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ST. LOUIS — A Department of Personnel employee at the center of a scandal that led to the firing of the former director is no longer with the city in the wake of an audit that found a department employee racked up 5,700 miles on city vehicles in 2024.

The internal city audit, conducted by Comptroller Donna Baringer’s office, does not name the employee, but the Post-Dispatch has previously reported that former Department of Personnel Chief Administrative Officer Anthony Byrd was known for his frequent use of city vehicles, racking up hundreds of miles on cars checked out from the Municipal Garage. And testimony from a former co-worker earlier this year suggested that Byrd was once intoxicated when he drove her home in a city vehicle.

An employee at the Department of Personnel’s reception desk said Byrd no longer worked at the department. Another Department of Personnel employee answered Byrd’s city phone number and said he no longer worked for the city. Byrd, whose city email address was inactive, could not be reached for comment. His last day of city employment was about three weeks ago.

The Department of Personnel would not confirm Byrd was the employee in the comptroller’s audit who had put thousands of miles on city vehicles but released a statement from interim director John Unnerstall saying the department appreciated the “diligence” of the comptroller’s team.

“Following the completion of our internal investigation into the misuse of a City vehicle by a Department of Personnel employee, we can confirm appropriate action has been taken,” Unnerstall said in the statement. “We remain committed to transparency, accountability, and the responsible use of City resources.”

Byrd was at the center of the scandal that ultimately led to former Mayor Tishaura O. Jones’ historic March firing of Sonya Jenkins-Gray as personnel director, the first time since the 1941 creation of the city’s civil service system that a mayor had ousted a leader of the mostly independent department. Jenkins-Gray, who reemerged last week when Gov. Mike Kehoe appointed her to the new ӣ����Ƶ Board of Police Commissioners, had Byrd check out a city vehicle to drive her to Jefferson City where her husband, the Rev. Darryl Gray, was meeting with his ex-wife.

During unprecedented public hearings this winter to hear the city’s case for firing Jenkins-Gray, her lawyer said Byrd went out to dinner with Gray, and attended family gatherings. Jenkins-Gray testified she considered Byrd her “right arm” in the department.

And when Gray borrowed Jenkins-Gray’s car to drive to the capital on July 3 of last year, Jenkins-Gray decided to also head to Jefferson City and asked Byrd to check out a city car. (Jenkins-Gray has maintained she went to retrieve personal papers from the car her husband took to Jefferson City, though she has declined to say what those papers were).

“I trusted and believed that he could get a car because Anthony always drove city cars,” Jenkins-Gray testified in early January.

The comptroller’s audit, spurred by a whistleblower complaint, said its review of Department of Personnel vehicle usage found 5,718 miles recorded during 14 vehicle requests that had city cars checked out of the municipal garage for 86 days. The employee had the car out an average of nine days at a time and racked up as many as 870 miles in one use, according to the audit.

The mileage was put on the cars during a roughly six-month period between February and August 2024, according to a person familiar with the matter.

City vehicles are not supposed to be driven outside of the city limits without authorization and can’t be used for personal use except commuting to and from work with authorization.

The city comptroller’s office couldn’t verify the vehicles were used for work, so it recommended the Department of Personnel secure $3,300 in mileage reimbursement to the city based on the excess mileage and a 64-cent-per-mile reimbursement rate.

In its response to the audit, the department said it would back the comptroller’s office trying to recoup the mileage money.

“Regarding the reimbursement of any funds owed by the employee in question, the Department of Personnel does not have the operational capability to directly mandate the reimbursement, however we will support all efforts made by the Comptroller’s Office to this effect,” the department wrote.

Further, the Department of Personnel said it will no longer allow its employees to check out city vehicles without written authorization from the director, and it recommended the municipal garage, controlled by the comptroller’s office, also make reforms to prevent abuse. All city employees should be required to provide proof of department authorization to the municipal garage manager before being allowed to check out a city car, the Department of Personnel wrote in its response.

“We recommend that the Municipal Garage review its communication and tracking processes to help prevent and mitigate potential misuse of City vehicles in the future,” the department said.

Byrd’s use of city vehicles happened while Baringer’s predecessor, Darlene Green, was the comptroller. Green in the past had allowed some of her employees to use city-owned take-home vehicles, including the manager of the municipal garage.

In an interview, Baringer, who was elected in April, said there was a policy governing city employees checking out vehicles but it wasn’t being enforced. She said rules on city cars seemed to have loosened during the pandemic but she said her office is now tightening them up again.

“From now on, anyone who wants to take a car from the fleet must have a signed document from their manager,” Baringer said.

Baringer said her office is looking at the legality of whether it can seek the $3,300 in reimbursement from either the former employee or the Department of Personnel itself.

Byrd was hired by the city in 2017 and worked in the Department of Personnel before being transferred to ӣ����Ƶ Lambert International Airport. In July 2023, a few months after Jenkins-Gray was hired, Byrd transferred back to the Department of Personnel.

During public hearings designed to make it harder to oust the head of the city’s civil service without cause, Jones’ office argued that Jenkins-Gray, hired by Jones in 2022, had put Byrd in the middle of a personal family matter by not telling him why they were driving to Jefferson City. The trip stretched on until midnight as Jenkins-Gray later had Byrd drive her to a Maryland Heights Casino where her husband had gone after his trip to the capital, then to her home and then to a friend’s house.

During the trip, she asked her employees to process a promotion for Byrd. She has maintained the promotion and corresponding raise was in process before the trip.

During the hearings, one of Byrd’s co-workers in the department, Biannca Lambert, suggested in her testimony that Byrd had driven a city vehicle while intoxicated, though when the incident occurred was unclear.

“You just talked about the fact that you told the director that you were in a vehicle with Anthony, in a city vehicle, where he was driving drunk, correct?” Jenkins-Gray’s attorney Ron Norwood asked Lambert.

“I said that the worst thing that Anthony could do to me would be to report that, yes, I was in a vehicle with him while he was drunk and I was drunk,” Lambert responded.

Austin Huguelet of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.