Three of the candidates who were not chosen to be the new District 7 representative on the Jefferson County Council are calling foul.
Bob Tullock, Tony Kalna and Brent Myers, who were among the eight people who applied to succeed Jim Terry on the council and were interviewed at a June 3 special meeting, complained to the council on June 14 that the process by which Vicki James was selected was flawed.
“I thought this process would be handled in a straightforward, transparent, professional manner,” said Tullock, 55, of House Springs. “What actually happened was something else.”
After Terry submitted his resignation with about a year and a half left on his second four-year term, the remaining members of the County Council are, according to the county charter, charged to choose a replacement by majority vote.
After the candidates were interviewed June 3, each council member was asked to rank each candidate, with eight points awarded to the top choice, seven to the second choice and so on, according to a procedure outlined at previous meetings and reinforced that evening by Councilman Phil Hendrickson (District 3, Arnold), the council’s chair.
After the ballots were tallied, James, 61, of Cedar Hill was announced the winner, and then the council voted 6-0 to appoint James to the vacant spot. She was sworn in soon afterward.
However, the three unsuccessful candidates say the ranking system was rank.
“When it was announced that Mrs. James was appointed to succeed Mr. Terry, I applauded, as everyone else who was in the audience did. To find out later what actually happened became a matter of concern,” Tullock said.
He said three of the six council members chose James as the first choice and did not rank other candidates.
“Everything was done in a backroom and not by the rating system,” he said. “Your votes should not have counted.”
Council members Brian Haskins (District 1, High Ridge) and Tracey Perry (District 5, Festus) selected only James. Council member Dan Stallman (District 6, De Soto) also selected James as his top choice, but indicated Tim Brown, a member of the Grandview R-2 Board of Education, was his second choice. Stallman did not rank the other six applicants.
“The rogue action did not allow any other candidate to garner enough votes to win the seat,” said Kalna, 58, of
Dittmer, who was chosen first on the other three ballots, cast by Hendrickson, Renee Reuter (District 2, Imperial) and Charles Groeteke (District 4, Barnhart).
Myers, 41, of Hillsboro, agreed.
“This is clearly a concerted effort to manipulate the vote,” he said. “It boils down to big money from developers and having a County Council willing to change their rules for the developers so they can do what they want and make the most money doing it. Three council members don’t care what the taxpayers want.”
Haskins, Perry and Stallman generally vote for contested planning and zoning petitions while Groeteke and, to a lesser extent Reuter, are more likely to cast no votes.
Tullock said he filed a complaint with the Missouri Attorney General’s Office, claiming the County Council did not follow its own rules when filling the vacant seat.
Myers argued that because James was named first on three ballots and Kalna on the other three, there was no majority vote.
“I’m looking at these ballots and don’t see four votes,” he said. “Who in their right mind thinks this is legal or would hold up in court?”
However, County Counselor Wes Yates said there was a majority vote.
“If you recall, there was a 6-0 vote for Ms. James, and no rules were violated,” he said. “What occurred prior to the official vote was a preferential vote. It’s a poll if you will, not the official vote.
“The charter was followed by holding a majority vote,” Yates said. “That’s the vote that counted. That’s the vote that was on the record. What happened up to that point was meaningless.”
While Yates conceded the council followed the same ranking system when it chose a replacement for Jim Kasten, who resigned his District 5 seat in 2017, he pointed out he was not county counselor at the time.
“There were and there are no rules on voting for this process,” Yates said. “There are no council rules, no county rules, no bylaws and (the Sturgis Standard Code of Parliamentary Procedure), which is the secondary set of rules that the council uses, has about a dozen processes on voting, none of which has been followed in the past.
Yates said the fact that three members did not rank every candidate was not improper.
“No one in this county can direct any of you how to vote, how you are voting or if you’re voting at all,” he said.
Yates said Sturgis defines the lack of votes on a preferential ballot an abstention.
“No one can tell you that you have to vote for all eight candidates. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to,” he said. “There are undervotes (in elections run by the state). Those ballots aren’t thrown out. They’re still counted, contrary to what was discussed here earlier. You don’t have to vote for anybody.
“You can vote for one, or you can vote for none. Sturgis even talks about this.”
Yates emphasized that the council has no written procedures to replace council members.
“The council has never voted on rules for this procedure. It didn’t this time (or with the two previous times, when Kasten resigned and earlier in 2017 when Hendrickson was chosen to replace Boyer, who was elected assessor). Should it have? Absolutely. But it didn’t, so in some respect, this is the wild, wild west, folks.”
Yates chastised the two members who ranked James last, without mentioning Groeteke and Reuter by name.
“Ms. James, I’m embarrassed for you. You are a fine lady. This is not about you,” Yates said. “Ms. James, who helped write the charter, was ranked lower, the lowest in fact, by two members and lower than someone who was not qualified to hold this position. The entire council was advised of that fact (that one candidate wasn’t qualified) by me, giving this candidate the benefit of a doubt in hopes that that situation could change right up until the last minute, when he was allowed to speak before the council.
“So everyone’s upset with one set of members doing what another set of members did,” he said. “Shame on everybody in this room, but that’s politics.”
Yates said those unhappy about James being appointed have three recourses – run for the seat when it is on the ballot in August 2022, start a recall campaign under rules set down by the charter or, as Tullock said he did, file a complaint with the state Attorney General’s Office, the Jefferson County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office or his office.
The third alternative, he said, could lead to a quo warranto action, in which a judge decides, based on evidence presented, whether a person has the legal right to hold an office.
“Absent extensive proof, none of which exists at this time, I am far from inclined to take that kind of action,” Yates said.
“St. Louis County just went through that a few months ago to determine who their chair was and it cost St. Louis County about $275,000. Does anybody in this room want to spend $275,000 for this kind of nonsense? I’m a taxpayer and I don’t.”
Reuter said regardless of the legalities, all council members should have followed the process set down by its chairman.
“Failing to rank all candidates did a disserve to all the candidates, and even to our newest member,” Reuter said. “This action disrespected her by placing a cloud over her public service, through no action of her own.”
Hendrickson said when he found out three members did not rank all the candidates, he felt disrespected.
“We do not have rules of order on how to replace a council member, but I looked into how it was done in the past, and there were no problems then. This seemed like the fairest way to go about it,” he said. “I’m not going to point fingers at anyone, but this seems like a way to create more division, and as the chair, I’ve been working to avoid that. There were several excellent candidates, and I believe Vicki James would have ultimately been chosen had everyone followed the procedure. She will do an excellent job. There’s no doubt in my mind about that.”
Perry said she voted her conscience.
“I completely stand by my vote,” she said. “I picked the person who I thought would do the best job, and I didn’t want to discredit anybody by making them second or third or fourth. I’m sorry if anyone feels that they might be slighted.”
Haskins said he did not feel compelled to follow the procedure to the letter because it wasn’t official.
“I voted for one person,” he said. “In my mind, our job was to choose the best person.”
Stallman agreed.
“I felt voting for the one person I thought was the best was the important thing. There was no reason to vote for any of the other people. I’m sorry if they felt they were not treated right.”