Independence mayor says FBI didn’t want to interview her about controversial projects
Independence Mayor Eileen Weir denies any connection between her support for a solar farm project in 2017 and $10,000 in donations she received from political action committees funded by the company that operates the venture.
The Star reported last month that the FBI has questioned members of the city council about two projects approved by the council in 2017: a $1 million land deal for a solar farm and a nearly $10 million contract to decommission an electric power plant owned by Independence Power & Light.
The FBI is talking to local officials, Weir said, but she was told they would not need to interview her.
“I was not contacted by the FBI,” Weir said Tuesday. “Rather than waiting around for the FBI to show up unexpectedly, I reached out and said ‘If you want to interview me, let’s set it up.’ They said there wasn’t a need for that.”
She said she reached out to the FBI this week.
“People assume if the FBI is conducting an investigation in Independence that they would talk to me, but that’s not the case,” Weir said. “I really don’t know what the investigation is about. I think there is one. That’s clear, that there is an investigation going on.”
Bridget Patton, a spokeswoman for the FBI in Kansas City, said the agency does not confirm or deny the existence of investigations and would not be at liberty to discuss any statements.
Weir ‘didn’t need to be persuaded’
Raising concern among some of Weir’s council colleagues are four $2,600 donations her campaign received in late October 2017 from PACs partially funded by the Springfield private-equity firm Gardner Capital.
The PACs are also connected to Steve Tilley, Gardner Capital’s lobbyist and a longtime adviser to Missouri Gov. Mike Parson.
Just days after receiving the checks, Weir and the council voted in executive session to authorize the city manager to purchase the 94-acre former Rockwood Golf Club for $985,000. The plan was to build a solar farm in a joint venture with Gardner Capital and its construction partner, Lee’s Summit-based MC Power.
Weir said that she was a supporter of the project long before the donations or vote took place, “so I didn’t need to be persuaded.”
She said she did not inquire about the origin of the PAC money or who was behind the PACs when she received the checks in 2017.
“I didn’t investigate every donor to that PAC. I’ve never done that. I’ve never seen that as a necessity. It’s not required that I do that,” she said, later adding: “I had a lot of fundraisers that year, because I was gearing up for my re-election campaign.”
Some PACs have “thousands of donors,” Weir said. “It’s unreasonable to think you’re going to research every contributor to a PAC.”
The $10,000 in PAC donations made up most of the roughly $12,000 Weir raised in the fourth quarter of 2017, in the run-up to her successful campaign for re-election the following spring.
All four PACs are based in the St. Louis area, and the donations came the same week Weir’s campaign reported spending $228 at the Marriott St. Louis Grand Hotel for a political fundraiser.
Weir said she couldn’t recall If she met any representatives of the PACs at the fundraiser, but acknowledged that Tilley attended.
Over the last three years, Weir has only received one other donation larger than $2,600.
Two lobbyists, $240,000
Weir’s explanation echoes what she told The Star in 2017 regarding a $5,000 donation her campaign received in 2014 from Integrity in Law Enforcement, a political committee controlled by former Jackson County Executive Mike Sanders.
In 2017, The Star revealed how Sanders obtained funds from the committee through a kickback scheme to pay for political and personal uses. Sanders pleaded guilty in 2018 to a federal charge related to use of the money and was sentenced to 27 months in federal custody. He’s currently in a halfway house in Kansas City, Kansas, according to U.S. Bureau of Prisons records, and his term is due to expire in April.
“They did make a contribution to my campaign,” Weir told The Star in December 2017. “They were a political action committee, so I don’t know anything more than that.”
City Councilwoman Karen DeLuccie said Weir should have known where the money came from. An at-large council member, DeLuccie ran citywide campaigns in 2014 and 2018. She said she wrote personal thank you notes to every individual and group that contributed to her.
“She should have known,” said DeLuccie, one of two council members who confirmed to The Star they’d been recently interviewed by the FBI. “How could you not know?”
DeLuccie said she’s never received contributions as large as $2,600. But if she did, “I would know who was giving the money.”
More broadly, DeLuccie criticized the city’s overall spending on lobbyists, which has nearly quadrupled in recent years.
Independence previously paid a single lobbyist $61,000 per year. But the city changed firms in 2016 and also added Tilley’s Strategic Capitol Consulting that year to represent Independence Power & Light.
Since then, the cost of hiring both firms has increased: They each now receive $120,000 per year.
“I think it’s ridiculous we’re spending $240,000 on lobbyists,” DeLuccie said. “There is no reason for us to have two lobbyists.”
Tilley’s contract with Independence originally included a provision prohibiting him or members of his firm from contributing to or assisting any candidate for city council. Weir said she does not believe the PAC donations violated that provision because Tilley didn’t contribute money directly to her campaign.
The provision was removed from Tilley’s contract when it was renewed in 2018.
Weir said that in the past she has refused contributions from donors who were actively seeking contracts with the city or working on projects with the city. And while she dismisses any allegation that there was a connection between her support of the solar project and political donations, “the way the donations were made wasn’t very transparent.”
“Certainly,” she said, “I try to be very discerning to avoid conflicts of interest.”
For government contracting to be effective there “shouldn’t even be a whiff of conflict of interest,” said Jeremy Mohler, communications director for In the Public Interest, a Washington, D.C.,-based nonprofit that studies best practices and policies in public contracting.
“Taxpayers have to know,” Mohler said, “that public money is going to the bidder who will do the best job.”
The Star’s Steve Vockrodt contributed to this story.
This story was originally published December 4, 2019 at 5:00 AM.
