BY: TIM CARPENTER
Kansas Reflector
Outside consultant hired to review $150 million infrastructure grant award program
TOPEKA — The Kansas Department of Commerce issued a blanket statement Thursday describing as “categorically false” the allegation attributed to a recently deceased former agency employee that Lt. Gov. David Toland influenced distribution of state infrastructure grants based on political factors.
The statement issued by agency spokesman Patrick Lowry said the death of Jonathan Clayton in an apparent traffic accident was unfortunate, but the Department of Commerce believed it necessary to “provide clarity regarding allegations made publicly” in an email released to coincide with Claytons’ disappearance in early August. That email took on greater urgency when a body was found Sunday in a smashed truck registered to Clayton, 42, of Peabody. The corpse hasn’t been officially identified as Clayton, but a family member and published reports made the connection.
This email linked to Clayton included an assertion Toland, a Democrat who serves as secretary of the Department of Commerce, put a political spin on the scoring system for applications for grant funding from the Build a Stronger Economy, or BASE, program. Allegedly, the distortion was part of a deal with Republican Senate President Ty Masterson of Butler County and now-former GOP House Speaker Ron Ryckman of Johnson County.
The death message claimed “resulting awards from both rounds of the program are inaccurate due to the orders from Toland to alter the application scores after a pre-selected group of awardees were determined.”
Lowry’s rebuttal statement said Clayton’s allegation that Toland undermined integrity of BASE grant awards was inaccurate. The statement likewise said a claim that Toland forced Clayton to serve on a volunteer theater board was “categorically false.”
“While there is no evidence of any impropriety at the Department of Commerce, as an extra precaution an independent third-party contractor is doing a full review of all ARPA grants,” Lowry said. The third-party entity selected to examine grant awards wasn’t identified.
Meanwhile, Masterson spokesman Mike Pirner said “the Senate president never requested or even had a conversation about altering the department’s scoring.”
“It’s important to emphasize that legislative leaders had no role in the department’s scoring of BASE projects,” Pirner said. “The president was involved merely in his capacity as a member of the SPARK executive committee.” He was referring to the Strengthening People and Revitalizing Kansas, or SPARK, committee that was assigned the job of issuing grants made with federal COVID-19 pandemic appropriations.
BASE infrastructure grants were made in two rounds in Kansas. In the first round, 35 grants were issued from a pool of $100 million. Johnson and Butler counties received 47% of that funding. Concerns were expressed about geographic distribution of the money. In the second round, 38 recipients shared $50 million available through the program. Butler County received nothing in the second round, while Johnson County secured 8% of that total.
The Aug. 8 email to news organizations and others, which was attributed to Clayton, said he was forced to resign from the commerce department because he refused to distort scoring on the second round of BASE grants. Clayton was placed in charge of the agency’s COVID-19 grants in 2021.
Clayton left the department in late 2023, but commerce officials said they didn’t know when hiring him in early 2020 that he had been convicted of financial offenses in Pennsylvania. He was placed on probation in 2018 in a check-fraud case and reportedly still owned $195,000 in restitution.
“Under existing Kansas law, we are unable to perform national level criminal background checks for the position that Clayton held,” said Lowry, the commerce department spokesman. “Our process for vetting prospective employees included online searches, social media reviews and reference checks, which unfortunately failed to uncover his felony convictions. He would not have been hired by commerce had we been aware of these convictions.”
Lowry said the state agency would assist local, state and federal agencies investigating Clayton’s work at community-based organizations in Kiowa and Marion counties that could have been victims of fraud.
Clayton, who accepted a job in June as Peabody’s interim clerk, vanished in early August about the time information became available that Clayton might be involved in problems with a $425,000 Department of Commerce grant to the Mullinville Community Foundation.
In addition, the state agency raised an alarm about documentation gaps associated with part of a $1.5 million grant to Peabody that could involve Clayton.
Clayton also claimed in the email to reporters that allegations he might be responsible for misuse of BASE grant awards in Mullinville or Peabody were “unilaterally unfounded and I believe to be a form of retaliation.”