Transparency Missing in Missouri Senate, Courts

Posted on April 15, 2011 by BobMcCarty

Lisa Payne-Naeger summed up one of the problems related to Family Court justice in Missouri in the opening paragraph of her March 30 post, Best Interests of Children Take Backseat as Bill Advances Thru Missouri Senate “Sight Unseen”:

Lisa Payne-Naeger

Americans gasped when then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi uttered a few words about the health care reform legislation known as ObamaCare: “We have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it.” One year later, members of the Missouri Senate seem to be following Pelosi’s lead when it comes to legislation affecting children and families in the Show-Me State. In short, members of the Missouri Senate are planning to vote on a bill site unseen.

The focus of Lisa’s post was SB 237, introduced in the Missouri Senate Feb. 9 by Republican attorney Kurt Schaefer of Boone and Randolph Counties and co-sponsored by Democrat attorney Jolie Justus of Jackson County. It’s a bill that, if passed, will require the legislature to approve updated Missouri Supreme Court Standards for Guardian Ad Litem (GAL) representation in child welfare cases.

What’s a Guardian Ad Litem? It’s an individual — often an attorney — appointed by the courts and charged with looking out for the best interests of children involved in divorce, custody and other family relations matters handled in Family Court courtrooms.

After publishing Lisa’s post, I felt compelled to learn more about the Family Court system and the standards to which GALs are held accountable. Conversely, individuals from both the St. Louis area and across the country have deluged me with information about their experiences after reading Lisa’s post. In the not-too-distant future, I hope to share details of some of those cases. For now, I focus on the Family Court environment in Missouri.

QUESTIONS FOR THE COURT

Shortly after 10 a.m. April 11, I contacted Beth S. Riggert, communications counsel for the Supreme Court of Missouri and the judicial branch of government in the Show-Me State, to help me answer questions about GALs and the justice system within which they operate. Some 72 hours later, I had answers.

Transparency

Regarding the issue of transparency, or the lack thereof, I asked Riggert if her office would make public the language in the revised standards developed by the committee headed by St. Charles County Associate Circuit Judge Elizabeth Swann.

“The Court does not release committee recommendations as it may or may not adopt them,” she replied. “The Court will release any revised standards when the Court approves them.”

Ethics & Accountability

Asked who hears complaints about GALs, Riggert explained that Section 452.423, RSMo, sets out a procedure for disqualifying GALs.

“The primary person to resolve complaints is the judge appointing the GAL,” Riggert added. “If the GAL is an attorney and, as a GAL, the attorney violates the code of professional conduct, a disciplinary case can be referred to the chief disciplinary counsel.”

When asked who determines legal and/or ethical wrongdoing and/or violations of standards by GALs, Riggert pointed to her earlier answer (i.e., the appointing judge and/or the chief disciplinary counsel).

When asked who administers disciplinary actions related to GALs determined to have engaged in legal and/or ethical wrongdoing and/or violations of GAL standards, Riggert pointed for a third time to her answer, the appointing judge and/or the chief disciplinary counsel.

Records

I asked Riggert for an estimate of the number of attorneys in Missouri who have performed duties as GALs since Jan. 1, 2010, because I wanted to get at least one year of statistics.

“That information is not collected,” she said. “Although there is a section in our statewide case management system where the GAL is added to the case, it may not reflect all appointments and would not indicate if they are attorneys.”

Asked how many Missouri attorneys have been removed from performing duties as GALs since Jan. 1, 2010, Riggert gave another surprising answer — “That information is not captured” — which left me wondering if ANY GALs have been removed from ANY cases and if ANYONE keeps records of such removals.

Asked for details of the last time a Guardian Ad Litem attorney assigned to a case in the state of Missouri was removed from a case, she could produce none.

“The Court is not informed of such cases as removal is at the discretion of the appointing judge or pursuant to the motion of one of the parties to the case,” Riggert replied. “There is no centralized reporting of such actions.”

Same goes for Family Court judges.

“When was the last time a judge handling a Family Court case in the state of Missouri removed from a case?” I asked.

“Again, the Court is not informed of such cases as these decisions are made at the circuit court level,” Riggert said.

With no database readily available, citizens are kept in the dark when it comes to learning whether or not a GAL assigned to a Family Court case or a judge overseeing a Family Court docket has ever been removed from a case(s) and for what reason(s).

Riggert did make it a point to say “parties to a case are entitled to one change of judge upon timely request, and the request need not set out any reasons for requesting the change.”

Good luck finding someone involved in a Family Court case who was successful in requesting and being granted a change in judge. I talked with a half-dozen different parties involved in Family Court litigation in the St. Louis area, and all laughed when I mentioned that entitlement, giving me the impression that rules differ from reality.

