Sally Wilson knows how a city's records get made. She was mayor of Osceola, in Mississippi County, until the end of 2022.

She's also no stranger to the Freedom of Information Act. Her husband is retired Circuit Judge Ralph Wilson Jr.

As I wrote here in June, Judge Wilson "has a long record of careful work, as well as familiarity with transparency law." He presided as a special judge over a FOIA case in which I represented a requester.

You'd think that if anyone could get a city to follow the FOIA, it would be the city's former mayor who's married to a judge who has handled FOIA litigation. Apparently not.

This summer, two mayoral candidates asked Ms. Wilson about actions the city had taken. She pointed them to the city's website. Under a municipal ordinance, she explained, each month's council packet includes the numbered resolutions and ordinances the council adopted, and the packet must be posted online. Or so it was when she was mayor. Not so much anymore.

When she checked, more than 100 approved resolutions and ordinances were missing from the council packets uploaded since February 2024. One is Ordinance 2024-07, a tax-abatement measure that Wilson says may show the council's vote to raise the revenue bond for the U.S. Steel/Big River Steel expansion from $3 billion to $3.75 billion. Kind of a big deal.

So on Sept. 23, Wilson did what the law contemplates. She emailed the mayor's assistant, who serves as the city's records custodian, copied the city attorney, listed each missing document by number, and invoked the FOIA.

The next morning, the custodian forwarded the request to the city's chief financial officer, asking him to direct Wilson to the link, because he manages the........

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