Former Grandview Mayor Steve Dennis’ story shows parallels to the Karen Pletz case

News out of Grandview is looking grim for Steve Dennis, the city’s mayor who suddenly resigned last month without explanation, as the FBI began asking questions about a charity that he ran.

KSHB Channel 41, which has been light-years ahead of the story, dropped another report Monday night that appears to come closer to explaining why Dennis needed to be far away from Grandview City Hall.

According to the report, Dennis billed several expenses to the city without providing receipts, including a run of Christmas Eve purchases at department stores.

Dennis also bought several meals at local restaurants last year without providing receipts. When he did document the lunch meetings, he said they were with other local politicians. However, those politicians told KSHB that they had no memory of dining with the former Grandview mayor for those meetings.

Karen Pletz, the former CEO of the Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences, got into trouble with federal investigators for the same type of thing. Pletz was indicted in 2011 for such things as tax evasion and embezzlement. Part of the allegations against her were that she used university money to buy high-priced dinners all over town with local business leaders who later said those meals never happened, at least not with them.

Dennis’ lunch excursions were at less fashionable places, like Winstead’s and Chick-Fil-A, but still raise questions for the former politician.

Dennis’ case has another parallel with the Pletz ordeal: lax oversight from the people who should have been overseeing spending.

Pletz went undetected by her university’s board for years, despite at least more than one whistleblower letter sent to the board about her activities. Dennis, according to the KSHB report, was not pressed by city officials about the expenses he billed to taxpayers. Those city officials didn’t seem to think anything was amiss about Dennis’ lack of documentation.

Dennis has said in e-mail correspondence that he worried about going to prison. In e-mails obtained by The Pitch, he references Kansas City law firm Wyrsch, Hobbs & Mirakian, a group of trial lawyers frequently sought out by people under investigation.

The e-mail was part of a Sunshine Law request by The Pitch for Dennis’ correspondence regarding the Truman Corners development off U.S. Highway 71 and Blue Ridge Boulevard. Now called Truman’s Marketplace, the $80 million retail development has had trouble getting off the ground. The developer, RED Legacy, wants Grandview to issue bonds for about half (more than $39 million) the development’s cost. Those bonds, under the proposal, would be backed by the city. That means taxpayers would be on the hook to pay bondholders if the project doesn’t generate enough revenue to repay the debt on its own, much like the Kansas City Power & Light development does on an annual basis.

Grandview’s general fund is $14.5 million. The city has not yet approved the project.

The e-mails paint a picture of a project in distress during 2013. The Pitch will have more on this later.