Excessive Legal Fees Lead to Audit Request by Fire District's Treasurer

Mounting legal expenses are among the concerns that sparked the treasurer of the Monarch Fire Protection District to request an audit of the agency, an that Gov. Jay Nixon ordered to be conducted on Thursday.

Kim Evans, a board member and treasurer of the district, said she was concerned when the district had spent nearly $750,000 on legal fees in the past two years.

"I couldn't stop the wasteful spending in the board meetings, and I wanted to be a responsible director," she said in a phone interview on Thursday. "I was elected by the people of our district to protect the taxpayers' dollars."

The Monarch district is headquartered in Chesterfield and serves several portions of West St. Louis County. Monarch's Station No. 2 is located at 18424 Wild Horse Creek Road in Wildwood.

Nixon's order of an audit comes weeks before the April elections, in which board president Rick Gans faces a re-election challenge for his post. Gans and Evans have been at odds on the board; in fact, Evans said she was frequently on the losing side of votes involving legal expenditures, often outvoted by Gans and board member Robin Harris.

"This (the audit) is a thinly veiled effort to make the district and me look bad," said Gans in a phone interview Friday.

Gans said union representatives have been trying to get him out of office since 2005, when he didn't agree to ask voters for a tax increase the union wanted because he didn't think it was necessary. He said Evans is the "union's candidate" and that she talks to the union at every board meeting and asks them how she should vote.

"She's there for the benefit of the employees, not the taxpayers," he said.

For her part, Evans said she was surprised by the timing of Nixon's order and that it was coincidental. 

"I can't help it that something more didn't happen earlier from the state," she said.

In fact, Evans said she started looking at the district's financial records nearly four years ago when she joined the three-member board of directors.

"When it seemed we kept spending more and more in legal fees alone, I had to admit there's just something not right about this," she said. She said other fire districts have typically spent $35,000 to $45,000 in legal fees in a year, but Monarch spent nearly $250,000 in 2010 and in the range of $500,000 in 2009.

Evans said the spending alarmed her enough to make an appointment to see former Missouri State Auditor Susan Montee last spring to ask for guidance.

When Montee was replaced by Tom Schweich and she hadn't heard any movement on the issue, she sent a letter to Schweich in January to inquire about the matter.

Gans is running for re-election and faces Wildwood resident Steven Swyers for the six-year term. Gans said Swyers' son is a firefighter.

The district has had strained relationships with its union-organized firefighters for the past several years, but union representatives deny endorsing a particular candidate this year.

Evans said her observation is that many of the lawsuits, which ran up large charges for the district, could have been nipped before they got to trial. 

"When every situation turns into two weeks of testimonies and several thousands of dollars later, the costs add up," she said. "The audit is about setting our minds at ease, and making sure that taxpayers' dollars are well spent on services to those residents."

She said she plans to reanalyze her records and to develop a more succinct report that she may make public in the next seven to 10 days.

Gary McElyea, spokesman for the state auditor's office, said an audit could take months.

He said he could not speak as to why the governor did not request an audit sooner.

"I can tell you that Auditor Schweich felt the allegations were serious enough to request the governor order this audit as soon as possible," he said. "As to the timeline, I would defer comment to the governor's office."