ӣ����Ƶ

ST. LOUIS — The Mid-America Carpenters Regional Council is accusing former ӣ����Ƶ union leader Al Bond of breaching his fiduciary duty to the union in a new lawsuit filed this week in ӣ����Ƶ Circuit Court.

The new legal action against Bond comes after a U.S. District Court judge in March dismissed the union’s federal lawsuit against Bond on procedural grounds, ruling only union members and not unions themselves could bring actions against leaders using the 1959 Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act. A union lawyer said then it planned to pursue its legal claims in state court.

Bond led the ӣ����Ƶ-Kansas City Carpenters Regional Council from 2015 until September 2021, when he was ousted without explanation by national leaders at the United Brotherhood of Carpenters. The 22,000-member ӣ����Ƶ-based council was an important force in area development projects and held considerable sway in regional politics, funding candidates and putting its weight behind major efforts such as an ill-fated attempt to privatize the city-owned airport and the Better Together-led city-county merger campaign.

Though the union was mum on its reasons, court filings and other documents eventually disclosed that union leaders were investigating “financial impropriety” by Bond. It dissolved the ӣ����Ƶ council and put its operations under the Chicago district council, which was renamed the Mid-America Carpenters Regional Council.

The new lawsuit makes many of the same claims against Bond as the federal lawsuit filed in March 2022. It accuses Bond of using union funds to pay $900 of his daughter’s medical bills, buy a $1,300 CPAP machine used for himself and purchase Fox Theatre season tickets worth $4,500 between 2018 and 2020. It also alleges he had the union pay him nearly $18,000 for an unauthorized, retroactive salary increase.

It also contains one new allegation, accusing Bond of spending $5.6 million to buy land and build and furnish a new wellness center in Kansas City without proper approval from the U.S. Department of Labor. Because the land had been owned by the affiliated Carpenters Joint Training Fund, the lawsuit says, the ӣ����Ƶ council needed a waiver from the Labor Department.

But while the waiver application was pending, Bond ordered construction to begin despite the union’s attorney advising him to wait, the lawsuit alleges. That caused the Labor Department to deny the waiver, imposing additional application costs on the union.

In addition, the lawsuit says, Mid-America “will be fined and civil penalties will be assessed by the DOL at an amount yet to be determined.”

Bond has not yet filed responses in the case, but his filings in the federal case called the national union’s dissolution of the ӣ����Ƶ council “a political coup d’etat” and “a hostile takeover.” Bond’s attorney, longtime labor lawyer John Goffstein, declined to comment on the new lawsuit. A lawyer for Mid-America, Philip Cantwell of Dowd Bennett, declined to comment.

The lawsuit is one of several filed since Bond’s ouster.

Mid-America last year sued two billboard companies owned by James Neumann over a $4 million contract outdoor advertising contract Bond approved. The union alleged Bond, who it said has “a close personal relationship” with Neumann, paid the companies $3 million before seeking board approval and that only one of three billboards was actually built. After a judge tossed the federal lawsuit, the billboard companies filed their own lawsuit in ӣ����Ƶ, and the union countersued last month.

Last week, Mid-America sued developer Paul McKee and companies tied to him over $1.8 million due on a 2020 union loan Bond approved to support the operations of the largely defunct GreenLeaf Market grocery store.