Arnold Mayor Bill Moritz recently announced the city will seek a new attorney and create clearer separations between it and the Arnold Retail Corridor Transportation Development District.
Moritz on April 16 laid out seven steps Arnold will take in response to a blistering audit report that was released by the Missouri State Auditor’s Office on April 6. The report gave Arnold, the ARC TDD and Triangle Transportation Development District the lowest possible rating of “poor” and there were numerous conflicts of interest, a lack of transparency and an effort by the city to derail the audit process.
During the April 16 City Council meeting, Moritz announced one of the steps Arnold will take following the audit is to issue a request for qualifications (RFQ) for a new city attorney to replace Bob Sweeney and the Sweeney Law Firm, which also includes Sweeney’s daughter, Allison Sweeney.
“I had a meeting with Bob, and it is one of those things that came out of our conversation,” Moritz said. “It seems to me that is the only way that people will start believing we are doing this correctly.”
Moritz said he did not know when Arnold will issue an RFQ for a new city attorney.
Sweeney did not respond to a phone call from the Leader.
Sweeney has been Arnold’s attorney since September 2010, when he was reappointed to the role after briefly being removed from the position in December 2009. Before that, he had been Arnold’s city attorney for 17 years.
Allison Sweeney has been Arnold’s prosecuting attorney since March 2024. She said her contract to be Arnold’s prosecuting attorney is separate from the law firm’s agreement to represent the city, and she would like to continue that role, if city officials want her to continue to be the prosecuting attorney.
Arnold Finance Director Bill Lehmann said the city pays $170 per hour for legal counsel. He said the city has paid the Sweeney Law Firm $111,408.75 this fiscal year, which started Sept. 1, 2025, and goes to Aug. 31, and $278,045.64 last fiscal year.
Audit
The audit report said the Auditor’s Office had concerns with the formation and current status of the Triangle and ARC TDDs; no significant concerns with TDD 1-cent sales tax rates, collections and revenue; and identified significant overlap and conflicts between city of Arnold activity and TDD activity; significant concerns related to the ARC TDD’s property acquisition procedures; and noncompliance with various legal provisions.
Arnold officials have created a page on the city’s website, arnoldmo.org, addressing the report. The page includes answers to frequently asked questions and other documentation about the TDDs.
Along with seeking a new attorney, Moritz said Arnold will take the following steps to address issues raised in the audit report.
■ Arnold will make sure all TIF (Tax Increment Financing) status reports are current. The audit said the city had not properly submitted annual TIF reports since 2018.
■ Arnold will review all TDD board oversight procedures.
■ Arnold will review the TDD board composition.
■ Arnold will remind retailers in the district of their obligation to display the TDD sales tax rate. The audit report said the 1-cent sales tax the TDD collects is not properly displayed.
■ Arnold will recommend to the TDD board that they hire an independent firm to handle all of the TDD’s financial transactions and bookkeeping to create greater separation between the TDD and Arnold.
■ Arnold will implement stronger policies around public engagement and outreach, especially for major projects.
“I’m glad to see city officials acknowledge some of the issues uncovered by our report and take positive steps to be more transparent and accountable to the people of Arnold,” Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick said in a Friday email to the Leader. “However, the changes fail to address the root issue, which is a taxing authority that hasn’t completed a transportation project in more than a decade and doesn’t have a legitimate purpose but continues to collect a tax that was never approved by voters. Until that issue is addressed, the people of Arnold will continue to be overtaxed.”
Ward 1 Councilman EJ Fleischmann said Moritz’s announcements were important.
“I think we are turning a new leaf, and this new council will continue to work well together,” Fleischmann said. “I think the most important thing is rebuilding trust, and I think if we all work together, we can rebuild that trust.”
On April 7, Fleischmann and Ward 3 Councilman Rodney Mullins were reelected to the council after running unopposed. However, residents also voted in three new council members with Michael Rother replacing incumbent Brian McArthur in Ward 2; Matt Saller replacing Peggy Allen to serve the remaining year for the Ward 3 seat that Allen was appointed to following Jessica Bess’ resignation last year; and Brad Cary unseating Gary Plunk in Ward 4.
