When James Ryan Williams and James Montee started revising their fee office bids, they raised some eyebrows. In several bids they drastically reduced the amount of money returned to the state (in the case of Lee's Summit, by more than 40%) and somehow managed to narrowly win the fee offices and make a lot o money in the process.
Now they've caught the attention of the Associated Press:
"JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) —A friend and the ex-husband of Missouri Auditor Susan Montee have amassed millions of dollars of contracts from Gov. Jay Nixon’s
administration under a new competitive bidding system that was supposed
to eliminate political favoritism in awarding state license offices.
Attorney James Montee and business associate James Ryan Williams
won several of the lucrative contracts despite scaling back initial
promises to pay the state sizable chunks of their profits. The
difference to their pocketbooks could be an extra $360,000 they
otherwise would have paid to the state."
Today David Kerr will be resigning his position as Secretary of Commerce and replacing Interim Director Kathleen Steele Danner in the Missouri Department of Economic Development.
Kathleen Steele Danner took over after Linda Martinez resigned due to disagreements with the Governor's office.
Today, Governor Nixon cut $200 million dollars from the Missouri budget and announced 700 layoffs within the state. Medicaid payments are being reduced and Medicaid will stop taking on new clients for certain mental health services.
The names have changed, but the story sounds a lot like Governor Matt Blunt's situation in 2005, when he cut Medicaid funding. Will the media react the same way? We doubt it. Blunt was dragged over the coals for trying to balance the budget.
Reactions from some outlets, such as the St. Louis Post Dispatch, bordered on the hysteric.
Nixon Did What?
One St. Louis Post Dispatch article was titled "A Tale of Two States Waging War On the Working Poor: Missouri's Medicaid Shame" (9/21/05). The article's solution? Raise taxes, and create a new budget crisis by attaching children's health insurance to a regressive and declining revenue source (cigarette taxes). Reasoning was abandoned in the rush to bury Matt Blunt.
Another was "Two Standards? Two-Faced? Too Bad" (5/1/05). The title says it all about the tone of the piece.
These vitriolic articles were just the tip of the iceberg. The newspaper became a soapbox for one side of the issue - opposing views were only briefly mentioned and rarely elaborated.
So here's the question - now that two Governors in a row have cut Medicaid, will the press give them the same treatment?
Not long after firing career DNR employee Jim Yancey, Source tipsters saw Jay Nixon taking top aide Jeff Mazur to see the Black and Gold in a luxury box.
Go Mizzou?
Why is Mazur being rewarded? He and Jack Cardetti lied about their knowledge of water safety tests at the Lake of the Ozarks. They found out about dangerous E. Coli levels and didn’t tell anyone. To make it worse, they tried to cover it up.
It was an unconscionable violation of the public trust. But not only did Mazur escape having to take responsibility for endangering the public, Nixon thought it would be appropriate to treat him to a night out on the town.
Nixon has used a flagrant double standard to protect his aides and punish DNR employees who don’t have political connections. But then again, by protecting them he can be sure they wouldn’t release any details on his personal involvement...
Tommy Sowers is a fourth generation Missourian, a decorated war veteran and he raised $205,000 in his first quarter. At first appearance he has the makings of a contender, but closer inspection reveals a remarkably duplicitous candidate and a political disaster just waiting to happen.
For something to listen to while you read, we recommend this:
Warning Sign #1: Anemic Support in Missouri
Sowers, a Democrat, has tried to emphasize his Missouri heritage and attack Jo Ann Emerson for being more attached to D.C. than the 8th District. It looks like a conventional, if uninspired, strategy right until you see his fund-raising numbers. Then it just looks crazy.
When Tommy Sowers went searching for donors, he didn’t go to the 8th District or even Missouri. He only raised $36,200 from Missouri residents. Compare that to nearly $60,000 coming from New York.
The Sowers campaign had the audacity to brag that it raised money in 37 states. For a candidate who is stumping on his Missouri heritage and being a ‘political outsider’, why is he spending so much time fund-raising in New York City? Add all the time he’d have to spend in D.C. as a Congressman and it’d be a wonder if he ever came home at all.
