How a single commissioner put Clay County’s taxpayers on the hook for a cool $1 million

Just when you thought the shenanigans couldn’t get more absurd or outrageous in Clay County government, one of three county commissioners has felt it necessary to file a sunshine request to find out what one of the others has been up to.

That’s because, unbeknownst to Presiding Commissioner Jerry Nolte — as well as the taxpaying and voting public — his fellow commissioner Gene Owen signed contracts totaling more than $1 million for architectural and engineering services at the site of a proposed new county annex.

No fanfare, no notice, no public discussion, no commission vote. Just Owen’s signature, along with that of the county’s private counsel, encumbering the taxpayers of Clay County, largely on Owen’s say-so alone.

Nolte has filed a sunshine request for “any recorded vote or written authorization by the Clay County Commission” from Sept. 1, 2018 to March 24, 2020 that might designate Owen as an authorized agent of the county. Since Nolte doesn’t recall any, that is.

“My understanding is, he has not been empowered to actually sign contracts,” Nolte told The Star Editorial Board. “I think he just did it.”

Owen used an “official action” procedure that doesn’t require commission approval, but which is normally used by county staff for routine day-to-day expenditures. A million-dollar set of contracts is, of course, “a different kettle of fish,” as Nolte puts it.

Neither Owen nor third commissioner Luann Ridgeway returned a request for comment. But the county clerk and county auditor both had plenty to say.

“I have never seen a commissioner use an executive action to single-handedly spend over a million dollars in taxpayer money,” said County Clerk Megan Thompson, who is running for the retiring Ridgeway’s seat. “The lack of transparency and accountability is shocking. I am present at open commission meetings, and I never witnessed the commission vote to give one of its members authority to spend this money.

“This is a perfect example of what our current leadership in county government is doing. They’re hiding this stuff, they’re cramming it down our throat and they’re spending millions of dollars without even asking anybody.”

The use of “official action” spending authority, Clay County Auditor Victor S. Hurlbert surmises, might be to keep certain items off the commission’s published agenda — or perhaps to mask “the sheer volume” of expenditures, “as the county has been on a spending spree.”

Nolte suspects he’s the reason that the official action process was instituted in 2017.

“I think part of it was because, quite honestly, I was questioning a lot of the expenditures when they were being brought up in open meetings,” Nolte says. “I think it was a way of keeping it from being embarrassing.

“There’s a logical reason for it to some degree, but not nearly to the extent we’re using it.”

Pending Nolte’s investigation of the matter, there may be little the public can do about the situation. There may be nothing even Nolte can do: Although he’s the “presiding” commissioner, he may not even be able to get the issue of Owen’s contract signing on Monday’s agenda — since county administrators actually decide what is included.

“I highly doubt (assistant county administrator Laurie Portwood) will put it on the agenda,” Hurlbert said.

“There’s a distinct possibility that it will not be brought up,” Nolte agreed.

In short, no dissent allowed?

Here, then, is another brick in the growing wall between the governing and the governed in Clay County — and yet another reason the county government must be reformed, perhaps by expanding its commission from three to five, in an effort to forestall the tyranny of one or two.

In the short-term, the continued use of no-discussion “official action” spending certainly ought to be junked. Thompson reveals an alarming breakdown in accountability regarding such outlays.

“They’re not even delivered to my office anymore,” the county clerk says. “We have to just go in and kind of guess when they did these. We go in about every week or so. We have to go hunt them down, essentially, to even have them as a record for the clerk’s office.”

Thompson says her office found out about Owen’s million-dollar contract signing through social media.

“We saw it on there, and I’m like, ‘What in the world is this?’ I was getting phone calls (from the community) and they’re like, ‘What is this nonsense?’”

Moreover, county auditor Hurlbert maintains the expenditures, by law, should be signed off on by his office as well, but have not been. He says he has two former Missouri attorney general opinions, and “the plain language of the law” that all say so.

One wonders, however, if law or accountability means anything in Clay County.

This story was originally published April 1, 2020 at 5:00 AM.