TROY, Mo. – The Missouri Ethics Commission is looking into a decision where Mayor Ron Sconce of Troy cast the deciding vote regarding his office’s pay raise.
The night before the mayoral election in April 2022, Sconce had to break a 3-3 tie, which motioned to give his position a $20,000 pay raise.
“I told the mayor, and I told him the state statute and city ordinance that he was violating if he voted that raise and he did it anyway,” Darrel Huffman, the resident who filed the ethics complaint, said. “I was sitting there at the meeting when he looked at the city attorney and said, ‘What should I do?’ in the vote and the city attorney told him, ‘Well, it’s up to you.’”
The mayor agreed to the consent order from the ethics commission as well as paying the fine to avoid a hearing and a possible larger fine. Sconce said at the time, he and the city attorney thought his actions were legal.
“Sconce voted to break a tie on a vote in which he had recognizable stake; there is probable cause to believe that he violated the conflict-of-interest prohibitions,” the commission’s order said.
“I wasn’t voting on my pay; the election was the next day and there was a chance that I wouldn’t be in that seat,” Sconce said in a 2022 interview. “The optics weren’t good.”
Huffman said the mayor should be forced to pay back the raise, taking the matter to the attorney general.
“I just really want a government that… is transparent with the community,” he said. “I wish the Missouri Ethics Commission never had to make that ruling but they made the right one.”
In addition to the accusation of improper conduct, Sconce was also accused of a separate violation of failure to report expenditures.
Missouri Ethics Commission – Troy Mayor by KevinSeanHeld on Scribd
