Courtesy photos
Personnel director Sonya Jenkins-Gray, left, claims Mayor Tishaura Jones, right, wants to get rid of her for political reasons.
A mysterious after-hours trip to Jefferson City involving two St. Louis city employees was the subject of a court hearing Friday—and will likely be front and center at another hearing that will determine whether a city director gets to keep her job. The hearing was set for this morning, but needed to be postponed after City Hall was shut down due to the yesterday's snow.
The July 3, 2024, trip was taken by the director of the city’s department of personnel, Sonya Jenkins-Gray, who oversees the hiring and firing of thousands of city employees. The city is now using that trip to try to fire her. Jenkins-Gray’s attorney, Ron Norwood, on Friday described the trip in milquetoast terms, saying it was for “partly business and partly personal reasons.” However, an attorney representing the mayor said the trip played out under “very troubling circumstances.”
Jenkins-Gray admits she used a city vehicle to drive to the state capital that day, but says that she repaid the city the travel’s $170 cost. She alleges in a lawsuit filed last month that Mayor Tishaura Jones is using the infraction as a fig leaf to justify firing her for political reasons.
However, in court Friday there was much that suggested the jaunt was an atypical one.
The city’s lawyer, Reggie Harris, said that Jenkins-Gray brought with her the personnel department’s chief administrative officer, Anthony Byrd, and that Byrd later recounted in a deposition in "excruciating" detail about being told by his boss to get a city vehicle and go with her to the state capital.
“After midnight, [Byrd] was with his boss,” Harris said, indicating that whatever personal reasons Jenkins-Gray had for ordering the trip, it lasted hours.
A court filing made by the city last month claims that while in Jefferson City, Jenkins-Gray had an “encounter” with her husband, the activist Reverend Darryl Gray.
Gray disputes this, telling SLM, “I saw my wife one time in Jeff City that day and I didn’t even speak to her. She was driving by with one of her staff.” He added, “Our personal business should not be a factor in the director’s ability to do her job.
“I think that people who are paying attention to this know exactly what it is,” Gray continued. “What the mayor doesn't realize is that these kinds of hatchet jobs on public officials like the director of personnel will only prove to come back and haunt her in this election.”
At one point on Friday, Harris asked Judge Joan Moriarty if more specific details about the Jefferson City excursion should be discussed in open court. Moriarty indicated they didn’t need to be.
Neither Jenkins-Gray nor Norwood responded to emails asking about the reason for the July 3 trip. In his conversation with SLM, Darryl Gray declined to elaborate on what he was doing in Jefferson City that day, beyond saying he was there for personal reasons, or if his personal matters there were connected to hers.
As part of Jenkins-Gray’s lawsuit against the city, the personnel director had asked Moriarty to pause the city’s disciplinary process against her. Norwood argued at Friday’s hearing that there had been numerous, potentially improper phone calls between Jones’ chief of staff Jared Boyd and the chair of the Civil Service Commission, which Norwood argued is tantamount to a lawyer in a case having improper private communication with the judge presiding over it.
Norwood added it was unprecedented for such an important person in City Hall to face termination over a $170 matter. Harris disagreed, saying that it was Jenkins-Gray’s conduct—whatever that may have been—that was unprecedented.
More details would have likely come to light this morning when Jenkins-Gray was to appear before the Civil Service Commission. Despite Norwood’s request, Moriarty ruled that the hearing should take place as planned. It will now need to be rescheduled once City Hall reopens.
