JEFFERSON CITY - Jay Nixon’s broken promise to reform the Second Injury Fund and his longtime practice of using the fund to reward his trial attorney political contributors explains why he is now desperately trying to cover up those facts by issuing politically-motivated letters FROM HIS OFFICIAL OFFICE to Gov. Matt Blunt.

A Nixon letter to the Governor about the Second Injury Fund reported on today by The Kansas City Star ignores the fact that as a candidate for attorney general in 1992, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that Nixon “has promised to change the [Second Injury Fund] by barring any participating lawyers from contributing to the attorney general’s political campaigns.” Instead of reform, state records show that expenditures for the fund have jumped from $7.4 million in 1993 to $68 million last year and that lawyers that are political contributors have benefited from the fund.

Among those that have gained from the fund include Susan Montee, the state auditor whose recent audit of the fund failed to mention that her family law firm handled nearly 150 fund claims in recent years. And then there is the case of Nixon senior advisor Mary Still, whose husband Russell Still has, since 2002, handled and had resolved more than 20 cases with Second Injury Fund claims to the tune of $260,000.

“Jay Nixon has mismanaged and abused the Second Injury Fund for more than a decade and this latest desperate political attempt to cover his tracks by issuing a letter to a governor who wants to reform the system would be laughable if the issues involved weren’t so serious,” said Paul Sloca, communications director for the Missouri Republican Party. “Nixon is a hypocrite who is trying to look like a Second Injury Fund savior when in fact he is nothing more than a Second Injury Fund abuser.”