Sower’s great-grandparents might have lived in Missouri, but it’s clear where Sower’s political roots really are. This is reason number one to consider him Tommy Two-Tones.
For reference: Jo Ann Emerson out-raised him in Missouri by an almost three to one margin.
Warning Sign #2: The Big Populist Contradiction
Sowers has claimed at various points that he’s running because of the poor economic state of the 8th District. He doesn’t have any solutions, but apparently his brand of populism is very popular with New York financiers.
Sowers raised $51,575 from investors and bankers. Add another $17,750 from realtors and developers and another $13,465 from lawyers.
Sowers claims he’s trying to run for the ‘common man’, but his campaign is being bankrolled by wealthy out-of-state donors. There’s a major disconnect here that’s beyond explanation, and it’s reason number two to start thinking of him as Tommy Two-Tones. Sowers isn’t even trying to reach out to people in the 8th District, does he really expect them to vote for him?
For reference: In the last four elections, Jo Ann Emerson won with more than 70% of the vote. If he doesn’t understand why she’s so popular, he doesn’t understand the district, or its voters.
Warning Sign #3: Where Are the Policies?
His campaign is uniquely light on substance: he hasn’t articulated a single policy since starting his campaign. At some point he might have to get around to doing that, but based on what we know so far we’re not looking forward to it.
In October, he told the Rolla Daily News he was going to take thirteen months to study Cap-And-Tax. In other words, he isn’t going to form an opinion on one of the country’s most important legislative issues until after the election.
We’re all for studying the issues (who isn’t?) – but if you can’t keep up with the legislative process, what good are you? At his pace he’d never vote on a single piece of legislation.
All we know is that his New York financial industry donors have a major interest in seeing Cap-And-Tax passed. As Senator Kirsten Gillibrand recently told the Wall Street Journal, if passed Cap-And-Tax “could quickly become the world's largest commodities market, growing to as much as $3 trillion by 2020 from just over $100 billion today."
Apparently they know something the 8th District doesn’t, since they were willing to give him over $50,000. The song Sowers is singing to them must be very different than the one 8th District voters are hearing.
Tommy Sowers has a serious political identity crisis. The guy doesn’t even have any policies yet, but whenever he claims to stand for something, he turns around and does the opposite. Tommy Two-Tones it is.
Our thoughts? If he doesn’t want to deal with the 8th District and its voters, he should move to New York where all his supporters are.
The Kansas City Star is reporting that Jim Yancey, a 25 year DNR employee and head of the Missouri state parks environmental section, has been fired. Yancey was responsible for withholding a set of E. coli test results in around the time frame to E.Coli-Gate.
Yancey told the press a week ago he had already been disciplined by the DNR, but apparently the Governor's office wasn't finished. As a career employee with no major political connections, Yancey was a low hanging fruit. He could be thrown under the bus without much risk of backlash. And he was.
What's striking about Yancey's case isn't that he was fired: it's that Nixon aides and appointees have done the same things and got away with their careers intact. Whether they were lying to the public or concealing health risks, Mark Templeton, Jeff Mazur and Jack Cardetti have all been protected.
Why? Because if Jay Nixon threw them overboard, they'd have no reason to keep protecting Nixon. Nixon is assuming a huge liability by keeping them around, we can only imagine how much bigger the problem would be if he let them go.
It's not like Nixon isn't afraid to break a few bones. To avoid the PR disaster of having Mark Templeton announce job cuts, Nixon needlessly rushed almost 100 DNR employees out onto the streets without exploring alternatives. A hundred jobs, just for a newspaper headline.
Can the Nixon administration really be trusted to clean up Missouri's waters, when it puts politics before EVERYTHING else?
The Missouri GOP has uploaded video of Nixon's recent press conference, in which he dodges and evades questions about his knowledge of E.Coli-Gate. When the press asked him what information he was using when he said his office wasn't aware of E.Coli-Gate, Nixon never got further than "I'm not exactly sure". After changing his answer mid-sentence at least five times, he finally gave up.
