Fee office investigation closes without harm

The widely reported investigation was officially unconfirmed until Cummins’ announcement.

Speculation swirled that Gov. Matt Blunt or one of his associates may have committed illegal acts by forming third-party management companies to run fee offices that issue driver’s licenses and car tags. State Democrats lobbed claims of wrongdoing against the Republican governor, who, like his predecessors, awarded control of fee offices to political supporters.

The U.S. attorney said Blunt was never a target of or witness in the probe.

“Any allegations or inferences to the contrary are uninformed and erroneous,” said Cummins in the news release, which noted that his office wouldn’t comment further.

The FBI also declined to elaborate on the investigation’s genesis, purpose and findings.

Tangled web

The Kansas City Star broke the investigation story in April. Soon after, other news outlets, including the Associated Press, picked up the story.

“If the governor is doing a public action, and then people close to him are enriching themselves off that action, and there’s an attempt to conceal who ultimately profits from those actions, that would certainly be illegal, and I think that’s exactly why the FBI is looking into these (actions),” said Missouri Democratic Party spokesman Jack Cardetti in April when Springfield Business Journal reported on the investigation.

The investigation even led some state Republicans to criticize the governor’s handling of the fee offices. Republican Reps. Mark Wright of Springfield, Ryan Silvey of Kansas City and Jim Lembke, Charles Portwood and Jim Avery of St. Louis County unveiled a fee-office reform plan in July.

The reform plan, which Wright said is still a go even though he’s hitting term limits, calls for fee offices to be awarded only to nonprofit groups and local government agencies.

“Even if it’s not illegal, it doesn’t look good,” Wright said. “I sincerely believe that some type of bipartisan legislation needs to be crafted. Then we won’t have to worry about this problem ever in the future.”

The group plans to craft its reform bill before the legislature convenes in January.

Response

Following the U.S. attorney’s announcement, Missouri Republicans lambasted Missouri Democrats for causing the FBI investigation and the media for reporting it.

“Missouri Democrats’ lies about alleged wrongdoing in the Blunt administration, irresponsibly reported as fact by the liberal media, were exposed today as a farce,” the Republican Party said in a news release the day Cummins issued his announcement. “This is a dark day for politics and journalism in Missouri.”

Blunt spokesman Spence Jackson also responded. “It affirms what we’ve said all along, which is that we’ve overseen this process with integrity and with a clear focus on saving money for customers and improving efficiency for taxpayers,” Jackson said, referring to Blunt’s fee office privatization plan in mid-2005.

There are 183 fee offices in Missouri, all private and operated under the direction of the state Department of Revenue. Shortly after taking office, Blunt privatized the final 11 state-run offices, which were collectively losing $2.5 million a year. Included in the privatization was Springfield’s downtown fee office, now operated by Leslie Carter.

Local fee office agents Carter and Ben Newhouse, both Republicans and Blunt supporters, said Cummins’ announcement was what they expected. After all, they said, they never saw anything fishy from the Blunt administration’s handling of the fee offices.

“I think the lesson learned is that it clearly shows how important it is for individuals, journalists and the political parties to get the facts straight in order to prevent those baseless rumors and spending (of) taxpayers dollars unnecessarily,” Carter said.