A felony perjury charge against Shawnee Mayor Michelle Distler appears to center around an email chain from last March that Distler said could have violated Kansas open meetings laws because it included multiple city councilmembers commenting on council business.
Distler allegedly submitted an open meetings complaint under someone else’s name to the Kansas Attorney General’s Office in March after she viewed the email chain in question.
That’s potential perjury because the online complaint form asks the complainant to attest to the truthfulness of their identity when submitting the form.
Distler made her first court appearance on Tuesday, Jan. 5 and is set to make her next appearance Monday, Jan. 11.
Email chain at heart of the case
Distler’s complaint pertains to an email chain from early March 2020 that included her, four Shawnee city councilmembers and a handful of Shawnee residents who have been vocal in the past about city government and council decisions.
The Post obtained the email records from the city of Shawnee through an open records request.
Most of the discussion in the emails pertains to the internal and, at times, contentious battle among city councilmembers over the role of council president.
Just days before the emails were sent, the city council had settled on a process for selecting a new president that included having a runoff election and a coin toss if there were a tie between two candidates. That process was needed because Distler had declined to break tie votes and indicated she would continue to do so.
The process finalized in March led to the election in December of Councilmember Lindsey Constance as council president after a 4-4 tie with Councilmember Mike Kemmling. Constance won a coin toss to be appointed president.
Former Shawnee resident criticizes Distler in emails
The email chain includes comments from former Shawnee resident Michael T. Egan, who now lives in Missouri.
In an email on which Distler and four city councilmembers, among others, are CC’ed, Egan rails against the mayor for her decision not to break multiple 4-4 ties among the council on electing a council president.
“YA’LL ARE WILLING TO TURN THE CURRENT GOVERNMENT UPSIDE-DOWN,” Egan writes at one point in all-caps, “because the chicken-mayor won’t even vote? … I have never seen a more dysfunctional city government than Shawnee. EVER.”
After two city councilmembers — Kurt Knappen and Eric Jenkins (from his personal account) reply to Egan — Distler appears to have forwarded the email chain to Shawnee City Attorney Ellis Rainey and one other person with her concerns that the email discussion is a violation of the Kansas Open Meetings Act.
“There are 4 councilmembers on this chain of emails discussing council president and 2 of them have commented,” Distler wrote. “Isn’t THIS a KOMA violation?”
There is no response from Rainey included in the records obtained by the Post.
Distler sent her email to Rainey at 3:48 p.m. on Saturday, March 7.
A criminal affidavit says an electronic record of the complaint Distler allegedly filled out under someone else’s name was produced at 4:46 p.m. that day.
Additionally, the Shawnee Mission Post requested to see the actual complaint submitted to the Kansas Attorney General’s office, but the AG’s office has since declined that request, citing an exception in state open records laws exempting records related to active criminal investigations.
Below is a copy of the chain of emails obtained from the city of Shawnee.
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