Carpenters union lawsuit alleges former leader OK’d questionable ad contracts, pay raise | Law and order

ST. LOUIS — The Mid-America Carpenters Regional Council is accusing Al Bond, the prominent former carpenters’ union leader in St. Louis, of entering into questionable advertising contracts and directing staff employees to give him a larger paycheck than the union’s board had authorized.

In a federal lawsuit filed in St. Louis last week, the union says Bond improperly entered into advertising contracts with two firms, Interrail Outdoors LLC and Foxpoint Interactive LLC.

The lawsuit also accuses Bond of retroactively raising his salary without authorization from the board of trustees and using union funds for personal expenses, including a CPAP machine (used to treat sleep apnea) and season tickets to the Fox Theatre.

The lawsuit is the latest indication of financial mismanagement at the once-powerful St. Louis-Kansas City Carpenters District Council, which the United Brotherhood of Carpenters dissolved without explanation in September. Bond, who served as executive secretary-treasurer, was fired and management of the council, for years a political force locally, was moved under the Chicago office, which was renamed the Mid-America Carpenters Regional council.

Though the union has said little publicly about what prompted the sudden dissolution of the St. Louis-Kansas City council, documents have surfaced that shed some light on the union’s problems. An investigation by the Post-Dispatch found major accounting changes in the union’s most recent federal filing, and Douglas McCarron, head of the national office, has said the union was investigating “financial malfeasance” at the St. Louis-Kansas City council.

But the lawsuit against Bond and the two outdoor advertising companies has included the most detail yet on the financial problems that prompted national union officials to step in. Both companies are owned by James Neumann, according to the lawsuit, who owns a house in Glendale and also lists an address in Arizona.

In January 2020, Bond entered into a $4 million contract with Interrail to erect three digital billboards in St. Louis, Kansas City and Wichita, Kansas, where the St. Louis council maintained offices.

But Bond didn’t bring the agreement to the union’s executive committee until a year later, in January 2021, after he had already paid $3 million to Interrail, according to the lawsuit. He paid the other $1 million after the committee approved the purchase.

Only one of the three billboards, in Wichita, has been built despite the $4 million in payments. Those payments, the lawsuit says, were “well beyond the standard costs to purchase and construct digital billboards in St. Louis, Kansas City, and Wichita.” They also do not appear to show up in the union’s disclosure forms filed with the Office of Labor-Management Standards.

The lawsuit seeks the return of the money paid to Interrail, arguing the agreement was “predicated on an illegal act.”

In another deal, in February 2021, Mark Boehms, the chair of the Carpenters Joint Training Fund, entered into a 32-year deal with Foxpoint to sell advertising space at its property at 8955 East 38th Terrace in Kansas City, which is just across Interstate 70 from Kauffman and Arrowhead stadiums, the lawsuit says.

The training fund, which is affiliated with the union, at the same time assigned its advertising space rights to the St. Louis council. In June, Bond made a similar, 32-year deal with Foxpoint for space at its facility in Wichita, and the next month he inked a 32-year agreement with Foxpoint at the union’s headquarters on Hampton Avenue.

The contracts purported to split advertising revenue with 70% going to the union for the first seven years, but they allowed Foxpoint to deduct 15% for brokerage fees and costs relating to design or production, installation, taxes and fees.

Any revenue generated by the contracts, the lawsuits says, would be inconsistent with the union’s nonprofit status and “create an undesirable tax burden on the St. Louis Council and the Union.”

The Mid-America Carpenters, represented by Jim Martin of Dowd Bennett, wants the court to declare the Foxpoint contracts void, arguing they were “illegally entered into by Bond.”

Bond also spent $1,300 in union funds for a CPAP machine, $900 for medical care for his daughter, and $4,500 for season tickets to the Fox Theatre for his wife and himself, the lawsuit says.

In addition, the lawsuit says that the board authorized a salary increase for Bond in January 2021, and the next day Bond told his staff to issue a paycheck based on the increases, constituting an unauthorized retroactive increase.

Bond’s salary had risen by more than $100,000, to $303,000, since taking the top job at the union in 2015, according to federal filings. The paycheck referenced by the lawsuit, $17,899, suggests a $465,000 annual salary based on a biweekly pay schedule.

Bond does not have a lawyer listed and did not return a request for comment. Neumann, the owner of the advertising firms, also did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for the union also did not respond. Boehms, who is vice president at Interface Construction, also did not immediately respond to a message left at his office.

Updated at 4:30 p.m. Monday, March 14.(tncms-asset)62ae2a84-6362-11ec-9396-00163ec2aa77[1](/tncms-asset)(tncms-asset)7b0a589c-9bce-11ec-8d35-00163ec2aa77[2](/tncms-asset)(tncms-asset)dd8aba74-26d1-11ec-8dfc-00163ec2aa77[3](/tncms-asset)