Wentzville board narrows financial-disclosure thresholds, adds CFO to filing list

The Wentzville School District Board of Education on Aug. 21 approved revisions to board policy 0342 that add the district chief financial officer to a short list of administrators required to file annual financial-disclosure statements and that set the board’s internal reportable threshold at $100 for certain disclosures. Board legal staff and several board members spent more than an hour debating the appropriate dollar threshold for what income must be reported and how the district’s rule should relate to state statutory minimums. The board’s legal advisor, Pat, said the statute’s reportable threshold is $1,000 and that the draft redline in the packet follows statutory reporting levels. “The thresholds that are set forth in the revision comport directly with what’s required by the statute,” Pat said during the discussion. He also told the board that a previously published $100 figure appeared to have been in the district policy since 2004. Several board members proposed different thresholds. One board member moved to change the policy so the disclosure thresholds for board members and employees would be $100; that motion passed on a roll call. A later attempt to amend the policy to raise the employee/administrator threshold to $500 failed on a roll-call vote. After subsequent procedural votes and motions, the board voted to approve and then to certify policy 0342 “as amended” later in the meeting. Speakers pressed two practical questions repeatedly: whether the $100 figure applied to any employer with ties to the district, and whether the superintendent’s and purchasing officer’s disclosures would be harmonized with board-member reporting. The adopted language adds the chief financial officer to the list that includes the superintendent, the chief purchasing officer and the general counsel. No criminal or civil penalties were changed by the board’s action; the board’s legal advisor reminded members that the state statute establishes reporting obligations and that the district may adopt stricter thresholds but cannot reduce statutory requirements. The board certified policy 0342 as amended before moving on to other business, and the certified version will be posted with the board’s policy library.