KC’s well-paid top MoDOT official charged with assaulting fiancée’s 15-year-old son

UPDATE (Oct. 25): A spokesman for the Clay County prosecuting attorney says the case against Niec was dismissed Oct. 19, 2016

UPDATE (Nov. 8): Niec is no longer a MODOT employee, effective Nov. 7, 2016.

The leader of the Missouri Department of Transportation’s local office faces a misdemeanor assault charge for an episode involving his fiancée and her 15-year-old son.

The boy told police that Daniel Niec, district engineer at the Kansas City headquarters of MoDOT, punched him after he tried to intervene when he saw Niec choking his mother.

Liberty police arrested Niec, 47, on suspicion of assault after being called to his home after 11 p.m. on July 5. When police arrived, his fiancée and her son were sitting in a car outside the home. Police described Niec as being “difficult and antagonistic,” though he spoke to police after being taken to jail.

Niec said he did not slap the boy that hard because he knew he had braces. At the house, the boy had showed the reporting officers pieces of metal from his orthodontia that he said had come loose after he was punched. The officers noted that he had an abrasion about the size of a nickel on his left cheek and red gums on the left side of his mouth.

Niec was released on bond. He entered a plea of not guilty to a charge of third-degree assault. 

A faltering relationship mixed with alcohol on the night of Niec’s arrest, according to the probable-cause statement. 

Niec’s fiancée told police there were problems in the couple’s two-year relationship and that Niec had given her 30 days to find a new place to live. She said they were drinking on the night in question, and an argument started because Niec said he wanted her and her son to move out immediately.

Niec told police the fiancée had given back her engagement ring the night before the argument. He said she felt he was always telling her what to do, according to the police report. They went back and forth about who should leave.

The argument moved upstairs. The boy told police he could hear Niec yelling outside his bedroom that he needed to wake up and move out. The fiancée tried to keep Niec, who is listed in the booking sheet as 6 feet tall and 200 pounds, from entering the room. The boy and his mother told police that Niec pushed her to the floor twice and began choking her; Niec denied this. Niec said he backed off after his fiancée hit him in the chest. He said he pushed her away after she charged at him and that he tried her pick her up and move her away from the stairs, fearing a fall over the bannister.

The boy emerged from his bedroom. He told police that Niec punched him two times with a closed fist after he told him to leave his mother alone. Niec told police that the boy “came at him” and that he slapped him with his open hand.

Niec told police that he and his fiancée had argued in the past but that it had never gotten physical. The fiancée — officers observed scratches and bruising on her arm and “very slight” redness on the side of her neck — also said their disputes had not become physical in the past.

The fiancée later told police she did not want Niec to be charged with assaulting her. She was upset, however, that he had struck her son.

A hearing in Clay County District Court was scheduled for October 18.

Niec, who serves in the U.S. Navy Reserve at the rank of commander, did not respond to a voice message and an e-mail. A MoDOT spokeswoman tells The Pitch that the agency is aware of the charge and that it does not publicly discuss “employee-specific personal issues.”

As district engineer, Niec leads an office that covers nine counties and maintains 7,674 miles of road. Niec has worked at MoDOT since 1991, beginning as a construction inspector in the St. Louis district office. In 2005, he was promoted to district engineer in the Macon office.

In 2011, MoDOT closed the district offices in Macon and two other cities in an effort to reduce administrative costs. Niec was named district engineer of the Kansas City office, replacing Beth Wright, who became MoDOT’s state maintenance engineer.

For taxpayers, transferring Niec from Macon to Kansas City proved costly. In 2015, the Missouri state auditor criticized MoDOT for making $91,168 in payments related to the relocation of an unnamed employee. Niec fits the description of the employee, who received what the auditor described as “impermissible extra compensation.”

The description of the relocation expenses appeared in an auditor’s report detailing $7.1 million in road funds spent on expenses unrelated to highway construction or maintenance. The questionable spending included $30,000 to help offset a loss on a sale of residential property for an employee who transferred from Macon to Kansas City.

According to the auditor’s report, the transferred employee owned two homes and notified MoDOT that he “could not sell either property without incurring a loss.”

MoDOT agreed to pay $30,000 to compensate for the loss on the sale of a home “outside the employee’s official domicile.”

The auditor’s report criticized the $30,000 payout, noting that losses on home sales are not reimbursable under MoDOT’s relocation assistance policy. Also, the house was not located in or around Macon or Kansas City and therefore had “nothing to do with his employment.”

The employee discussed his real-estate woes with MoDOT officials in November 2012, according to the audit. At the time, Niec was going through a divorce.

Niec listed three homes in a statement of assets related to the divorce case. In addition to a house in Liberty, which the couple had purchased when Niec transferred district offices, Niec and his then-wife owned houses in Macon and in Lake St. Louis, outside St. Louis. 

Under the settlement Niec reached with his ex-wife, with whom he has three children, Niec was entitled to receive the equity in the homes in Macon and Lake St. Louis. Online property records indicate that the couple sold the home in Lake St. Louis on November 29, 2012, for $299,900, which was more than the couple owed on the house but less than the $368,500 purchase price.

The auditor’s report said that MoDOT dispersed the $30,000 payment to the employee through the state’s payroll system. An online state-salary database indicates that Niec’s pay increased from $107,565.50 in 2012 to $134,412 in 2013, and then fell to $104,895 in 2014.

In addition to the money for the real-estate loss, MoDOT paid the employee who relocated from Macon to Kansas City $21,816 in “dual-housing reimbursements” for 18 months. The auditor’s report says MoDOT policy provides for such payments to be made for up to six months.

The employee also used a home-selling service that MoDOT makes available to employees who relocate, resulting in MoDOT paying a third party $21,101.

In a response to the auditor, MoDOT said the employee had received relocation assistance “consistent with how similarly situated employees were handled.” MoDOT said several employees received dual-housing reimbursements beyond six months because of the “unique circumstances” of the agency’s restructuring, known as the Bolder Five-Year Direction.

The agency defended the $30,000 payment on the grounds that the “employee would not have chosen to sell any home but for the required move to another work location.”

The auditor’s office was unmoved by this argument. The report concluded that MoDOT could have saved $79,597 in relocation expenses if it had limited the amount of the relocation expenses to 10 percent of the employee’s salary, the policy at other state agencies.

MoDOT, the report concluded, “has little apparent justification to provide relocation assistance to its employees that are more generous than those provided to most other state employees.”