Troy Wonder

Troy Nash is the man.

Since the March election, when five City Council seats turned over, 34-year-old Nash, now in his second term, has ascended to what's arguably the most powerful position on the council.

Controversy, which has dogged him since before he was first elected in 1999, has followed him to the top.

In May -- sweeps month for TV ratings -- viewers across the city saw him cast in the role of the weasely politician, racing down City Hall's back stairs while Dave Helling and a cameraman pursued him with tough questions about the $150,000 in campaign money he had raised in spite of having no opponent.

Some of his colleagues on the City Council whisper that he's the next Kansas City scandal in the making. Rumor is, he's being investigated by the FBI or the IRS. In one version of recent events, he raised more than $150,000 to get re-elected to the City Council by exchanging favorable votes for contributions. In another, he's running a kickback scheme with his former office assistant, to whom he paid $16,000 to do consulting work for his uncontested campaign.

Now there's the box of Eggos.

The package of toaster waffles appears on a long receipt from Costco, along with eggs, bacon, dish soap and paper towels. The Pitch found the receipt, along with others like it, in Nash's personal campaign finance files, the ones that aren't made available to the public.

Missouri campaign finance laws state that campaign contributions "shall not be converted to any personal use."

Nash insists that everything is cool with the Eggos, though.

The state's campaign finance laws, he points out, allow politicians to spend campaign money on "any ordinary expenses" related to campaigning or serving in office.

"Boy, that's a huge net," he says. Big enough to cover groceries for dinner, lunch and breakfast meetings at his house. His constituents and supporters wolfed down the Eggos, he explains.

Joe Carroll, the Missouri Ethics Commission's director of campaign finance, tells the Pitch that Troy's interpretation of the law is correct, though the agency would investigate whether a single package of Eggos qualified as an "ordinary" expense if someone filed a formal complaint.

But Carroll says the way Nash reported the Eggos purchase is "problematic."

In the public files, which any citizen can browse at the Kansas City Board of Election's offices, the Costco expenditure shows up on the forms as part of a "reimbursement" to Nash's wife, Sherrie.

There are many such reimbursements to Sherrie -- seventeen in all. Nash also recorded ten reimbursements to other friends and family members.

Some of these reimbursements might seem dubious to anyone who's ever shopped for groceries. Many are for improbably round figures -- such as one for $1,100 paid on April 21, 1999, and another for $1,000 dated September 26, 2000. Typically, expense reimbursements end up being for unrounded sums -- such as $476.06 or $721.82.

Nash tells the Pitch that early in his first term, he frequently used the family credit card to pay for things he needed in the course of his political duties. Money would sometimes get tight, he explains, and his wife would get on him to pay down the card. So he'd often just cut reimbursement checks for campaign purchases made with the card.

Nash's most recent reimbursements to his wife, most of them made during the late summer of last year, are for amounts one would expect to see on a cash register, such as $649.62 and $454.02. "We've learned over time," he admits.

Yet Nash wrote his close friend Stan Counts two such reimbursement checks -- one for $800 on November 9 of last year, the second for $1,000 on December 12. (Counts works for the Economic Development Corporation, which receives city funds. Early in Nash's first term on the City Council, Counts won a contract to help with an urban redevelopment initiative Nash had championed.)

Odd figure. Even figure.

It doesn't matter, Carroll says.

"Reimbursements" to third parties are against the rules.

"The expenditure report should be a listing of the actual items paid for, not simply reimbursements," he explains. "Otherwise, you could pay for an entire campaign through a credit card, and the public would not know what you actually spent your money on. It's a disclosure issue."

Nash insists there's nothing scandalous about his files. Candidates write "reimbursement" all the time, he says.

Besides, it hasn't held him back yet.

Troy Nash is the man, and the mayor knows it.

After the March election, when Kay Barnes dispensed committee assignments like a hostess handing out party favors, Nash ended up with one of the most coveted.

He chairs the council's Planning, Zoning and Economic Development Committee. The chair of Planning and Zoning (or P and Z), most people who are familiar with city government agree, is the most powerful seat on the council.

Planning and Zoning is where the power is because it's where the money is.

Want to build a business on a vacant swath of land? Go to Planning and Zoning. Want to divide up a cornfield and sprinkle it with $250,000 homes? P and Z. Want a tax break to turn an abandoned downtown warehouse into hoity-toity lofts?