Nixon went on to claim that he has made his staffers, such as Jeff Mazur and Jack Cardetti, available to answer questions about their roles in E.Coli-Gate. The problem? He never did. The two have only issued a few highly filtered messages to the press that didn't answer any questions. Nixon could make them, but he'd rather cling to a lie that no one believes.
Nixon's discomfort is almost palpable, as is the frustration from reporters in the room.
Here is a man who wants to fix the "communication failures" that plague the DNR but can't answer simple questions about communication inside his small office. He wants to restore trust in Missouri's waters, but retains staff and appointees who have been caught lying and concealing E. coli levels in the past. Meanwhile, he fires people who actually do their jobs.
Nixon wants the inmates to run the asylum. His position is so absurd he can't even finish a sentence in defense of it. Having seen the video, are those the answers of an honest man?
So many of his problems would go away if he just gave acceptable answers to these questions. The only reason not to answer them is if he's worried about being contradicted later on. With the Senate investigation and possible use of subpoenas still looming, this is a reasonable concern for a politician with something to hide.
There's a similar pattern in his other actions. His "investigation" into the DNR, which produced no written report and whose results are being kept out of the public's eye, didn't lead to any substantive measure except the reinstatement of Mark Templeton.
By sticking with fluff, there's nothing he can be held accountable for. It leaves one conclusion standing: Nixon is still hiding information, and the threat of its release is significant enough to keep him quiet.
One hundred Missouri parks employees who did their jobs were notified by e-mail that they are being laid off, but Jay Nixon appointees who don't do their jobs are still on the payroll. We believe the decision was needlessly rushed out the door to protect Mark Templeton, who was still under suspension.
Templeton is keeping his job, while 100 DNR employees might not.
One employee remarked that the timing was "suspicious", given the DNR's recent unpopularity for withholding water safety test results - a direct product of the Nixon political machine.
The proposed cuts are expected to reduce the state parks department by approximately one eighth of its previous size, and are expected to save 3.7 million dollars this fiscal year. How that stacks up to the damage done to Lake of the Ozarks tourism by the Nixon administration is unknown.
That competent and reliable employees are losing their jobs while bumbling and dishonest political appointees keep theirs is a disgrace.
The decision also has the State Park Advisory Board up in arms, because it was never notified that the DNR was considering layoffs. Its combined experience far exceeds the tenure of Deputy DNR Director Bill Bryan, who was Nixon's CIO before becoming Templeton's temporary replacement. Ed Martin, the former chief of staff to Gov. Matt Blunt and a member of the board, has argued that the DNR should have explored other options first.
The call was rushed - the DNR doesn't even know if it can fire all 100 employees it notified, and doubtlessly some will have to stay. We think the decision and its announcement, which was sent by e-mail, after all, was rushed to protect Mark Templeton, so it wouldn't land on his doorstep so soon after being reinstated.
Innocent DNR employees are being put up on the chopping block because of the Nixon Administration's lies.
It's just one more example of the lengths Nixon will go to in order to protect his political appointees from the consequences of their actions. But survival instincts must also have been in play - having Templeton make the announcement would force more negative attention on his dereliction of duty, and also on Nixon, who was involved in E.Coli-Gate from the very beginning.
Jeff Mazur, Jack Cardetti, Mark Templeton and others all still have their jobs. It's a miscarriage of justice.
Tony Messenger of the St. Louis Post Dispatch has written an excellent column about Nixon's shaky memory. One of the crucial points in E.Coli-Gate was when the public discovered that several top level Nixon aides were lying about their knowledge of the test results, and Nixon is waffling about it.
E. Coli? What E. Coli?
When did Nixon realize his staffers were lying? From the words of the man himself: "I'm not exactly sure . . . This is a very busy job . . . It's not a single data point . . . I just don't remember"
The response is difficult to explain, given that he suspended one of his appointees to the DNR for giving him a misleading report about beach closures. When that happened, he told the public he was outraged. Why are guys like Jack Cardetti getting away without even a scolding?
