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Donors and their contribution amounts were available July 2, 2024, when The Missouri Independent accessed the information and showing the largest donors to the program at the time were a Fortune 500 health care corporation, a cable company and the founding family of the Kansas City Chiefs.

When the article was released, the State Treasurer鈥檚 Office called The Independent to ask how the information was accessed. The office did not seem to be aware that the list was available on a detailing state spending.

According to Internet Archive鈥檚 Wayback Machine, donor information was .

Jackson Bailey, chief of staff to Missouri Treasurer Vivek Malek, said the office never intended the information to be posted publicly, chalking it up to a 鈥渃lerical error.鈥�

The office declined to answer further questions about the removal, including whether the information is available upon request.

In 2022, Missouri lawmakers to shield nonprofits from being forced to disclose donor information. It quickly was used to conceal public records, such as of his holiday gala.

A year later, lawmakers approved a fix to the law .

Missouri鈥檚 tax-credit scholarship program, called MOScholars, is set up using state-approved nonprofits. Donors apply for a tax credit through the State Treasurer鈥檚 Office and donate to the nonprofits, which are called educational assistance organizations. At tax time, they are able to deduct the donation amount from their state tax obligations, as long as it鈥檚 less than half of their total bill.

Because the program is set up using private nonprofit organizations as an intermediary, the state might be barred, or at least exempt, from disclosing the donation information, according to Dave Roland, director of litigation at the Freedom Center of Missouri.

Programs like MOScholars, Roland said, are 鈥渟pecifically designed to have the funding treated as private money rather than public money.鈥�

鈥淒ue to the connection to a government-created program, the government might be able to require public disclosure of the persons donating to these programs (and thus receiving the tax credits), but they are not obligated to make this information public if they don鈥檛 want to,鈥� he wrote in an email.

For those wary about the MOScholars program, less transparency only makes frustrations worse.

Senate Minority Leader Doug Beck, a Democrat from Affton, has been a vocal critic of MOScholars and , including Malek. In 2024, Beck asked for 鈥渁ll the data鈥� the office had compiled on MOScholars and received a screenshot of a webpage with basic demographic information.

鈥淲e should have accountability and transparency,鈥� he told The Independent. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 know where the money is coming from. We don鈥檛 know how much money it is. How do we know it鈥檚 getting where it is supposed to go?鈥�

He pointed to released earlier this month which called out Malek鈥檚 office for .

The audit also identified a lack of transparency in the administration of the MOScholars program. The treasurer鈥檚 office wasn鈥檛 hiring annual audits of the program as required and it missed inconsistencies in quarterly reports from educational assistance organizations.

Trent Blair, director of programs in the State Treasurer鈥檚 Office, told The Independent that the office has already rectified this mistake and recently hired an auditing company.

The demand for more oversight of MOScholars has accelerated in recent months, with state lawmakers passing a to the program. A is challenging the constitutionality of the funding windfall.

Blair, when asked if Missourians should feel safe handing over $50 million in the wake of oversight issues, said taxpayers could trust the state.

鈥淭here are no fewer accountability issues with this program than any other,鈥� he said in an email. 鈥淪o Missourians should feel confident about the fiscal responsibility associated with this appropriation.鈥