Realtors PAC pours $10,000 into Woolston's Joplin City Council campaign

Big money continues to come into Joplin city and school races like never before.

A few moments ago, the Re-Elect Woolston the Tornado Mayor Committee filed a 48-hour report indicating that it had received a $10,000 contribution from the Missouri Association of Realtors PAC.

The Re-Elect Woolston the Tornado Mayor Committee filed its organization papers with the Missouri Ethics Commission Friday, listing James D. Hardy, Joplin, as treasurer, and Woolston as deputy treasurer.

Woolston is one of six candidates running for three at-large council seats. Other candidates are Harvey Hutchinson, Miranda Lewis, Trisha Raney, Ryan Stanley, and Jim West.

The Joplin Globe and those juicy page one rumors

The Joplin Globe spent a considerable amount of space in today's edition exploring whether City Councilwoman Trisha Raney lives in the city limits,

The reason this is a story, the Globe notes, is because of "rumors and Facebook posts."

I am not one of those purists who believe that rumors have no place in the news. Often they play a prime role in the things that happen and therefore, they should be reported and the truth should be discovered.

Debby Woodin, who wrote the page one story, has had a long and solid journalistic career with the Globe. What a shame that the editors are now using her to chase down rumors about Bill Scearce and Trisha Raney.

The story makes it clear that Raney lives in Joplin. The headline does not.

"Council member says she has moved," the headline reads.  If people are not familiar with this story, that headline is certainly not going to make them want to read it. For those who are familiar, it makes it look as if there is still some doubt about where Ms. Raney lives.

The subhead reads, "City Clerk: Council packets delivered to Trisha Raney at Joplin address."

A better use of the time might be doing some research to see where these stories are starting. The rumors, combined with the Globe headline (there are going to be people who will just scan the headlines and say, "Sure, she says she lives in the city" and never bother to read the story) may be enough to make a difference in the April 8 election.

The rumor has already been given credence by the Globe's regular "guest columnist" Anson Burlingame on his blog:

It seems that Trish Raney, very much in my gun sights as a candidate, lived in Joplin when she was last elected. However over the last couple of years she evidently began a relationship and later married a man living in Webb City. Supposedly she now lives in Webb City with her husband but still owns a home in Joplin.

The question of course becomes is she a legal resident of Joplin, which she must be to run for City Council. I make no attempt at a legal judgment on that point. But if someone actually lives “out of town” but still owns property in Joplin, that does not sound like a residence, at least to me. I would think one must actually live in Joplin to qualify as a candidate for city council.

When a writer has someone "very much in my gun sights," (an unfortunate, but telling remark), he had better make absolutely sure he is right. There is a reason, for instance, why I back up what I write with multiple sources and often with supporting documents.

The Globe's role in this election is being carefully scrutinized and it should be. If it wants to explore the Raney story, it needs to find out just who is planting those rumors...and it is time, long past time, that the newspaper cuts any ties to Anson Burlingame. 

Globe fails to run Burlingame's latest attack on council

Whether the editors at the Joplin Globe rejected his blast against the five City Council members or just had not published it yet and he became impatient is not clear, but Anson Burlingame's latest post debuted on his blog and not in the pages of the area's newspaper of record.

Burlingame addressed the issue at the beginning of his post:

Note: This blog was originally submitted for publication as a guest column in the Globe. Lacking such publication in the newspaper I now post it as a blog to reflect my continuing concerns about how Joplin city government is being grossly mismanaged by the Bloc of Five, council members Scearce, Rosenberg, Golden, Raney and Colbert-King.

The rest of the post features Burlingame's strongest commentary to date on the five City Council members who fired City Manager Mark Rohr:

This city is being mismanaged, grievously, by the City Council, meaning members Scearce, Rosenberg, Golden, Raney and Colbert-Kean. They are using their majority power to terminate a great leader and city employee, implication of gross misdeeds by one member of council and all sorts of other underhanded attempts to stall and even thwart the rebuilding effort ongoing in Joplin for almost now 3 years and previously approved by council.

Burlingame offers his remedy for the city's problems:

All five of those members need to be DISMISSED, run out of office, condemned by the public and all other legal forms expression of outrage for their actions. This is not democracy in action as Americans expect it. It is tyranny of the majority, a majority of good ole boys (and girls) that think they can just ride roughshod over a very angry city.

If the Joplin Globe truly vetoed Burlingame's guest column offering, it is a step in the right direction for a newspaper that has taken a hit with its coverage of city and Joplin R-8 issues.

The Globe also had to use considerable space today to counter a rumor that Burlingame helped promote that City Councilwoman Trisha Raney, one of Burlingame's Bloc of Five, is not a city resident. Though the Globe reporting totally put it to rest, I have a feeling the issue is not going to go away.

Burlingame appears to be easily swayed by those who project themselves as strong leaders. He has been wooed by master developer David Wallace (he has written about Wallace guiding him through the process) and he appears to have his views on local education spoon fed to him by C. J. Huff. 

While I would disagree with Burlingame's apparent stamp of approval of Wallace and Huff as strong leaders Rohr, from all appearances was a strong leader, particularly in the days immediately after the Joplin Tornado, but I still have a hard time believing that any group of "good ole boys" as Burlingame and others have characterized the five City Council members would have been naive enough to think that there would not be serious repercussions to firing a man widely viewed as a hero. Whatever was in the pages of the Loraine report that were not revealed to the public was enough in their view to merit his immediate dismissal. If the decision had been based on political considerations, Rohr would still be city manager because it was obvious that Rohr supporters were going to use the firing to attempt to keep council members Trisha Raney and Jack Golden from being re-elected.

