JEFFERSON CITY – Seemingly ashamed of their policy and seeking to conceal its highly political nature, top gubernatorial staff in the 1990s took a heavy editing pencil to legal documents in which the then-Director of Revenue gave brutally direct statements about how the Democratic administration handled fee offices.

For her part, former Gov. Mel Carnahan’s Revenue Director Janette Lohman was unapologetic for Democrat abuses of fee offices and spoke openly of the central role of party politics in the old system, according to documents obtained and released by the Missouri Republican Party.

In response to written questions in a 1994 fee office lawsuit, Lohman admitted that the Revenue Department relied on “recommendations from Democratic County Committees and referrals from the Office of the Governor” when appointing fee agents.

But then came editing by Mike Wolff, then Carnahan’s chief counsel. The changes made to Lohman’s written responses were reviewed by Carnahan and staff members Roy Temple and Marc Farinella.

Temple, a Democratic political operative, has been more or less continuously on Carnahan payrolls since his youth, but also with work as a corporate lobbyist. Temple also signed on with former Gov. Bob Holden, a Carnahan ally, at the Missouri Democratic Party, to provide the judgment and guidance that were evident in Holden’s tenure. Farinella was a high-level staffer on Carnahan’s political campaigns and within the governor’s office.

The changes made in Lohman’s response to interrogatories manifested an interest in trimming back her admission of rankly partisan use of the fee offices. Making such changes, of course, rests on the obviously dubious notion that Wolff, a staff lawyer, would know more about the system than Lohman, who actually ran the offices, would have worked with the Governor’s staff, and, more than anyone else, knew how the Administration did business.

When Lohman said that party affiliation was a “criterion considered,” the word criterion was scratched out by Wolff and replaced by the word “factor.” And a new line was added by Wolff that read: “Political affiliation is not necessarily a determinative factor in that some agents are Republicans and some have no known political affiliation.”

Still, Lohman went on to say that “political affiliation is an appropriate requirement for the performance of a fee agent’s duties and this contention is entirely consistent with established precedent directly on point.”

In direct contrast with Gov. Matt Blunt’s reforms that extended fee office hours to improve customer service, Lohman said the Democrat Revenue Department “has not set hours of operation for any or all fee agent offices. Office hours established by fee agents are subject to the approval of the Director of Revenue.”

“These documents show that Carnahan’s political cronies were anxious to protect their fee office abuses from honest and open public inspection, and thereby to save the offices as ‘political plums’ for donors and other buddies,” said Paul Sloca, communications director for the Missouri Republican Party. “Gov. Matt Blunt’s reforms including longer office hours and business plan requirements have brought the state fee office system back from the political stone age and into the 21st century and saved millions of taxpayer dollars.”

Copies of the documents can be obtained at http://www.mogop.org/media/feeofficeiii.pdf