JEFFERSON CITY – In defense of the politically corrupt fee office system expanded by Democrats in the 1990s, Jay Nixon argued in legal briefs that fee office agents were encouraged to be openly partisan, didn’t need any professional training and didn’t even have to show up for work.

With former Gov. Mel Carnahan as his client, Nixon defended the fee office system perpetuated by Democrat bosses whose political allies were stuffing their pockets with fees from the wallets of hard-working Missourians. In legal briefs filed in 1998 with the Missouri Court of Appeals for the Western District of Missouri and obtained and released today by the Missouri Republican Party, Nixon made it clear that partisanship was the top priority when it came to staffing fee offices.

“No special education, experience or training is required before a person is qualified to be a fee agent. Fee agents are not required to cease political activities after they are appointed,” Nixon said. “Political affiliation, therefore, has always been an important criterion for selection.”

Nixon said that fee agents “are not required” to work in their offices and then goes on to contend that fee agents are similar to lawmakers, statewide officeholders and “political operatives” because they “are themselves politicians.”

“While not requiring a confidential relationship with the governor or the making of policy, fee agents must demonstrate loyalty, efficiency and partisan pride in representing the governor who appointed them,” said Nixon, who has made no secret of his intention to run for governor. “Government employees are restricted in their political activities. Fee agents, on the other hand, are completely political animals.”

“Candidate Jay Nixon’s unabashed pride in the Democrat corruption of the fee office process is shocking for someone who is supposed to uphold the ethics laws of our state but then again, Jay Nixon at the time was being the good political soldier he continues to be,” said Paul Sloca, communications director for the Missouri Republican Party. “Nixon’s endorsement of this system is shameful and he should be held accountable for legitimizing a corrupt and ethically-challenged fee office system that only recently has been reformed by Gov. Matt Blunt including longer hours, business plans and other changes that have resulted in millions of taxpayer dollar savings.”

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