Embattled Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher testifies to ethics panel investigating him

House Speaker Dean Plocher testified Tuesday evening before a bipartisan committee investigating him over allegations of ethical misconduct.

Appearing alongside his attorneys — Lowell Pearson and David Steelman — Plocher’s testimony took place behind closed doors. House rules require proceedings of the ethics committee to be confidential, with none of the discussions, testimony or evidence gathered made public until a final report is issued.

After an hour and a half testifying, Plocher quickly left out of a side door of the hearing room and ignored questions from reporters as he boarded an elevator. He was late for a dinner he was hosting in the House Lounge with former speakers.

Plocher has been accused over the last few months of, among other things, pushing for the House to enter into a contract with a private company outside the normal bidding process; threatening retaliation against legislative staff who pushed back on that contract; improperly firing a potential whistleblower; and filing false expense reports for travel already paid for by his campaign.

The allegations sparked a formal investigation by the House Ethics Committee, which hired an outside attorney to lead the inquiry. He’s also faced calls for his resignation by several members of the GOP supermajority.

His attorneys in the ethics investigation are longtime figures in Missouri GOP politics. Pearson has represented the House Republican Campaign Committee, while Steelman is a former lawmaker who also served several terms as a member of the University of Missouri Board of Curators.

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Roughly an hour after Plocher left the hearing, state Rep. Dale Wright, a Republican from Farmington, showed up to testify. He is chairman of the House Administration and Accounts Committee, which is in charge of purchasing for the House.

After Wright testified, the committee heard from state Rep. Chris Sander of Lone Jack, a Republican who has called for Plocher to resign.

The ethics committee was scheduled to meet again on Wednesday evening.

Plocher’s troubles spilled out into the public in September, when he was accused of engaging in “unethical and perhaps unlawful conduct” as part of a months-long push to get the House to award an $800,000 contract to a private company to manage constituent information.

A month later, The Independent reported Plocher had on numerous occasions over the last five years illegally sought taxpayer reimbursement from the legislature for airfare, hotels and other travel costs already paid for by his campaign.

As those scandals swirled, Plocher fired his chief of staff. According to the Kansas City Star, that got the attention of the House Ethics Committee, which began looking into whether the staffer was protected as a whistleblower when he was fired.

Plocher even garnered attention from federal law enforcement, with the FBI attending the September legislative hearing where the constituent management contract was discussed and voted down. The FBI, which investigates public corruption, also conducted several interviews about Plocher.

Since the ethics committee began its probe, Plocher has continued facing scrutiny.

In December, The Independent reported Plocher spent $60,000 in taxpayer money to renovate his Capitol office, including converting another lawmaker’s office into a makeshift liquor cabinet Plocher referred to as his “butler’s pantry.”

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The Kansas City Star reported last month that Plocher was the only legislator in the past three years to be granted exemptions from House travel policies, allowing him to spend more than allowed to upgrade a flight to Utah and get reimbursed for a flight to a conference in Hawaii.

Soon after, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that the annual payroll for the speaker’s office ballooned more than $250,000 since Plocher took over.

And Monday, The Independent reported on bipartisan criticism of Plocher after his office arranged a series of meetings in the state Capitol between GOP legislators and an out-of-state technology vendor.

This story was first published at www.missouriindependent.com.

This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: Dean Plocher testifies to Missouri House ethics panel investigating him