Like most citywide elected officials, Aldermanic President Lewis Reed and Recorder of Deeds Sharon Q. Carpenter drive taxpayer-funded cars with a modest luxury package of accessories.
These vehicles are purchased for the officials, largely without their input.
“When they said packages were attached, I didn’t know what it meant,” Carpenter told the American yesterday about her company car.
“We all have the same car, different years.”
(Actually, Circuit Clerk Mariano Favazza elects not to drive a City vehicle, according to Fred Dunlap, City supply commissioner.)
It so happens that the only citywide elected officials for whom the City purchased vehicles during the period the State Auditor’s Office reviewed City finances (in response to a citizen petition) were Reed and Carpenter. So they were the only officials whose cars were mentioned in the first four reports issued by state Auditor Susan Montee on Tuesday.
However, a price tag n a reasonably modest $25,567 n was provided only for Reed’s car in the auditor’s report. Carpenter, we are told, received “a sedan with similar options at a similar price.”
This may explain why Reed’s routinely purchased vehicle (at a modest price) led the news stories produced by Associated Press and the Post-Dispatch concerning a set of audit reports that everyone immediately recognized as being unspectacular.
The first four reports concern the Board of Aldermen, Board of Public Service, Department of Personnel and Supply Division. More are to come.
Indeed, the largest price tag mentioned in the first four reports n $234,215 for a “traffic signal detection system” n is not even mentioned in the Post story, though this system cost nearly 10 times what the City paid for each of Reed’s and Carpenter’s cars.
Dunlap admitted he didn’t know what a “traffic signal detection system” is, though he signed off on the purchase. He directed a reporter to the Street Department, where a message was left yesterday with Director Todd Waelterman.
So why the fuss over a $25K car purchased routinely as part of someone’s compensation package?
Like the “traffic signal detection system” n which cost ten times as much as Reed’s car, and which the Post overlooked entirely n Reed’s car was listed as an “emergency purchase” when it did not meet the criteria for that designation.
Dunlap doesn’t get it.
Dunlap said, “Mr. Reed needed a car. I purchased him a car. Did he ask for specific luxuries to come with the car? No. I didn’t ask for luxury packages on anybody’s car. The items the auditors consider to be ‘luxury’ are things that came with the car.”
The apparently standard “luxuries” made their way all the way into the lead of Jake Wagman’s story at the top of the Post’s Metro digest mini-section yesterday, which bids up “seat warmers and other perks” on the vehicle purchased for Reed n and for Carpenter, though her car is buried in the middle of the story, with no insulting details about “perks.”
Perhaps Wagman led with Reed’s car because only Reed’s car had a price tag quoted in the auditor’s report, and reporters love to quote numbers. So why was only Reed’s car price-tagged in the report?
Dunlap couldn’t explain that.
The two cars were mentioned (but only Reed’s was name-tagged) in the auditor’s report on the Board of Public Service. Marjorie L. Melton, president of the Board of Public Service, was called yesterday twice and did not return either call.
Samantha Brewer, public affairs coordinator for the State Auditor’s Office, could not explain why Reed’s car was described in detail and price-tagged, yet Carpenter’s only summarized.
“It was nothing personal against Mr. Reed n it was just the way it was written in the report,” Brewer said.
Brewer expressed puzzlement that the news reports had focussed on what seemed to her a small and insignificant item, so a reporter tried to explain St. Louis politics to her, in brief.
“Is the other car owner … white?” Brewer asked, as it began to make sense.
“And Mr. Reed black?”
Yes n and yes.
“I can make the other auditors aware of that, but I’m sure they don’t care either,” Brewer said.
Perhaps this also has something to do with the fact that Mayor Francis G. Slay has nothing whatsoever to fear from Sharon Carpenter in the 2009 municipal elections, while he has been attempting a scorched earth policy on electable African Americans n and has been succeeding in getting the Post-Dispatch to play along with him.