The turnover on election day mirrored last year’s election when residents voted out longtime Mayor Ron Counts as well as three council members.
On April 16, Fleischmann was elected to serve as mayor pro-tem for another year after the council reorganized following the election.
City attorney
Sweeney became a focal point of residents outraged by Arnold’s announcement of a road project in August 2024.
The proposed 2-mile, two-lane road between Hwy. 141 and Richardson Road, which was to be called the Arnold Parkway, was projected to cost about $75 million. The cost included acquiring 38 homes in the Key West Estates subdivision, multiple businesses and a portion of the Water Tower Place Shopping Center.
Residents attempted to gather enough signatures to force recall elections for all Arnold elected officials, and the owners of the Water Tower shopping plaza filed a lawsuit to stop the road project and to dissolve the ARC TDD.
The project was abandoned the same month it was announced, but Fitzpatrick had his office on Nov. 6, 2024, start an audit of Arnold’s oversight and operation of the ARC TDD and Triangle TDD after receiving multiple complaints from its Whistleblower Hotline.
The audit said Sweeney had excessive involvement in ARC TDD matters. It also claimed Sweeney provided intentionally misleading statements about his involvement with the TDD, claiming he made false statements on March 18, 2025, that were not discovered until July 17, 2025.
The audit said the alleged misdemeanor violation has been referred to the Jefferson County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, even though the statute of limitation to prosecute may have passed on March 18. Fitzpatrick said that is the only potential violation the Auditor’s Office reported to authorities.
Prosecuting Attorney Trisha Stefanski has not responded to questions of whether her office will seek charges against Sweeney.
Moritz said Sweeney has served Arnold well and praised Sweeney’s work in establishing the TIF and TDDs in 2005-2007, which led to the expansion of the Arnold Crossroads shopping plaza and creation of the Arnold Commons shopping plaza off Hwy. 141.
During the council meeting, Moritz said Arnold’s taxable sales grew from $128 million in 2005 to $439 million in 2025.
“Bob has been with the city for 33 years,” he said. “Bob didn’t do anything wrong, but at the same time, he also recognizes that he is the face of the city with respect to this TDD.”
Mullins said he supports the move to search for a new city attorney.
“It is not our job to interpret law, but it is our job to ensure that governance around our processes internally and for those that we do business with are sound, forthright and minimize the opportunity for perceived conflicts of interest,” he said in the statement.
Reactions
During his announcement, Moritz said he ran for mayor because he had concerns about how the abandoned road project was announced and that much of the backlash was from the failure of the previous administration to hold an open house and public discussions about the Arnold Parkway.
He also said he was troubled while reviewing the audit and that is why he made a list of how the city can move forward.
“I ran against the mayor because I was going to make sure that, if given the chance, I would never do it that way,” Moritz said of how the city announced the road project. “I am keeping my promise to keep things open and honest.”
Bess spoke at the council meeting after Moritz’s announcement about the changes the city plans to make following the audit.
“Thank you for finally taking accountability,” she told the council. “I think that goes a long way for building trust. I think if we would have had that accountability in the onset that would have gone a long way for the community and city. I think this is a great step forward.”
Sarah Lurkins, who helped organize opposition to the road project and the effort to recall elected officials, said the audit report validated the concerns raised about the TDD. She also appreciated Moritz telling residents how the city plans to move forward.
“The final audit report validated our concerns around the operations of the TDD,” said Lurkins, who was appointed to the city’s Planning Commission in December 2024. “However, I didn’t want to be right. Being right meant something was wrong and at the taxpayers’ expense.”
“It sounds like (Moritz) is now taking the audit report seriously, and residents will expect him to keep his word to clean up the discrepancies noted in the audit.”
Moritz said he hopes Arnold’s changes will help restore trust among residents.
“There is some reason that people think we are not being aboveboard on this, and I know that to not be true,” he said. “It was a pretty clear message when they turned over the City Council over the course of two elections. We are listening.”