A former employee of the Kansas Department of Commerce, who is believed to have died in a traffic accident, accused Lt. Gov. David Toland, who also serves as commerce secretary and is pictured here, of allowing politics to dictate issuance of COVID-19 grants. (Tim Carpenter/Kansas Reflector)
TOPEKA — A former Kansas Department of Commerce employee apparently found dead inside a wrecked vehicle purportedly wrote a statement to coincide with his death that accused state officials of awarding grants based on political considerations and asserted he was improperly accused of financial impropriety in handling of grants.
The Kansas Bureau of Investigation reported a vehicle registered to Jonathan Clayton, 42, of Peabody, was discovered Sunday in a ravine near U.S. Highway 50. A deceased male was found inside the 2011 Chevy Silverado, but the KBI said Tuesday formal confirmation of the person’s identity was withheld pending an autopsy. Investigators suspect the vehicle was driven off the road, where it crashed into a tree, the KBI said.
The KBI had considered Clayton a missing person for weeks, but that advisory was removed from a website after discovery of the crash.
A story by Harvey County Now said Clayton’s husband, Christopher King, confirmed the body recovered from the vehicle was Clayton.
“I love Jonathan very much, and I was hopeful that he would be found alive,” King said.
Clayton, the interim clerk in Peabody since June, had disappeared in early August as information surfaced that he could be connected to misappropriation of COVID-19 grant funding. The Kansas Department of Commerce terminated a grant to the Mullinville Community Foundation and submitted a request for return of $425,000. The state agency also made the case there were documentation problems with the initial phase of a $1.5 million grant to Peabody.
In addition, it was reported Clayton had been placed on probation in 2018 in a Pennsylvania credit card scheme. The Marion County Record reported that he still owed about $195,000 in restitution.
On Aug. 8, an email was sent to news organizations, including Kansas Reflector, purportedly on Clayton’s behalf. The email said it was being released “following the death or incapacitation of Jonathan Clayton.”
“I, Jonathan Clayton, am providing the following information in writing as I am no longer capable of testifying or providing a sworn statement,” the email said. “As this message is only being provided after my death, I pray that those named below may be reviewed for any participation in my untimely demise.”
The message asserted Lt. Gov. David Toland, who serves as secretary of the state commerce department, schemed to distort the scoring system for applicants to the Build a Stronger Economy, or BASE, grant program to direct funding in accordance with covert deals with Senate President Ty Masterson of Butler County and now-former House Speaker Ron Ryckman of Johnson County. Current House Speaker Dan Hawkins replaced Ryckman in January 2023.
“The 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,” the email said. “This can be evidenced by the inordinate number of awards for the first round of the BASE program awarded to Butler and Johnson counties.”
The offices of the Senate president and House speaker weren’t available to comment or didn’t respond to Clayton’s allegation. Neither did the commerce department.
The email purportedly issued by Clayton said he was forced to resign because he refused to distort the grant awarding process in the second round of BASE grants. Clayton was hired by the Department of Commerce in February 2020. In 2021, he was appointed director of the agency’s COVID-19 funds. He left the commerce department in late 2023.
The email also said the claim by the Department of Commerce that he didn’t provide sufficient documentation of two BASE grant awards was “unilaterally unfounded and I believe to be a form of retaliation.”
The Clayton-attributed email includes an apology that he was no longer alive or available to address the turmoil. It also said Clayton had made “several mistakes in my past” and that a life insurance policy was taken out to “hopefully accommodate those errors in judgment.”
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