Former state rep. Betty Thompson was working part-time as a coordinator for St. Louis County’s Community Empowerment and Diversity Program Manager office. But she told the St. Louis American on Tuesday, March 1, “I walked out this morning.”
On February 28, County Executive Steve Stenger dismissed the office’s executive director Annette Slack, who is also an attorney.
“She was hardworking, a registered nurse, a lieutenant colonel in the Navy for 30 years,” Thompson said. “She was good. They walked in and got rid of her.”
Thompson said at the office’s 10 a.m. meeting on Tuesday that she told Stenger’s chief of policy Jeff Wagener that she was resigning. But before she did, she told him this, “I will not stand by and watch an African-American woman be mistreated.”
Thompson said she has been in the Civil Rights Movement too long to just sit back. Wagener asked to speak with her, but she just turned and walked out, she said.
Slack told The American she had no idea it was coming. She said Stenger’s team came to her at 4 p.m. on Monday and told her she had been using her computer to grade her students’ tests. (Slack teaches a night class one day a week.)
And they said that she helped her nieces out of a traffic ticket using county resources. She said that was not true. She did help her nieces, but did so as an attorney, not a county employee.
“I should at least been given a warning,” Slack said.
A county spokesman said he could not explain why Stenger chose to dismiss her. However, on Tuesday, Stenger appointed Ethel Byndom as interim director of Community Empowerment and Diversity Program Manager. Byndom has served as a coordinator with the office since January 2015.
According to the county’s statement, “Slack, who was hired in 2015, left County employment at the end of February.”
Thompson said she helped get Stenger elected, but she strongly disagreed with this move.
“It’s a lot of crap,” she said.
Ironically, given the allegation over the fixed ticket, Stenger recently created a furor when he wrote a letter to a district judge on behalf of Michael Saracino II, a nephew of John Saracino, then Stenger’s director of constituent services (he since resigned) and a key member of Stenger’s campaign team.
The younger Saracino was sentenced in December to 24 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to possession and intent to distribute more than 1,000 kilos of marijuana.
“Based on my experience with Michael and his family, I respectfully request that you grant him leniency in your sentencing for the crimes he has committed,” Stenger wrote to the court.
Stenger said he met Saracino when the young man served him at one of his family’s restaurants. “He provides excellent service to all of his customers,” Stenger wrote to the judge.
