County Council’s new lawyer suffered $2M loss in Jennings

The St. Louis County Council two weeks ago hired a part-time legal researcher at a salary of nearly $79,000 a year—a move that has some county government watchers questioning how carefully the council researched its new hire, Shira Truitt.

Truitt is also the city attorney of Jennings, and was in that role when the North County municipality got hit with a $2 million judgment resulting from its failure to respond in a timely way to a lawsuit filed against it. Hankins Construction had claimed the city violated its contract by halting plans for a new community center and sued. Citing Jennings’ lack of response to the claim, the judge awarded them a sum that represents about 7 percent of Jennings’ annual budget. 

Former Jennings City Attorney Sam Alton calls Truitt’s handling of the Hankins lawsuit “malpractice.” “It’s incredibly rare to have a summary judgment smash into you because you don’t know how to respond,” Alton says.  

Truitt’s hiring for the 30-hour/week job comes about six months after county voters passed Proposition C, which allowed the County Council to hire its own legal representation. Doug Moore, spokesman for County Executive Sam Page, says that Truitt is the second attorney hired by the Council since the proposition’s passage. 

“They’ve cut everyone’s budget across the board,” Moore says. “But they gave themselves money to hire two people.”

Alton was previously chief of staff for Prosecuting Attorney Welsey Bell, and regularly drew criticism, including from members of the County Council, for moonlighting in legal roles for North County municipalities on top of his work for Bell. He’s now in private practice and wonders why council members are holding Truitt to a different standard. 

“If she is working 30 hours a week on a set salary for the county and [is] the full-time city attorney for Jennings—what she does with her time, I have no clue. But that would be hard,” Alton says in a text. (Alton says he was paid $69,000 annually by Jennings.) 

Alton points out that Jennings is a relatively large municipality that has regular dealings with the county. In light of that role, he says “it makes no sense” for the council to hire Truitt to work on policy initiatives as well as suggest revisions to legislation.

Says Alton: “Who does she represent on contracts between the city and county? Grants? Negotiations? Property bids? Anything. It’s all a conflict. She’s on both sides.”

Neither Council Chair Rita Heard Days nor Councilman Mark Harder, who was critical of Alton’s second job, responded to messages seeking comment. 

Truitt also did not respond to a voicemail left at her law firm. An email sent to the address listed for the firm bounced back. In a motion asking the judge to set aside the verdict against Jennings, she argued that she was not late in responding because the case should have gone to arbitration. The city is appealing the $2 million judgment.

Truitt previously served as vice president for the Mound City Bar Association, a professional organization for Black attorneys in the St. Louis region. However, according to a motion for a temporary restraining order the organization filed against Truitt, the association issued a vote of no confidence against her in April 2020. Truitt said she would not resign. The bar association then suspended her, but Truitt refused to turn over passwords, and blocked others from accessing the group’s Facebook page and payment processing platform. She also caused a Wells Fargo investment account to be forfeited after failing to respond to notices sent regarding it, the bar association alleged in legal filings. 

The association alleged that Truitt continued to hold herself out as bar association leadership, causing confusion that was “palpable, on-going, and is unraveling the association in ways
practically impossible to calculate or cure.”

The Mound City Bar Association voluntarily dismissed its suit against Truitt about a month after it was filed.