Leaders of a bipartisan Missouri House committee investigating Speaker Dean Plocher over allegations of misconduct said Monday that there is no timetable for when the inquiry will conclude.
State Rep. Hannah Kelly, a Republican from Mountain Grove and chair of the House Ethics Committee, spoke to reporters following a roughly three-hour closed-door meeting of the committee on Monday afternoon. It was the committee’s first meeting since December and the first since outside counsel was hired to help conduct the investigation.
Kelly said she expects the committee will meet again before the legislative spring break begins on March 14.
But beyond that, there was little else Kelly or the panel’s vice chair, Democratic state Rep. Robert Sauls of Independence, were able to say because they are bound by House rules that require proceedings of the ethics committee to be confidential, with none of the discussions, testimony or evidence gathered made public until a final report is issued.
“The ethics rules are very clear in that confidentiality is very, very important,” she said, “as is the honest hard work of making sure that the integrity of the institution is upheld.”
Plocher has been accused over the last few months of, among other things, pushing for the House to enter into a contract with a private company outside the normal bidding process; threatening retaliation against legislative staff who pushed back on that contract; improperly firing a potential whistleblower; and filing false expense reports for travel already paid for by his campaign.
The House Ethics Committee began looking into Plocher in October, and an outside attorney was eventually hired to assist the investigation.
The 10-member ethics committee is split evenly between Republicans and Democrats.
It’s unclear how far along in the process the committee is. If it has held a “primary hearing,” according to House rules, the subject of the inquiry has 21 days to answer the charges in writing.
At the conclusion of the primary hearing, the committee has the choice of dismissing the complaint, proceeding to a formal hearing or allowing the legislator to accept a sanction for misconduct, which can range from a reprimand all the way to expulsion from the House.
If the investigation proceeds to a formal hearing, the committee’s investigation is guided by the rules and the committee has 45 days after it finishes taking testimony to deliver a report to the House.
“Due process takes time,” Sauls said.
When asked last month if he had spoken to the committee or the attorney conducting the investigation, Plocher told reporters he was prohibited from saying anything about the inquiry.
“I can’t comment on that,” said Plocher, a Republican from Des Peres. “You know that.”
But on Saturday, he told a reporter from Spectrum News that he has not yet been called to testify to the committee — but that he was eager to do so.
“I welcome the opportunity to present anything I can to the ethics committee and to the people as a whole,” Plocher said.
Plocher’s troubles spilled out into the public in September, when he was accused of engaging in “unethical and perhaps unlawful conduct” as part of a months-long push to get the House to award an $800,000 contract to a private company to manage constituent information.
A month later, The Independent reported Plocher had on numerous occasions over the last five years illegally sought taxpayer reimbursement from the legislature for airfare, hotels and other travel costs already paid for by his campaign.
As those scandals swirled, Plocher fired his chief of staff. According to the Kansas City Star, that got the attention of the House Ethics Committee, which began looking into whether the staffer was protected as a whistleblower when he was fired.
Plocher even garnered attention from federal law enforcement, with the FBI attending the September legislative hearing where the constituent management contract was discussed and voted down. The FBI, which investigates public corruption, also conducted several interviews about Plocher.
This story was originally published in The Missouri Independent, part of the States Newsroom.