When the content of those missing pages is finally revealed, we should find out more about why Tom Loraine's bill went over the $45,000 limit by so much. This has been the part of the story that has bothered me the most. An educated guess would be that once the Rohr information comes to light, whether we agree with it or not, we will have a better understanding of why the report cost so much.

Thoughts on Mark Rohr and corruption on the Joplin City Council

Mark Rohr has been one busy ex-Joplin city manager.

Let's review. In the month since the Joplin City Council fired him by a 5-4 vote he has done the following things:

-He promised to expose corruption on the City Council.

-He called the five council members who fired him liars and damned them all to hell. (He's the one who said they would get their judgment in the next life.)

-He came close to tears (that seems to be a requirement for the people the media have described as heroes of the Joplin Tornado) and shamelessly brought his children into his speech (another thing that those same heroes of the Joplin Tornado seem to like to do).

-He was hired as the new city manager of League City, Texas.

Since Mark Rohr's firing, I have watched the coverage, both online and in print and it has been, for the most part, unabashedly pro-Rohr. In its editorial pages, the Joplin Globe has done everything but tell voters that the two council members who were with the majority and fired Rohr should be voted out of office (and I am sure that editorial is coming).

In their now-independent blogs, former Globe bloggers Anson Burlingame and Geoff Caldwell have referred to the five council members as "The Feral Five," and "The Bloc of Five" with Burlingame insisting that the pages of the Loraine investigation that we have not seen have people describing Rohr as a bully. How he knows this, I have no idea, but that accusation is probably in those pages. Though it does not appear their blogs receive a great deal of traffic, both men are staples on the Globe's editorial page and Burlingame, in particular, has made it clear he intends to influence the outcome of the April elections.

The Globe has painted the five council members as the ones who are responsible for not releasing the entire report, even though the last time I looked there are nine council members, all of whom know what was included in the report...and Mark Rohr knows what is in the report, as well.

The Joplin Tri-State Business Journal also included several pages in its most recent edition that appeared slanted solidly on Rohr's side.

And those media have made Rohr's characterization of the five who fired him as being a part of a good old boy network that is intent on stopping progress from coming to Joplin, sound like a fact, instead of what is, a talking point planted by Rohr to influence coverage from people who were already inclined to be on his side.

Some questions we should consider:

-Where is the corruption that Mark Rohr promised to reveal? It was a great sound bite, but he has not produced any evidence that there is widespread corruption on the Joplin City Council. An allegedly stolen sticky note is not corruption, its elementary school name calling. Unless, of course, Rohr's corruption allegations are centered around his (successful) attempts to woo Globe Editor Carol Stark into fighting his battles with Councilman Bill Scearce.

-Why are the five council members being described as part of a good-old-boy network, when the most secretive group involved in the April city election, the Joplin Progress Committee, has received contributions from many of the major power players in the city- and none of their contributions are going to anyone who voted to fire Mark Rohr. Apparently, they don't make good old boys the way they used to.

-Why is the media acting like Wallace-Bajjali has disproven the accusations in the Loraine report? The last time I looked, all they did was provide their own version of the facts and did not disprove anything.

-Why is the media ignoring the bankruptcies, fraud accusations, and securities violations, as well as numerous lawsuits involving Wallace-Bajjali. As far as I can recall, it has never been brought up in any of the local media except for a paragraph in the Globe, which quoted Mark Rohr as saying none of it amounted to anything.

Some final thoughts

If the Joplin Globe is successful in its legal efforts to force the city to release the complete report, this is what I expect will occur:

-The report is not going to be what the Globe, Anson Burlingame, or any of the other Rohr supporters would expect. The council members who voted to fire Mark Rohr were not taken by surprise by the reaction. Rohr's influence over the Joplin Globe is well known. Two council members, Trisha Raney and Jack Golden, voted to fire Rohr, knowing full well that it could cost them their council seats. That is not the way good old boys usually operate.

-Bullying may have been a factor in Rohr's dismissal, but it was not the deciding factor. I would say there were things that occurred that the five council members saw as Rohr abusing his office. We probably will wonder why the other four did not join them in their vote. The allegations could have prevented Rohr from landing the League City position and could have landed the city in a lawsuit. When Rohr left Piqua, Ohio, he successfully sued someone who accused him of wrongdoing. I reported the following in the June 3, 2007, Turner Report:

The Family Abuse Shelter of Miami County, Ohio, is $3,000 richer, thanks to a settlement of a libel suit brought by Joplin City Manager Mark Rohr against a Piqua, Ohio, businessman who Rohr says defamed him while Rohr was Piqua's city manager.

According to an article in the March 29 Dayton Daily News, Rohr had initially won his lawsuit against Gustin, but the jury voted not to award him any money. A retrial was ordered, but will not be held thanks to the settlement.

Rohr sued Charles "Mo" Gustin after Gustin claimed police cruisers had been to Rohr's house three or four times to check out domestic abuse complaints;

Rohr said his lawyer, Grant Kerber of Troy, suggested the donation. Rohr liked the idea.

"My sole objective was to send a message that you can't go around saying untrue things about someone without repercussions." Rohr said.

Rohr said he thinks he made his point.