Tishaura O. Jones has been attacked in the local news media for submitting travel expenses to the city as St. Louis treasurer, but this reporting overlooks the fact that other city offices are given larger budgets for discretionary expenses than the sums for which Jones was reimbursed.
KMOV reporter Lauren Trager did a story on January 12 (since followed by other local media) about Jones billing taxpayers for a total of $22,000 in travel expenses in her first four-year term as treasurer. In fact, Jones self-reported that the sum is closer to $27,000 over the four years.
However, the mayor is allowed an annual expense account of $30,000, the circuit attorney of $32,000, and the comptroller of $15,000. Over the past four years, the mayor has received $120,000, the circuit attorney $128,000 and the comptroller $60,000 for discretionary expenses without having to submit a single receipt. The treasurer has no such discretionary fund.
All three offices also have separate expense accounts for travel. To get their discretionary funds, elected officials can either submit receipts and receive reimbursements, making it nontaxable. Or they can receive it as part of their paycheck monthly, and then they do not need to account for how the taxpayer money is spent – which is how most of them do it.
Jones is running for mayor, and none of her opponents holds any of these three other citywide offices. She is running against one citywide official, the president of the board of the aldermen, and a number of aldermen.
These officials all receive $4,200 a year for discretionary spending, or $16,800 over the past four years that Jones billed the city for $27,000. They don’t have to submit receipts for these funds to the comptroller, as Jones does.
Budget Director Paul Payne told The American that the budgeted amount for the board’s “elected official expense” fund has been a total of $121,800 per year for all the aldermen, including the president.
In fact, Jones is the only one of these city elected officials who does not have a discretionary expense account – because she opted out of it when she came into office. Instead, she chose to submit her expenses to the comptroller and be reimbursed. And travel is the only expense she receives reimbursements for.
“I wanted to make sure that we made everything transparent,” Jones said. “I decided I would submit receipts for my travel.”
As such, they were available to Sunshine Law requests when her opponents did opposition research on her. Trager acknowledged she received all of Jones’ travel expenses from “a source.”
Jones said all of her travel expenses are “Sunshineable, unlike the aldermen where you don’t know what they spend those funds on.”
Trager included multiple quotes from Aldermen Steve Conway and Joe Vaccaro saying they were “outraged” at her spending, as if it were a secret.
However, the Board of Aldermen approve the Treasurer Office’s Parking Division’s travel budget every year. In June 2016, the aldermen unanimously approved a $20,000 travel line item for the 2017 fiscal year, which is for the entire department. And those numbers have been the same or similar every year since Jones was in office.
When asked if any aldermen have ever questioned her travel expense before approving her travel budget, Jones told The American, “Never.”
“As treasurer, I expect the people to hold me accountable for my actions,” Jones said at the press conference. “I also expect the media to be fair and tell the entire story, which has not happened thus far. What all of this tells me is that my becoming mayor must pose a threat to somebody.”
Jones said her mayoral campaign has been subjected to “baseless and suspicious” attacks for months.
“I have been attacked for giving a second chance to a man who has paid his debt to society, attacked for filing bankruptcy almost 20 years ago, and attacked for making a trip to meet with officials of the NAACP to try to persuade them to bring their national convention to our city,” Jones said.
“I say these attacks are suspicious because I have not done anything either remotely wrong or unlawful to justify the aspersions being cast on my character.”
The NAACP meeting in Las Vegas is one of the travel destinations where Jones did business. She also traveled to the Democratic National Convention; conferences for parking service providers, securities professionals, the National League of Cities, Rainbow PUSH and the Congressional Black Caucus; and meetings with Missouri legislative leaders, the treasurer of Chicago, the Missouri State Women’s Political Caucus, the Cities for Financial Empowerment Coalition, the Clinton Global Initiative and Operation HOPE, where she serves on a board.
State Sen. Jamilah Nasheed, who recently endorsed Jones, said that she stands with Jones because she refuses to be sidetracked by the media smears initiated by her opponents.
“What matters to the City of St. Louis voters and residents here is fixing our public school system,” Nasheed said. “What matters is creating new jobs. What matters is stopping crime in our streets and making our city a safe place to be. Those are the issues that really matter.”
The recent “bias media attacks” are a hit on the entire community of people of color in St. Louis, said Lew Moye, president emeritus of the St. Louis Chapter of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists.
“It is clearly an attempt to portray black folks as corrupt and inept,” Moye said. “We are calling on all those of good will in our communities to stand and speak against media bias and let our region know that black women do matter.”
Jones remains undaunted.
“I want to say it loud and make it clear that nothing will stop this campaign,” Jones said. “Nothing will take us off track or distract us from our mission to bring new and fresh ideas to this city.”
