Mayor Stephen Jones on Monday said ending Worth Thomas Consultants’ time as the city’s lobbying firm was a joint effort between District 41 State Rep. Kabir Karriem and Ward 6 Councilman Jason Spears.
The council voted 4-0 at a work session Wednesday to give the Jackson-based firm the required 15 days’ notice it would terminate its contract for providing the city lobbying services on the state and federal level.
Mayor Stephen Jones vetoed that decision Friday, but Worth Thomas emailed him a signed resignation letter Monday that was effective immediately – making Jones’ veto a moot point.
“WT Consultants does not feel it is productive to continue its working relationship with the City of Columbus,” the letter, which Jones provided to The Dispatch, reads. “Achieving mutual collaboration, to work on behalf of the City of Columbus and its residents, has been WT Consultants’ primary goal, yet mutual collaboration has been met with resistance and has not been reciprocated.”
Worth Thomas Consultants has worked with the city since 2022 and was charging a rate of $72,000 per year – paid in $6,000 monthly increments. At Spears’ urging, the council began discussions in October about letting go of that contract, citing poor communication between the firm and city council, as well as ambiguous results.
But Jones told The Dispatch on Monday that Karriem (D-Columbus) revealed his “personal vendetta” against Worth Thomas Consultants began shortly after he won the Democratic nomination for mayor in May. Karriem supported Jones’ primary opponent Leroy Brooks.
“I asked Kabir … what he was going to do,” Jones said. “The first thing that came out of his mouth was ‘Getting rid of Worth.’ So, I think it was a personal vendetta … and it’s not my job to get into someone’s personal vendetta with somebody else. My job is to look out for the city.”
Since the council’s vote Wednesday, Jones said he also had reason to believe Karriem was trying to influence what the council does next.
“I’ve already received a call from another lobbyist in Jackson saying he’s talked to Kabir already, and Kabir is going to help him get the votes to be the next lobbyist,” Jones said.
If the goal was to replace Worth Thomas Consultants with another lobbyist, Jones said, it would have made more sense to wait until the contract expired Dec. 31.
“For it to happen like this, it seems like somebody just wanted to say, ‘I’m the reason why,’” Jones said.
Karriem applauded the council’s decision to jettison Worth Thomas Consultants, even writing in a letter to the editor published Saturday he thought the city’s relationship with the firm was “unproductive.”
But he denies he attempted to influence the decision or that he is gathering votes to get another firm the gig.
“I have nothing to do with what the city does, as far as lobbying,” Karriem told The Dispatch on Monday. “… I don’t control any votes on the city council. I don’t want to control any votes on the city council.”
Still, he stands by what he wrote in his letter to the editor, adding Worth Thomas’ claims of bringing the city $10 million in federal and state funding since 2022 contain “a lot of misrepresentation.”
As for Spears’ alleged collusion with Karriem, Jones told The Dispatch he saw Spears walking into Helen’s Kitchen, a restaurant Karriem’s mother operates, the Friday before the Oct. 7 meeting when Spears first suggested terminating the lobbying contract.
“That leads me to believe that it’s a collaborated effort to get rid of WT Consultants whether they are helping us or not,” Jones said.
Spears said he and his family sometimes eat at Helen’s Kitchen, but he denied “colluding with anyone on anything.”
Private info, fluid agendas
Before Wednesday’s vote, Spears said he had requested information from Worth Thomas Consultants but had gotten no response.
In Thomas’ letter to the mayor, he said Spears had requested information that “would violate privacy standards and jeopardize the trust and confidentiality agreements we uphold and value with all clients, stakeholders, and elected officials.”
Spears, on Monday, said he only asked for reports firm representatives had already told the council they had sent to either Jones or former mayor Keith Gaskin.
“I did not ask for any other communication between anyone else. I simply asked for what we were told … they had already been sending,” Spears said. “… I feel like getting the information they were being paid to compile for the city council in the lobbying efforts should have been more readily available to provide for evaluation to the council for us to make good, sound decisions.”
In Jones’ veto, he cited the vote was taken on an item that was not on the agenda. Since it was noticed as a special-call meeting, the agenda technically could not be amended.
Further, the vote occurred after Jones had left the meeting/work session and after Ward 2 Councilman Roderick Smith, who had joined the meeting by phone, had gotten off the line.
“It was rushed. It wasn’t on the agenda to discuss, and I had left. So, I didn’t get a chance to aid in the discussion,” Jones said. “Plus, as the mayor, I’m elected to look out for the city’s best interest.”
Spears argued that since work sessions are regular – they are scheduled for six days before each regular council meeting – the agenda “is fluid.” Besides that, he told The Dispatch, when he submitted his agenda item for the work session, it was to “discuss and consider legislative priorities and related matters.”
“I would not say it would be a stretch to believe that lobbying contracts for the upcoming session, that we’ve been talking about since October, are part of ‘related matters,’” he said.
By the time the agenda was printed for the work session, “related matters” was not included with that item.
“I don’t know who took the liberty of changing the wording on it,” Spears said.
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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