Compensation

Aware that Family Court judges nationwide redistribute tens of billions of dollars in family assets each year, I asked Riggert how GALs in Missouri are compensated for their services: “Are they paid by the respective courts within which they serve? Are they paid by the parties (i.e., legal guardians or parents) involved in the cases? Or both?”

“It depends,” Riggert said. “In (marriage) dissolutions, the GAL generally is paid by the parties. However, SB237 and section 484.350 only apply to GALs in child welfare cases. In child welfare cases, the judge approves the fees to paid to the GAL and the fee would be paid by the county. In cases to terminate parental rights, social services pays the fee.”

In speaking with the above-mentioned individuals involved in Family Court cases, I learned that GALs sometimes “double dip” or even “triple dip” — that is, they receive money from one or both litigants in a case as well as from the circuit court in which the case is being adjudicated. Such practices contribute to the financial tsunami that often hits Family Court litigants.

It’s not uncommon for individuals to spend upwards of $75,000 to $125,000 on attorneys — including those serving as GALs — in Family Court cases that sometimes last up to a decade. One person with whom I spoke had exhausted his entire life savings as well as the savings of extended family members — more than $100,000 in total — to fight for custody of his children in a case that, so far, has dragged on for more than five years.

Conclusion

My conclusion, after researching this topic and interviewing several people involved in Family Court cases, is that we have a transparency problem — and, very likely, an accountability problem, too — in Missouri.

Leaders of the Missouri Senate seem content voting on a measure without reading it. At the same time, GALs seem to be accountable only to the judges who appoint them, and records of removal — and, possibly, wrongdoing — on the part of those same GALs and judges are not kept in any centralized database, making them almost impossible to obtain. Without that information, litigants are kept in the dark about the key players in their cases.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This morning, I left a request for Senator Justus at Aixois, a French restaurant and coffee bar in Kansas City, where she was meeting with constituents. In addition, I sent identical “Media Query” messages to Senators Justus and Schaefer via Facebook and their Missouri Senate web sites. After waiting more than five hours for replies, however, I decided to go ahead and publish this post without their input. If, within a reasonable period of time, the senators respond to my questions, I’ll publish those replies in an update here. Below is the text of the questions contained in my electronic messages to the senators:

I understand you are a sponsor of SB 237, and I have some questions about it:

1) Have you or any other members of the Senate read the bill? If not, why?

2) What changes, if any, are contained in the revised standards for Guardian Ad Litems?

3) Will you provide me with a copy of the revised standards as they were provided to you by the committee headed by Judge Elizabeth Swann? If not, why not?

Thanks in advance!

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Best Interests of Children Take Backseat as Bill Advances Thru Missouri Senate ‘Sight Unseen’

Posted on March 30, 2011 by BobMcCarty

By Lisa Payne-Naeger, Guest Blogger

Lisa Payne-Naeger

Americans gasped when then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi uttered a few words about the health care reform legislation known as ObamaCare: “We have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it.” One year later, members of the Missouri Senate seem to be following Pelosi’s lead when it comes to legislation affecting children and families in the Show-Me State. In short, members of the Missouri Senate are planning to vote on a bill site unseen.

SB237

Introduced in the Missouri Senate Feb. 9 by Kurt Schaefer of Boone and Randolph Counties and co-sponsored by Jolie Justus of Jackson County, SB237 is a bill that requires the legislature to approve updated Missouri Supreme Court Standards for Guardian Ad Litem representation in child welfare cases. Those standards outline procedures and guidelines for GALs — always attorneys — in family court cases.

Updates to those standards, first established in 1996 and updated in 2008, are set by members of a court-appointed committee. The most-recent effort to revise the standards began with St. Charles County Associate Circuit Judge Elizabeth Swann leading the committee. On July 31, 2009, the committee issued a news release seeking input from citizens and members of the Missouri Bar. Seven weeks later, the process was closed to the public.

Now, fast-forward to March 2011.

Lawmakers in Jefferson City are charged with adopting whatever comes from the Missouri Supreme Court committee. Incredibly, however, members of the Senate committee that heard the bill and proposed its passage had no copy of the final standards when they voted to pass it on to the Senate floor.

What’s In SB237?

It’s difficult to know what SB237 contains in the form of revisions, because concerned citizens were shut out of the process.

Though citizens submitted affidavits of their experiences and suggestions for a better GAL program to Judge Swann’s committee, no outside contributors were invited to testify about their concerns. Likewise, citizen requests to sit in on hearings and attend meetings were refused and responses to inquiries were conveniently not returned in time for citizens to plan trips to Jefferson City.