Tony Messenger asks three questions about how Nixon got the information that nobody in his office knew. All three deserve answers.
Question One: Did it come from spokesman Jack Cardetti, who admitted knowing about the testing results even when he told reporters that nobody in the governor's office knew of them?
Our thoughts: The answer to this question has to be yes, with the addition of fellow aide Jeff Mazur. Cardetti and Mazur both knew about the tests early on. Either they lied to Nixon or Nixon instructed them to lie, and since Nixon has been protecting both of them we have to conclude it's the latter.
Question Two:Did it come from chief of staff John Watson, who was the liaison with the DNR and had met with Director Mark Templeton around the time the results were available?
Our thoughts: Almost certainly yes. The Senate investigation is focusing on the meeting in question (June 5) because of a big tangle of unanswered questions. Joe Bindbeutel went to great effort to prepare a report for Watson on the test results for this meeting, but his participation was suddenly and without explanation canceled. (Note: His lack of participation can't be verified because a Sunshine request for security tapes outside the Governor's office was refused due to terrorism concerns.)
Templeton may very well have delivered the report anyway, but we don't think the June 5 meeting is necessarily the first time that John Watson heard about the E. coli tests. Bindbeutel's unexplained exclusion from the meeting, and the end of his attempts to inform the Nixon administration, suggest he was told to be quiet. Question Three:How, indeed, did it come about that Nixon himself passed on incorrect information to the public?
Our thoughts: In a best case scenario, Nixon's staffers lied to protect him - but that doesn't leave a plausible account of why the test results were concealed in the first place. The explanations given by the DNR are too contradictory to take seriously, and Joe Bindbeutel has been caught lying so many times we'd have a hard time trusting him even if he was under a subpoena.
At this point it's almost a question of which lie you want to believe - there have been so many problems and omissions and deceptions that sorting through it all is an enormously complicated task. Fortunately, the Senate investigation has the resources to untangle the situation. For the final word we await their account, but we would note the substantial amount of evidence, reviewed in our earlier posts, that suggests Nixon knew very early on.
Nixon administration officials and appointees, out of sheer relief that concealing E. coli levels in the Lake of the Ozarks never got anyone sick, have been telling everyone there was never a health risk. As it turns out, they may have been very wrong.
When the news about E.Coli-Gate first emerged, The Source saw the need to end the dangerous involvement of politics in water safety tests. But it appears that the Nixon administration may have already done its damage.
Templeton, now returning to the DNR with Nixon's blessing, says there was no health risk.
A source in the DNR’s staff has told us that an eight year old girl, who swam in the Lake of the Ozarks in the same time frame as the E.Coli-Gate tests, is recovering after a difficult battle with an E. coli infection. To protect her and her family's privacy, we can't make more specific details available, but we’re told that she is in good medical hands.
We’ve received tips that a number of other people have gotten sick as well, but this is the most severe case reported to us so far.
If this is true – and we’re hoping it isn’t - it is the worst possible outcome. The girl and her family have our deepest sympathies, and the best thing we can do is make sure that this will NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN. Knowing the consequences, what the Nixon administration did was more than morally reprehensible. It goes beyond words to know that they exposed children to a serious health risk for the sake of politics, and then tried to cover it up.
During the period we’re told that the girl visited the lake, more than half of the tested areas exceeded safe levels, and several had higher E. coli levels than the testing equipment was capable of measuring. DNR Director Mark Templeton, restored to his post as of today by Jay Nixon, has told the public that there was no "health risk" as a result of concealing the tests. Yet the lake tested far above what the EPA says is safe.
That a situation was created where this report is plausible demonstrates the terrible consequence of the Nixon administration's politics. While they were trying to convince the public, in the face of all reason, what they did 'wasn't that bad' - an innocent child may have been struggling with a terrible illness.
The willingness of the Nixon Administration to jeopardize public safety, its attempts to obstruct outside investigations and refusal to hold anyone responsible for their actions has proved that it is incapable of reforming itself. They need to be stopped before this could happen again.
