Missouri SB 989 and its companion, HB 933, both of which have passed out of committee, are the most recent in a years-long effort to pass environmental audit privilege legislation in Missouri. Similar bills have been introduced every year since 1995. This bill would enable polluters to waive state penalties and keep their records sealed when they conduct "self-audits" and report their own violations of environmental laws. It would grant privilege and/or immunity to corporations who conduct self-audits, preventing such documents from being used against them in court or to assess fines. The stated intent of Missouri's audit privilege bill is to encourage the voluntary reporting of noncompliance with environmental regulations, and supporters say that companies will be less likely to hide pollution and more likely to correct it if they can avoid punishment and public scrutiny. But the bill includes unfair restrictions on the public's right-to-know about environmental dangers in their communities and their ability to take actions against the companies responsible for the damage. This bill puts the public's right-to-know about environmental, workplace, and industrial hazards far behind protecting the secrecy of polluters and other corporate wrongdoers. Opponents of the bill include the Sierra Club, the Missouri Coalition for the Environment and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Advocates of the bill include Anheuser Busch and companies with mining interests, and the House bill's sponsor is a former Dow Chemical Company employee.

Aside from being unethical, this bill and laws like it enacted in many other states have implications in federal environmental law. The EPA has long taken into consideration "honest and genuine" efforts to perform internal audits, but it has never guaranteed full protection against penalty, inspection, or public disclosure. More than half of the states have implemented or have tried to implement audit privilege laws in the past ten years; the EPA has taken issue with a number of those laws. Like citizen and environmental advocacy groups, the EPA is concerned that such laws may tie the hands of state prosecutors when they go after big polluters, preventing them from enforcing programs that the federal government has entrusted to the states. Some state environmental audit privilege laws have been challenged by the EPA (Utah, Texas, Montana) for being too stringent and offering too many protections to polluters.(1) In the fiscal analysis of the Missouri bill, the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) notes that it can not make a fiscal estimate of the bill's impact because the bill might have serious implications for federal revenues for environmental programs. The state DNR also notes that the bill's guarantee of protection from administrative, civil, or criminal penalties under some circumstances "weakens the state's enforcement provisions and conflicts with federal enforcement policies."(2) Maybe that's why similar bills in Missouri have been dismissed every year since 1995.

The EPA requires that, at a bare minimum, states retain the authority to: (a) obtain immediate and complete injunctive relief against polluters; (b) recover civil fines for significant economic benefits resulting from noncompliance, serious harm, and activities that present imminent and substantial danger; and (c) ensure that privilege/immunity statutes retain the information-gathering authority to carry out federal programs.(1) The federal law already offers corporate polluters a lot of leeway; this bill crosses the line and affords more protection to companies that endanger our health and environment than it does to those who the law is designed to protect in the first place.

For more information, see Coors / ALEC Audit Privilege Bill at http://www.serconline.org/alec/alec3.html and ALEC's Privileged Businesses, Public's "Right to Know Nothing" Act at http://www.serconline.org/alec/alec23.html.

Ran 3/29/2004