Four Officials Excluded From Audit Process

The Kirkwood City Council is banking on transparency as it works to regain public trust, turning to the city’s newest elected leaders.

In a move hoped to demonstrate integrity in the process, the three council members elected in April will work with independent legal counsel to review findings from the upcoming audit of Kirkwood Electric, which overshot its budget by $15.6 million last year.

This leaves four officials who were sitting on the council when the overspending occurred on the sidelines: Council Members Gina Jaksetic, Paul Schaefer and Mark McLean, and Mayor Liz Gibbons.

“We really felt it is important to separate all the findings from anyone who’d been involved, even on council. The goal is to bring transparency as much as possible in this process while protecting the integrity of the investigation,” Council Member Sheila Burkett said during a Nov. 5 work session.

The council was discussing the upcoming independent forensic audit of Kirkwood Electric, which is set to begin in January and expected to take up to six months to complete.

Burkett and fellow Council Members Justin Arnold and Deb Lavender were selected to review and recommend an audit firm earlier this year, in large part because they have only been on the council since being elected in April 2026. Those three will take the lead as the audit begins in January 2027.

The council’s vote to segregate the audit reporting team was split, with McLean joining the newer trio of council members in voting “yes.” Meanwhile, Mayor Gibbons and Council Members Jaksetic and Schaefer voted “no,” believing that the full council could maintain sufficient transparency during the audit.

Council Member Jaksetic said she has been gathering information related to Kirkwood utilities in her time on council because she is critical of decisions that have been made in the recent past regarding the city’s budget, spending and debt. She said it is important for the full council to be involved in the audit process.

“We all have the same outcome — the same goal that we are going for,” Jaksetic said. “There are several of us who have worked for the last 30 months trying

to get to the bottom of some concerns we’ve had. I am totally vested, and to be cut out of this blows my mind.”

“Credibility Is Paramount”

The council recently selected Chicago-based firm Plante Moran to conduct an audit of the past five years of finances at Kirkwood Electric, the city-owned power company.

It is likely the outside auditors will be interviewing officials and staff who were on the job from 2020 to 2025, the years being audited, which complicates the council’s role in the audit.

Council Member Arnold stressed that the move to separate all city leadership, staff and legal counsel who were present from 2020 to 2025 is designed to ensure Kirkwood residents see the audit as truly independent and not steered toward any particular outcome.

“I think the credibility of this end product is paramount for the city and the trust of its citizens moving forward,” Arnold said.

For this same reason, the audit firm will relay its findings using an outside legal team familiar with utilities — Ellinger Bell of Jefferson City — rather than through the city’s longtime legal representatives from St. Louis-based firm Lewis Rice.

Plante Moran will report any findings to a committee composed of Council Members Arnold, Burkett and Lavender, and the outside legal team. Those three elected officials will then report any findings back to the full council, and ultimately the public.

The deficit spending at Kirkwood Electric was discovered in late summer of 2025. The employment contracts of former Kirkwood Electric Director Mark Petty and former Chief Administrative Officer Russell Hawes were terminated by the city in the wake of the deficit.

Four Officials Excluded From Audit Process

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