File photo of a car parked on a St. Louis street.
St. Louis Treasurer Adam Layne plans to extend a parking-management contract for one year that will pay $2.35 million to a company that, along with its chief executive, has donated $38,000 to Mayor Tishaura Jones’ political campaigns.
The original three-year contract for more than $7 million with Hudson and Associates LLC, of St. Louis, was signed April 10, 2020, when Jones was still serving as city treasurer.
In the weeks that followed, the deal came under scrutiny from both local news and members of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen, not least because the contract paid a set fee of nearly $2.35 million per year without the company having to meet performance goals or show evidence of cost-savings.
In late May 2020, then-City Counselor Julian Bush cited, in a letter to a city alderman, a number of irregularities about the Hudson contract, which was set up to manage on-street parking meter maintenance and collections from nearly 8,000 meters, as well as parking enforcement.
Bush pointed out the Board of Aldermen had not approved it, nor had the treasurer obtained the countersignature of Comptroller Darlene Green, as required.
“My conclusion, then, is that this purported contract is not valid,” Bush wrote at the time.
Eleven companies bid for the contract in 2019, but Hudson made the cut as one of three finalists through a convoluted scoring process outlined at the September 25, 2019, meeting where Hudson got a nearly perfect score.
Critics of the deal noted that Jones did not recuse herself from the selection process or acknowledge Hudson’s major financial role in her campaigns. Hudson’s website even featured an endorsement of the company’s performance from Jones.
None of those concerns, however, were noted in a February 27, 2023, letter that Layne sent to Sheila Hudson, the firm’s principal and chief executive, in which he notified her of his intent to “exercise the right to extend the initial Term of the Agreement for an additional one-year period.”
Layne, in his dual role as city parking supervisor, concluded by stating that “We look forward to continuing to work together to provide seamless, efficient, customer friendly, and cost-effective parking operations for the city of St. Louis.”
Neither Layne nor Hudson returned calls seeking comment.
Cara Spencer, the current 20th Ward alderman, slammed Layne’s plans to renew the Hudson and Associates contract.
“This contract was ridiculous to begin with — a parking enforcement contract with no performance metrics,” Spencer wrote in a statement to the RFT. “Which means this private company is paid to enforce public parking without being required to issue a single ticket and no oversight regarding where and when parking is enforced.”
Spencer also criticized Layne for choosing to extend the Hudson contract without any public discussion and without a hearing of the Parking Commission or the Board of Alderman — oversights that are “really a slap in the face of government transparency and due diligence. Especially at a time when the office is running in the red for the first time in years.”
The Missouri Supreme Court in early March issued a ruling that allowed the city treasurer’s office to keep control of revenue from city parking funds, reversing a key part of a city judge’s 2018 decision on the issue.
The high court’s unanimous decision ended a lawsuit that crawled along for more than six years over who may control the many millions of dollars generated by city-owned buildings and parking garages, parking lots and meters, and how much of that money goes into the city general fund.
Jones, while still serving as treasurer, on March 16, 2020, announced she was suspending parking enforcement because of the COVID-19 crisis.
On April 10, less than one month later, she signed the $7 million, three-year contract with Hudson and Associates to manage parking meter maintenance and enforcement, saying it would eventually save taxpayers $600,000.
Meanwhile, a lawsuit filed in January 2021 seeks to invalidate the Hudson and Associates deal and remains active in St. Louis Circuit Court.
The "taxpayer enforcement action," filed by plaintiff Jesse Irwin, who formerly ran for 10th Ward alderman, argues that the contract should be declared "null and void" by the court because it wasn't appropriately approved. Irwin’s lawsuit seeks injunctions preventing the city and Hudson and Associates from taking further action related to the contract.
Irwin’s lawsuit argues the contract should have been subject to the city's professional services ordinance. That would require it to be approved and recommended by a five-member committee, with only two members from the agency seeking the contract, according to the suit, which alleges that condition wasn’t met with the Hudson and Associates pact.
The lawsuit also alleges Jones didn't disclose that Hudson and Associates "had made a substantial contribution to her campaign" for city treasurer, also required by the ordinance.
Felice McClendon, a spokeswoman for the treasurer’s office, told TV station KSDK shortly after Irwin’s lawsuit was filed that the work was competitively bid, and that it's worth $119,000 a month, down from $370,000 a month under the previous vendor.
Irwin, in a statement issued over the weekend, wrote he intends “to pursue a second legal challenge to this shameful contract, which was once again given to one of Mayor Jones’ campaign donors, this time by her unelected appointee.”
In a deep dive about the Hudson contract that appeared in October 2020, local journalist Jack Grone wrote in the McPherson Publishing independent news website that “Hudson’s bid had racked up 97 out of 100 possible points under the treasurer’s scoring system, including the maximum 15 points in the ‘References’ category.’ The person topping the list of references in Hudson’s winning bid? Carl Phillips, [then] parking administrator for the city of St. Louis.” Grone noted that the scoring system for the contract encompassed six categories, appeared “arbitrary” and that Hudson’s bigger “competitors received no points at all for their references, even though some of them offered examples of previous work in major cities such as Chicago and Washington.”
Grone’s story also pointed out that Hudson gets a guaranteed “flat rate” of $195,600 per month, or about $2.35 million during each year of the three-year contract.
This arrangement stands in contrast to the terms of the compensation deal paid to Conduent, the previous holder of the city parking management contract, to which Hudson was a sub-contractor. Conduent “earned a commission for each parking citation issued and a specified amount for each meter it oversaw,” Grone wrote.
Figures released by the treasurer’s office show that the city’s parking revenues and booting fees ranged from $5.6 million to $5.855 million for the years between 2014 and 2019.
Between 2020 and 2022 — the years of the Hudson contract — parking revenues and booting fees were $4.09 million, $3.37 million, and $4.1 million, respectively, even though the treasurer’s office raised meter fees, parking fines and parking garage charges significantly in 2021 and 2022.
Spencer, who’s running to represent the new 8th Ward in the April 4 aldermanic election, stated that “it’s time we take a hard look at how parking is handled in the City. We all pay parking tickets. The revenue is generated on public infrastructure — our streets — and should go into making those streets safe — or at the least drivable — which many of our streets are not.”
A previous version of this story incorrectly identified Jesse Irwin's job title. We sincerely regret the error.
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