The Missouri State Auditor’s Office declined to certify a $6.5 million bond issue for the Hallsville School District that received a 75% approval rating at the polls this spring, according to the district.
That’s because the district didn’t post notice of the bond issue in Boone County newspapers two weeks before the April 8 election and within one week of it, as required by state law. Rather, Hallsville’s notices ran three and two weeks before the election, said Boone County Clerk Brianna Lennon.
However, an $8.5 million bond issue in the Centralia R-VI School District that voters approved by 65% was certified by the State Auditor’s Office.
Both districts’ newspaper notices were handled by the county clerk’s office and ran in the same newspaper editions, Lennon said.
“What we do to make sure that we have the public notice is we put it in the Columbia Missourian, the Fireside Guard and the Boone County Journal,” Lennon said.
The Fireside Guard is in Centralia, and the Boone County Journal is in Ashland. Lennon said her office takes into account that both papers are weekly publications. To ensure adequate public notice, the clerk’s office factors in enough time before the election for any kind of unforeseen publishing error.
“Three and two weeks gives us a grace period in case something were to happen,” she said. “This is in addition to the sample ballot that we mail directly to all of the voters in advance.”
State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick was not available for an interview Thursday afternoon. However, he said in a news media statement that the Hallsville bond was never submitted to his office for certification.
“Instead, the bond counsel for the district reached out to the State Auditor’s Office to inquire if several hypothetical scenarios met the publication requirements in state law without identifying any specific bonds,” the statement read. “After the State Auditor’s Office provided a response to these inquiries, bond counsel informed the office that some bonds failed to meet the publication requirements and would not be submitted for certification.”
Fitzpatrick said Centralia’s bond issue “was submitted and certified by his office based in part on the representation of bond counsel that the publication requirements were met, when in fact they were not.”
Bond counsels are typically the attorneys for school districts. Hallsville’s bond counsel is Gilmore Bell in Kansas City, which could not be immediately reached early Thursday evening. The name of Centralia’s bond counsel was not immediately available.
Lennon said that to her knowledge, this is the first time there has been an issue with how the clerk’s office handled newspaper notices.
“If we are now on the hook to comply with that in a way that impacts our districts — that we care very deeply about — then, of course, we want to know what we can do to not allow that to happen,” Lennon said. “But that conversation had not ever happened before.”
In the statement from his office, Fitzpatrick called the election notice laws “antiquated” and said they need to change.
“If the General Assembly wants to change state law, I am ready to be part of that solution,” he said. “But until that happens, this is how we tell Missourians what’s going to be on their ballot, and making sure Missourians know what they’re voting on is critical. ... I urge the various political entities that put bond issues on the ballot, and the law firms they pay handsomely to serve as bond counsel, to start doing a better job of complying with laws they should already be extremely familiar with.”
Fitzpatrick also denied certification of bond issues for Meadville and Brookfield school districts, in Linn County, for the same reason.
“This is something that is impacting far more than just our county,” Lennon said. “I think we’re all hoping for consistency and for more information in advance to make sure that we’re doing everything that the auditor expects us to do.”
Hallsville’s bond issue, or Proposition 2, was to be used to address growing student enrollment in Hallsville. The district planned to improve parking, build classrooms at the primary school, relocate the baseball field and install additional security doors at the main entrances of the intermediate, middle and high schools.
Hallsville Superintendent Tyler Walker said that right now, the district is holding out hope that the decision could be changed in its favor. If that doesn’t happen, the district will try to bring the bond issue back to the voters in either the November or April election.
“I think that we need to continue pushing for the right thing,” Walker said. “I don’t know that it’s likely that that will happen, but I think we have to try.”