In December 2009, citizens obtained a draft copy of the revisions, but no updated drafts have been made available since. Likewise, requests to participate in meetings and/or obtain subsequent drafts were made to the Missouri Supreme Court, and all were refused. Based upon what was found in the early draft, one can conclude that the new revisions will be less friendly to children and families and more friendly to attorneys and judges. Examples below serve as evidence:

Though individuals from volunteer agencies such as CASA will no longer be assigned as GALs and can only be involved in the system by serving as unpaid assistants to attorneys assigned as GALs;

Training required of attorneys who want to serve as GALs will drop from 12 hours to only 8 hours — 22 hours less than the 30 hours of training required in Montana;

Revision language allows for case escalation and investigations far beyond safety and well-being issues and places GALs in the position of making long-term, life-altering decisions for clients, nullifying parenting actions and issuing gag orders against parents; and

While vague guidance in the revision implies timely resolutions to cases, there is no language that offers concrete accountability for overzealous investigations or escalations in cases from attorneys making roughly $200 dollars an hour or more acting as a child advocate.

Conclusion

The present standards, as well as the draft revisions, contain no disciplinary measures or provisions for removal of GALs who act in violation of standards. In addition, they leave GALs immune from the same malpractice guidelines that attorneys are held to as officers of the court. Finally, they do not establish any standard of punitive damages for parties who have been wrongly accused of abuse by spouses nor do they provide incentives to discourage escalation of domestic or divorce cases.

Despite all of these troubling concerns, it would seem the train has left the station.

They have no verbiage or documentation from the Missouri Supreme Court to know what they are voting into place. They have no understanding of how the long-term implications of sight-unseen standards will affect the interests of families and children across the state. Still, members of the Missouri Senate will take up this bill and debate it sometime before the end of the session.

That’s no way to legislate!

Lisa Payne-Naeger is a home-schooling mother of two and advocate for Guardian Ad Litem reform who resides in St. Charles County, Mo.

UPDATE 4/16/11 at 12:19 p.m. Central: See Transparency Missing in Missouri Senate, Courts, my latest post on this topic published yesterday.

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Book Exposes Disturbing Truth About Nancy Pelosi

Posted on August 26, 2010 by BobMcCarty

I just received my pre-publication copy of “She’s The Boss: The Disturbing Truth About Nancy Pelosi” by Rochelle Schweizer.

Schweizer, according to the promotional material that accompanied the book (shown above), reveals Pelosi’s countless abuses of power in her role as Speaker of the House. Think ruthlessness, patronage and hypocrisy (i.e., preaching environmentalism while demanding a private military jet — at taxpayers’ expense — for use by her family).

The jacket of the book published by The Penguin Group under its Sentinel imprint features words of praise from Andrew Breitbart of Breitbart.com, Michael Easton of the Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute and Fred Barnes of The Weekly Standard.

I look forward to reading it soon and sharing the highlights with you, my readers.

Click here or on the image above to place a pre-order for the book.

Offshore Drilling Moratorium No Longer Necessary

Posted on July 21, 2010 by BobMcCarty

Another reason why we don’t need a moratorium on offshore drilling: nobody else is going to be taking risks during the next six months like BP did three months prior to the April 20 Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico that left 11 dead and created one of the worst ecological disasters in history.

The Los Angeles Times, a source I rarely cite, reported today on the testimony of Ronald Sepulvado during a Coast Guard-Interior Department hearing Tuesday in New Orleans. In the article by Julie Cart and Rong-Gong Lin II, the Times reported the well manager as saying BP officials knew about a serious problem on a crucial well safety device at least three months before the catastrophe.

Further, the newspaper reported that investigators said BP officials did not disclose the matter to the appropriate federal agency and failed to suspend drilling operations until the problem was resolved, as required by law.

In light of Sepulvado’s testimony and the words of the investigators, one has to wonder why it is that this nation’s top Democrats — including President Barack Obama — seem dead-set on punishing the entire offshore drilling industry.

After all, wasn’t it Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) who announced Sept. 23, 2008, that the U.S. House of Representatives would allow a quarter-century-old offshore drilling ban to expire, prompting American Petroleum Institute officials to express cautious optimism the next day?

On Oct. 1, 2009, one year after the congressional embargo on offshore energy exploration and production had expired, observant Americans realized nothing good had transpired as a result of the Speaker Pelosi’s actions. Instead, more roadblocks to drilling had been erected and the federal government had lost money, according to one report. Plus, the federal government went from generating more than $10 billion in bonus bids from energy leasing in 2008 to collecting only $875 million — or 8.6% of the previous year’s total — in 2009.

Six months later, President Obama played a bad April Fool’s Day joke on the American people. Apparently wanting Americans to think he had “seen the light,” he announced that he had approved offshore drilling along much of the East Coast.

Within days, however, we learned from Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) that President Obama’s plan was full of rhetoric but short on drilling and will actually lock up significantly more of the Outer Continental Shelf than it makes available for energy production.

Now, with the Deepwater Horizon disaster approaching the 100-day mark, most Americans have had an opportunity to see how this president responds to a crisis — by imposing one moratorium on offshore drilling, having it rejected by a federal judge and then trying to impose another.

