule, the deadline of the legislative session outlined (in) the Missouri Constitution ensures that nearly no predictability or regularity of a work week exists for legislative employees," the House wrote.
And, the Senate's response noted: "Senate staff traditionally work Lincoln's Birthday, Presidents' Day and Truman Day (and) the granting of additional administrative leave replaces these holidays that other state employees receive."
Both chambers said individual lawmakers' records are not public under the state's Sunshine law - but, the two reports noted, unclear and incomplete open records policies have led to confusion over what is and is not open to the public.
For example, the Office of Administration retains executive branch emails forever, while the House keeps those records only for six weeks and the Senate holds on to them for only 30 days, auditors said.
Both chambers consider those records to be part of the chamber's proceedings and not covered by the Sunshine law, but said they would consider the audit recommendations.
The auditors said even for generally agreed open records, there were many cases where documents were not available or did not exist for the audit staff to review - including some committees' minutes and some interim committees' total records.
Both chambers said they would work to improve record-keeping.
The auditors criticized committees in both chambers for accepting lobbyists' gifts for some meals or travel expenses. And they said the Senate maintained a separate fund that appears to violate both the constitutional and statutory requirements that all money go through the state treasurer's office.
The Senate responded its fund is to pay for meals for staffers when they have to work late: "The schedule is such that it's difficult to predict when staff will work in excess of 12 hours. The Senate agrees to continue to review other ways to purchase meals as necessary."
Noting that a bill to stop the contributions failed to be passed, the House said it will consider the auditor's recommendations.
The complete House audit is available online at app.auditor.mo.gov/Repository/Press/2016069590454.pdf.
The complete Senate report is available online at app.auditor.mo.gov/Repository/Press/2016070883060.pdf.