FBI agents asking questions about projects in Independence, two council members say
Two members of the Independence City Council said they recently have been contacted by FBI agents who were asking about a pair of controversial projects approved by the council.
Council members Karen DeLuccie and Scott Roberson separately confirmed to The Star that they had spoken with a pair of FBI agents.
DeLuccie said agents asked her on Nov. 7 about a nearly $10 million contract awarded in 2017 to a St. Louis company, twice the amount bid by another company, to decommission an electric power plant in Missouri City owned by Independence Power & Light.
“They wanted to know what I knew about it,” DeLuccie said. “I said well, I know I was against the Missouri City deal. It was everything I already said: We didn’t need to spend money, we didn’t need to do anything, I thought it was ridiculous we did it.”
The other project the agents asked about, DeLuccie said, was the installation of a solar farm at the former Rockwood Golf Club, which the city bought in 2017 for nearly $1 million. DeLuccie opposed that transaction.
“I brought up with the council that we’re spending too much money on the property,” DeLuccie said.
Roberson said he was contacted by FBI agents a week ago and said their questions went beyond just the Missouri City and Rockwood contracts.
“They asked some specific questions but they didn’t necessarily restrict it to those two topics,” Roberson said. “I think it would be safe to assume those were two of the topics.”
Both council members said they were aware of others who had been questioned by the FBI agents but declined to name them.
Independence Mayor Eileen Weir and most of the other council members could not be reached for comment.
Meg Lewis, a public information officer in the Independence city manager’s office, said she was not aware of any investigation.
Bridget Patton, a spokeswoman for the FBI’s field office in Kansas City, said the agency could not confirm or deny the existence of an investigation, per FBI policy.
The Star reported previously that a St. Louis company called Environmental Operations, which does work in environmental remediation projects, submitted a $9.75 million bid to tear down a shuttered Independence Power & Light power plant in Missouri City. Another company, Commercial Liability Partners, handed in a $4.45 million bid. Commercial Liability Partners held itself out as a company that specialized in power plant redevelopment projects.
The Public Utilities Advisory Board, a group that gives recommendations to the city-owned Independence Power & Light, seemed perplexed in 2017 about the majority of the city council seeming intent on awarding the Missouri City contract to Environmental Operations.
Andy Boatright, the former acting director of Independence Power & Light, told The Star that IPL staff did not want to recommend Environmental Operations because the lower bidder “had more relevant experience and the decision was ultimately taken out of our hands.”
Stacy Hastie, owner of Environmental Operations, did not return a message seeking comment. A 2012 story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch described Hastie as a prolific donor to Missouri politicians and whose company dominated the state’s brownfield tax credit program.
Former Missouri House Speaker John Diehl worked for Environmental Operations as its general counsel when it received the Missouri City project in 2017. He resigned in 2015 from the House after it was revealed that he had sent sexually charged text messages to an intern.
The Rockwood solar farm deal was a partnership between Lee’s Summit-based MC Power and Gardner Capital to expand the city’s solar power portfolio.
The project was built on a golf course the city bought in 2017 for nearly $1 million, an amount that DeLuccie thought was too high.
Boatright said he had concerns about how the procurement process worked when the city selected MC Power. He said IPL staff wanted to consider a procurement process to find the most cost-effective way of expanding the utility’s solar power portfolio, which was “something that staff was not allowed to pursue.”
“My impression, and I believe this to be true, was that MC Power principals were doing an end around on the procurement process in Independence and going directly to their friends on the city council,” Boatright said. “And the city council then ensured that MC Power would be the selected vendor and the provider for this installment of community solar.”
MC Power and Gardner Capital officials did not return messages seeking comment.
Boatright was critical of city leadership’s handling of IPL.
”It seems to be the culture of late there, at least under this administration and leadership team, that there’s a culture of whatever city council wants, city council gets,” Boatright said. “And that’s not really the model of city governance that I’m accustomed to operating under or most of us in city government operate under.”
IPL is a utility under significant transition over the last year.
Boatright left IPL in June 2018.
His successor, Brenda Hampton, left IPL in June.
The city is looking for an outside manager to run the day-to-day operations of IPL.
This story has been updated to correct that Boatright left IPL in June 2018, not December 2018.
This story was originally published November 20, 2019 at 11:59 AM.
