Rays stadium bonuses become St. Petersburg council campaign fodder

The last of the city employees who received bonuses for their work on Tampa Bay Rays stadium and Historic Gas Plant District negotiations have returned them ahead of a Friday deadline to do so.

But fallout from the awards quietly handed out to 17 high-level employees of Mayor Ken Welch’s administration in violation of state law may linger.

Five out of six candidates running for St. Petersburg City Council say they’ve been met with questions and concerns from residents about the $250,000 in combined bonuses. For some of the candidates facing off in November, the topic has eclipsed all others as they knock on doors to sell themselves to voters citywide.

“In the past little while, it doesn’t get brought up all the time, but out of all the topics it’s definitely the No. 1 thing folks want to know about or talk about,” said Mike Harting, a proponent of the stadium deal competing in the District 3 race to represent Shore Acres, Snell Isle, Northeast Park and Placido Bayou. “It doesn’t seem like anyone has an issue with the team, the folks that were on the receiving end. It’s more of a trust-in-government kind of question.”

Indeed many of the residents raising questions have said they support the stadium deal. But echoing some sitting council members for and against the project during a meeting this week, they voiced concern over the secret nature of the awards.

The bonuses — six of $20,000 or more — were first reported by the Tampa Bay Times on Aug. 16, a day after they were paid out and three weeks after they were authorized by the city’s human resources director. One City Council member said he wasn’t aware of the raises until the report and another said she learned how the raises were funded through the Times’ reporting.

“I’m being asked every time I’m knocking doors,” said Torrie Jasuwan, seeking to unseat council chairperson Deborah Figgs-Sanders from her District 5 post representing Lakewood Estates, Greater Pinellas Point, Maximo and Bayway Isles. “Many people that we’ve spoken with have brought up the bonuses and have voiced their frustration with the lack of transparency surrounding them.”

Due to vacating seats, there will be two new faces on the dais next year — both possibly former opponents of Welch from the 2021 mayoral race. There is a potential third: Jasuwan is in a horse race with Figgs-Sanders, an incumbent and ally of the mayor. Those outcomes on Nov. 5 could change the dynamics of the eight-member council and create a board less pliant to the Welch administration.

Welch, through an emailed statement sent by a spokesperson, said the one-time payments have been discussed publicly with council members and addressed fully.

“We acknowledged that our current longstanding process on file did not align with the state statute that addresses this issue and, as a result, I asked for a full review of all of the City’s compensation policies and procedures,” the statement read. “We are focused on progress, the real issues that impact our residents, and creating opportunity for everyone to succeed in St. Pete.”

Three days after the Times reported the bonuses, Welch revoked the payouts and said employees had to return them. Then City Administrator Rob Gerdes, who received one of the two largest payments of $25,000, suspended Human Resources Director Christopher Guella for five days without pay “due to negligence and inefficiency in the performance of assigned duties.”

Guella took responsibility in an apology he emailed to top staff.

Gerdes told council members in a meeting last week that discussions about giving out bonuses happened before the City Council voted 5-3 in July to approve hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer support for a Rays stadium and redevelopment of the land around it.

He said the bonuses weren’t legal, but would’ve been if the city’s policy from 2005 governing such payments had been up to date. He said the city could have “thought about it differently.”

At that meeting, Figgs-Sanders said she agreed with her colleagues’ concerns about communication when discussing the bonuses. In a text she, alone among the current candidates for office, said she had not encountered questions about the bonuses while campaigning.

“I just wish, you know, that there’s a way that we can better improve our communication in regards to something of this magnitude,” Figgs-Sanders said.

Transparency at City Hall, candidates told the Times, has become a campaign issue, as has the council’s role of controlling the purse strings and checking the administration’s power.

Jasuwan said she encountered questions while knocking on doors in Shore Acres over the weekend, where residents of the neighborhood also sounded off on flooding and needed drainage upgrades. Money from the water resources department budget partially funded bonuses for two of the city’s attorneys, which Jasuwan said is why news about them “hit that neighborhood so hard.”

Wengay Newton, who served on the council from 2008 through 2015, is seeking a return to represent the District 7 neighborhoods of Childs Park, Jordan Park, Bayview, Broadwater and part of Central Oak Park. He said he’s heard not only from residents, but lower-level city employees who worked on the deal and were upset they didn’t receive a bonus that went to administrators making six-figure salaries.

“Yeah, a lot of them were pissed,” said Newton, who finished fourth in the 2021 St. Petersburg mayor’s race ultimately won by Welch. “People are talking about it. ... They just say it’s a shame what happened.”

Newton also serves on the Florida Commission on Ethics, which investigates complaints against public officials. An activist, Brad McCoy, shared with the Times an ethics complaint he filed against Welch over the bonuses and a voicemail from that board confirming receipt of the complaint. McCoy has also filed an ethics complaint against Figgs-Sanders for voting in favor of projects backed by political donors.

Corey Givens, Jr., who made it to the District 7 runoff election with a second-place finish in the primary, said there was “a lot of mumbling at church on Sunday” while he was preaching at New Faith Free Methodist Church, where churchgoers were “bringing it up to me.”

“It’s a big issue. The issue is the issue of transparency,” he said. “If council doesn’t know, how will constituents know?”

Pete Boland, who came away with the most votes in the District 3 race, said he’s heard “only small chatter” about the bonuses. Boland finished fifth in the 2021 mayoral race. He and his opponent, Harting, are both in favor of the stadium and Gas Plant deal like current District 3 council member Ed Montanari, who took issue last week with council not having a say over doling out the bonuses.

“It lends itself to the role of City Council and the way that the mayor and City Council interact and how they should interact,” Harting said. “The better topic or issue is how the candidates view themselves serving on City Council and what they would do in situations like this, or how they think City Council should act differently to make sure things like this don’t happen again.”