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JEFFERSON CITY — In one of his first moves after winning the Nov. 5 election, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey asked for more money to run his office.

In budget documents submitted to the governor’s budget office just days after voters gave him a full, four-year term, the Republican asked for $2.9 million in additional funding to hire 28 additional workers.

The new employees, including additional lawyers, would, for example, be slotted into offices overseeing constitutional appeals and consumer protection laws.

Bailey, was appointed attorney general by Gov. Mike Parson in 2022, and easily beat Democrat Elad Gross after surviving an expensive primary against Will Scharf.

He was on a short list to become U.S. Attorney General, but President-elect Donald Trump named U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz to the role last week. Scharf was named as Trump’s assistant days later.

With four years in front of him, Bailey is calling on the General Assembly and Gov.-elect Mike Kehoe to approve a boost to his office’s payroll at a time when the state’s robust revenue growth is flattening.

Unlike other agencies and statewide officers who submitted their wish lists in early October, Bailey’s request wasn’t posted online until after Election Day.

The documents show that on June 30, the office had 294 employees, even though Bailey has authorization to have 416 employees under the current spending plan.

But Bailey says the budget needs to grow from a current level of about $31.5 million to $50 million.

A spokeswoman did not respond to multiple requests for additional information.

The Republican-controlled Legislature has previously locked horns over the attorney general’s office budget.

Former Attorney General Eric Schmitt, whom Bailey replaced when Schmitt went to the U.S. Senate, was rebuffed in 2022 when he sought $500,000 to hire more attorneys after tangling with local school districts over COVID-19 restrictions.

Bailey has received criticism for putting state resources into high-profile national court cases.

In June, for example, he sued the state of New York to halt Trump’s sentencing on 34 criminal counts until after the November election. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the request.

At the same time, his office has said high employee turnover rates and an increase in public records requests have contributed to a major backlog of Sunshine Law requests going unanswered in a timely fashion.

Specifically, Bailey is requesting funding for six attorneys, one investigator and one administrative staffer for the criminal appeals division.

He wants seven more attorneys in the governmental affairs division and five more to enforce Missouri’s consumer protection laws.

Bailey also wants four attorneys for the solicitor general’s division, which defends the state in constitutional challenges.

Another request calls for the addition of one investigator for the Medicare fraud unit.

Bailey will be sworn into a full term in January. Lawmakers will take up the spending proposal in the spring.