If, after reading this, you still think a moratorium on offshore drilling is justified, I beg you to think again. Think about who’s behind the idea. Think about the significant harm it will do to the economy. Most importantly, consider who’s behind the idea.

Oh, one more thing: Vote wisely.

Emerson, Blunt Earn ‘Pretender’ Labels From Iowa Republican for Failing to Battle ‘ObamaCare’

Posted on July 6, 2010 by BobMcCarty

U.S. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) has labeled two of his Missouri colleagues — Jo Ann Emerson and Roy Blunt — as “pretenders” in the fight to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a., “ObamaCare”).

“In the case of the repeal of ObamaCare, a discharge petition is the only way that the American people will get a vote in the House—so long as Nancy Pelosi holds the Speaker’s gavel,” said King, the man leading the effort. “The effort to move a discharge petition will allow the American people to separate the pretenders from those who are truly committed to repealing ObamaCare.”

“While individual Members can make this or that argument against signing on as a cosponsor of repeal legislation, a discharge petition puts the question in a different and simpler way: Do you want to repeal ObamaCare or not?”

As of this posting, 109 members of the U.S. House of Representatives have signed the discharge petition, the aim of which is to start the process toward repealing ObamaCare. Among those not signed on to back the effort (a.k.a., “the pretenders”) are Emerson, who represents the 8th Congressional District in southern Missouri (including the Boot Heel), Blunt of the 7th CD who is probably too busy running for a soon-to-be-open U.S. Senate seat to worry about such matters and all four House Democrats from the Show-Me State — William “Lacy” Clay, Ike Skelton, Russ Carnahan and Emanuel Cleaver. Three House Republicans from Missouri — U.S. Reps. Todd Akin, Sam Graves and Blaine Leutkemeyer — signed on to support the effort last week.

Fret not, conservatives. Both Emerson and Blunt have conservative competitors in their primary races this fall.

The list of conservative challengers to Emerson includes Republican Bob Parker, a rancher from Raymondville, Mo., and Independent Larry Bill, a businessman and military veteran from the Cape Girardeau, Mo., area.

The only serious conservative challenger to Blunt is Republican State Sen. Chuck Purgason who lives near Springfield, Mo.

‘Attack of the 50-Foot Pelosi’ Ad Launched in PA

Posted on May 11, 2010 by BobMcCarty

“Once Nancy Pelosi was safely confined to liberal San Francisco, but Harry Reid and Barack Obama had other plans.”

So begins the latest television ad from RightChange launched today. The 30-second spot, “Attack of the 50-Foot Pelosi”, aims its message directly at voters in Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District where the late Democrat John Murtha served from 1974 to 2010.

It concludes effectively by asking and answering back-to-back questions: “Who has the power to stop her? Who can save America? You! The Pennsylvania voter!”

The 12th CD primary pits Republican Tim Burns of Eighty Four, Pa., against former Murtha aide Mark Critz of Johnstown. According to one news report, Burns “is the obvious choice in the May 18 special election” while Critz “is more preoccupied defining where he does and doesn’t stand with his party.”

Rush Warns About Future of Health Care Months After I Infiltrated Single-Payer Strategy Confab

Posted on March 19, 2010 by BobMcCarty

IF President Barack Obama’s so-called health care reform plan (a.k.a., “ObamaCare”) becomes law and UNTIL it’s rescinded for being unconstitutional, you can rest assured that more harmful legislation — including public option and single-payer option health care — will soon be following it down the slippery slope of socialism. That’s the essence of what radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh said today on his show, and I agree.

That in mind, I felt it appropriate to offer what loyal readers of this blog read in my post, Radical Ideology Exposed at Healthcare-Now National Strategy Conference in St. Louis, the first of 10 posts I published after crashing the 2009 Healthcare-Now.org National Strategy Conference held Nov. 14-15 at the Sheraton Westport Lakeside Chalet in St. Louis. Below is an excerpt from that first post:

Though uninvited, I introduced myself as a journalist and gained access to the meeting’s opening session late Saturday afternoon. There, I fully expected to find a room full of people in favor of the latest iteration of government-run health care. Instead, I found more than 100 people voicing widespread opposition to the bill.

Unlike those who oppose government-run health care on strong Constitutional grounds, the conference attendees with whom I spoke said they oppose the bill because, first, it lacks a strong-enough public option component and, second, it does not include coverage to pay for abortions.

Fast forward to the present when the U.S. House of Representatives under the leadership — or lack thereof — of Speaker Nancy Pelosi appears on the verge of shoving ObamaCare down the throats of all Americans. The links below provide glimpses, complete with undercover video, into the kind of people and ideas likely to be part of the next slippery-slope phase of government-run health care: