Commissioners of chaos: Cost of Clay County mess escalates as leaders create legal woes

The mounting financial toll of Clay County’s internal political and legal wars, with an entirely new front having recently opened, is now spilling over to Missouri taxpayers as a whole.

And if the commissioners responsible for the costly chaos — LuAnn Ridgeway and Gene Owen — get their way, the county jail will be forced to close, with as much as half of its inmates ending up on Kansas City-area streets.

Last week, in what State Auditor Nicole Galloway’s office called “an unprecedented move,” Clay County failed to abide by a subpoena to turn over records as part of an audit demanded by a Clay County citizens’ petition.

The state auditor said in a news release that it would now have to take Clay County to court again — after commissioners Ridgeway and Owen earlier lost a lawsuit trying to block or limit the citizens’ audit.

Galloway has graciously determined not to assess Clay County residents for the cost of all this, but Missouri taxpayers are, by extension, paying the freight for the state auditor’s work and the work of the courts in sorting out the Clay County wreckage.

On another front, Commissioners Ridgeway and Owen have forced the sheriff, the courts and the appellate courts to make a determination on whether the commissioners can simply decide to stop feeding and caring for jail inmates, which they did earlier this year. To their credit — literally and figuratively — food and health-care providers have been keeping the inmates alive and well for months without being paid. A judge in August ordered Ridgeway and Owen to fund the jail, but they characteristically filed an appeal, a ruling on which is expected at any time.

Even before Clay County defied the auditor’s subpoena, the third commissioner, Jerry Nolte, issued an extraordinary call for Ridgeway and Owen to resign in shame, citing their ringing up of $50 million in debt, mushrooming legal bills, the fumbling away of a $280,000 drug task force grant, and the bizarre jail cuts — widely believed to be retaliation against Sheriff Paul Vescovo for doing his job and investigating the tampering of county records.

Ridgeway responded to Nolte with a two-pronged statement to The Star that was disingenuous in both its prongs: blaming the reasonable Nolte, of all people, for fostering a toxic environment, and then holding up herself, of all people, as a knight in shining armor who, by leading the way to a new charter, will save the county from the very discord and disorder she dispenses.

“It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me to trust the same people who broke our government to fix it,” says county Clerk Megan Thompson, who’s announced a run for Ridgeway’s seat next year.

No, it doesn’t. In fact, Ridgeway’s new no-authority charter advisory board seems a patently offensive attempt to get out in front of a citizens’ movement to actually save the county from the kind of tyranny just two people like Ridgeway and Owen can impose on a three-member commission.

Which makes you wonder why Kansas City’s respected outgoing city manager and incoming Jackson County administrator Troy Schulte would agree to be named by Ridgeway to the 12-member charter advisory panel. Is he really putting his official imprimatur on Ridgeway’s and Owen’s expensive, divisive antics and their transparent attempt to hijack the will of the people?

No, he says. As a well-known city manager in the area, Schulte says, he was asked by Ridgeway to serve on the charter advisory board. As a Clay County resident, he wants to help end what he called decades of dysfunction in the government there.

Schulte says he neither knows Ridgeway well, other than what he reads in The Star, nor is beholden to her agenda. Asked if he’s concerned that the board he serves on is merely a way for Ridgeway and Owen to get out in front of a government reform effort that their own outlandish actions have inspired, Schulte said, “You’ll have to ask her that.” They didn’t talk about, and he doesn’t know, her motivations, he added.

Citizen activist Jason Withington can guess Ridgeway’s motivations, given that she already faces two opponents for reelection next year.

“I think this is nothing more than a stunt to try and get free headlines for Ridgeway and make it look like she was trying to clean up Clay County government,” Withington told The Star. “She didn’t talk about (reform) until I did.”

If Commissioners Ridgeway and Owen really do want to clean up the mess they’ve made in Clay County government, they could start by stopping all the lawsuits, cooperating with the citizen-mandated audit — and by funding the jail, which is currently some $787,000 in arrears for inmate food and health care.