By Tony Brockmeyer
Early editions of the First Capitol News were placed in the St. Charles City Hall on Thursday, October 6th. The First Capitol News reported that three different fictitious names, using the same federal tax ID number were paid over $15,475. The investigation showed documents where the City signed a contract with Sarah Collins and Associates and made a series of three payments to Lafayette Partnership and the tax ID number traced back to the Glennon Company. All three companies were owned by Glennon Jamboretz. The First Capitol News Investigation showed the money was paid out for paper when in fact the contract that the payments went for said for layout and design work for a State of the City report.
The purchase order for these same payments reads, Paper Newsprint for State of the City Report.
The FCN questioned how you could have a contract with Sarah Collins and Associates for layout and design and the check was written to Lafayette Partnership for paper and the money went to Glennon Jamboretz. In the real world this is often times referred to as money laundering.
The First Capitol News also questioned the fact that the City made a payment to Lafayette Partnership for $2300 on February 15th and the Lafayette Partnership registered under a fictitious name with the State of Missouri on February 1st. We also pointed out this is the same time a mailing to recall Councilwoman Dottie Greer was mailed in Ward 7. Councilman Mark Brown, who owns a printing company, told the First Capitol News the cost of this mailing to recall Dottie Greer would have been around the same amount, $2300. At the time we went to press this was all the information our investigation was able to uncover.
After the First Capitol News was placed in the City Hall wheels began to spin. Councilman Riddler, after reading our paper marched straight to the clerk’s office and demanded to see the invoices, check register and all documents and contracts pertaining to these purchases. Council President Riddler stated he was concerned that the City was capable of signing a contract for one company, paying another and yet have the money go to a totally different company. He questioned how the City Administrator, the Finance Director, City Attorney were unable to detect the series of financial irregularities contained in the documents we printed in our October 8th edition. Council President Riddler then and there requested to see the work product the City received for the $15,475. City Administrator Williams told the Council President he would have him the work product no later than Friday, October 7th. At the end of the day on Friday, Council President Riddler did not receive the work product and was unable to make contact with the City Administrator throughout the entire weekend. On Monday Riddler called City Hall and requested to speak with the City Administrator and was told the City Administrator had too much work to do and was not coming into the office but was staying at home so he could get his work done. Also on Monday Councilmen Brown and Gieseke said they read the FCN and they also made several attempts to contact Williams to no avail. On Tuesday, October 11th the Council held a special meeting along with their regular work session. Included on the agenda for the special Council meeting was bill #8720, an ordinance amending certain revenues, expenditures and fund balance accounts for the budget fiscal year 2005, commonly referred to as budget amendment Number 9. Included in this amendment was a series of transfers of funds and new appropriations for several items including one item which was the funding of the Pearl Ridge Estates flooding project. This project drew the most attention in the budget amendment and was a topic of discussion in every news media including the FCN in the City. Also included in this budget amendment was $15,000 additional funds to be allocated to the same paper account in which the alledged money laundering occurred.
This drew a series of heated questions to Mayor York. Councilman Gieseke challenged her on why she failed to produce any work product pertaining to the State of the City Report for which the $15,475 was paid. Councilman Gieseke went on to question her on why she not only paid for a product that was never received but why she paid the same person who was renting and receiving a business license from her rental property located at 338 South Main St. He questioned the fact that this same person, Glennon Jamboretz was responsible for the recall efforts against two of the current Council members, Councilwoman Greer and Councilman Brown. He also noted Glennon Jamboretz, who owns the public relations company, Glennon Company, represented Sgt. Thomas Mayer when he filed his $104 million lawsuit against the City a year ago.
Councilman Joe Koester chimed in stating he felt this violated the public's trust, having the Mayor give $15,475 to a company who has represented and worked in conjunction with attempting to rob the taxpayers of $104 million with a lawsuit he described as frivolous. He chastised the Mayor for doing business with a company in which they were attempting to do a recall on Council members and the payments were consistent with the payments that would have been paid for printing against the two Council members.
The Mayor told the Council she had received a work product and that it was on a disk and that each member of the Council could have a copy of it the following day. She stated that the $15,475 was used to prepare a State of the City Report and she said it was finished with the minor exceptions that she had two pages still to write, the City Administrator had a page, the Park Department had a page and the City Council still had a page to write. She estimated the report would be between 12 and 20 pages depending on how many pictures they were going to place in it.
Councilman Koester continued to question why she didn’t know how many pages it was going to be if the product was done. The Mayor responded by saying, “it depended on how many pictures we have and how long each of us use when we do our own statements.” Councilman Koester asked, :What size is the report layed out to be?’ The Mayor stated, “It is not layed out yet.” The Mayor then said on three separate occasions, “We are going to layout and design this report in house.”
On Wednesday, several Councilmen were contacted by the FCN after the meeting and asked why the City would be doing the layout and design work when under the contract the City made a $15,475 payment and the stated purpose was for layout and design to be done by Sarah Collins & Associates. We also asked the Council members if they received the disk containing the ten pages of typed information which the Mayor said she was going to give them. They said they had not received the disk and they were trying to get a copy.
On Friday, a frustrated Councilman Gieseke, filed a Freedom of Information request under the Sunshine law mandating the Mayor produce any work product pertaining to the contract and payments to any of the three fictitious names used by Glennon Jamboretz. As of Tuesday, October 18th 7PM Council meeting, Councilman Gieseke nor any other Councilman received any work product.
This led to more than an hour of heated questions in which the Mayor unsuccessfully attempted to justify her actions. The Mayor stated that she put on each Councilman’s desk over 400 sheets of paper which contained reports and that was the work product she had. Councilman Gieseke quickly challenged the Mayor stating, “Mayor these reports were all prepared by staff. None of this is work done by any of the three fictitious companies to which we paid $15,475 to.” The First Capitol News obtained a copy of the reports which were given to the Council members. The papers given to the Council by the Mayor were just copies of year end reports that have been given to the Council by Department heads over the past several years. Several Council members went into in depth questioning asking how the Mayor could funnel $15,475 to fictitious companies and the City Administrator did not do anything to protect the taxpayers money.
The City Administrator said, “I have done everything I can. I have requested a copy of the work product and I have not received it either. If this was one of my department heads I could make them produce it or I could fire them. However, I cannot require any elected official to produce a document.” Councilman Koester asked Williams why he signed off on the payment when he had not received the work product? Williams said, “I asked if the work product was in hand and I was told by the Mayor it was. If I was lied to there is nothing I can do about it.” Williams indicated he trusted the Mayor when she gave him her word.
The FCN had provided Councilmen with additional information pertaining to financial disclosure reports filed by Citizens Empowerment Committee and St. Charles Citizens for Responsible Government that we had discovered during our investigation. Councilman Brown pointed out the reports disclosed all payments made by the City, which totaled $15,475, were consistent with the payments made in the efforts to recall him and that were reported in the disclosure report. Brown stated, “It was so obvious, the last check written by the City was for $13,175 and the campaign disclosure report for that period revealed the committee showed receipts of $13,185.
Councilman Brown also pointed out the St. Charles Citizens for Responsible Government was headed by Glennon Jamboretz and Ken Kielty. Brown said, “I am disgusted to see there was an attempt to launder money through these committee also and the St. Charles Citizens for Responsible Government, headed by Glennon Jamboretz was making payments to the Citizens Empowerment Committee who in turn were paying Glennon Jamboretz to run the recall campaigns.
The First Capitol News will continue the investigation of this matter which may ultimately lead to criminal implications. We will disclose additional information in our next issue if the proper authorities give us permission.
