After longtime Alabama lawmaker John Rogers got caught misusing public money and resigned from office, nearly $100,000 meant to help his district instead collected dust.

There was no one to distribute the grant funding to schools, libraries, neighborhood associations and other nonprofits in the legislative district Rogers represented in Birmingham and other parts of Jefferson County.

“Since the federal investigation, indictments, and subsequent conclusion of the federal cases, the perpetrators have been held responsible by the justice system for their wrongs,” says a letter from Michael Brymer, an attorney for the Jefferson County Community Service Fund.

“None of this, however, does anything to right the wrongs to the citizens who could have benefited from and used those funds to better district 52,” Brymer wrote to the Jefferson County Commission last month. “But each of you can play a small part in doing just that.”

Brymer asked the commissioners to return the unused $98,510 for the district’s new representative to distribute to the community.

For every dollar that local residents and visitors spend in Jefferson County, one penny flows into the Jefferson County Community Service Fund, a pool of money for lawmakers to dole out grants to community groups.

Each state senator in Jefferson County gets roughly $243,000 and each state representative gets roughly $100,000 to hand out every year.

But when Rogers pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges and resigned in March and his seat sat vacant, the community service fund had to send the unspent $98,000 back to the county.

Helen Hays, a spokesperson for the county commission, told AL.com that they can’t send the unspent money back to the fund for the district’s new representative to use. She said state law requires that the money go to the county’s general fund to pay for roads, sewage projects, and other needs.

“Any monies that were remaining (not disbursed) come back to the County’s General Fund per state statute,” Hays said in an email. “The Jefferson County Community Service Fund will get its funding for the next fiscal year shortly.”

The Community Service Fund came under scrutiny as Rogers, his personal assistant and another state lawmaker were convicted in federal court for misusing nearly $200,000 of the funds in a kickback scheme.

Rogers had represented District 52 – which includes parts of Birmingham, Fairfield, Homewood and Mountain Brook – in the Alabama House of Representatives since 1982. The district had no representation in the House for nearly seven months until Democrat Kelvin Datcher won the seat on Oct. 1.

“Each committee member wanted to explore every opportunity possible to find a way for the cities, schools, and organizations of House District 52, and by extension its citizens, could achieve the same benefit that every other house district has realized this past fiscal year,” Brymer wrote in the letter to the county commission dated Sept. 24. “After all, the poor choices of a few should not jeopardize the citizens of district 52.”

Federal prosecutors said that between 2019 and April 2023, Rogers directed about $400,000 of public funds away from the community service fund to the Piper Davis Youth Baseball League, which was operated by Rep. Fred Plump.

Plump then sent back nearly $200,000 of that money to Rogers’ assistant Varrie Johnson Kindall, according to court records, and she then deposited the money in a personal bank account for herself and Rogers to use for credit card and mortgage payments.

All three of them were sentenced to federal prison. Rogers started his 13-month sentence after Labor Day. Johnson Kindall started her three-year sentence in August.

Plump, who began serving a one-year sentence in August, was the first to plead guilty and resign from office in May of 2023.

But his district didn’t suffer from a lapse in community funding.

Five months after Plump resigned, Travis Hendrix was elected to the District 55 seat. Since then, he allocated the full $98,510 to 21 recipients across parts of Birmingham and Fairfield, according to records on the fund website. That included two high schools and a middle school, Lawson State Community College, four public libraries, AIDS Alabama and Birmingham AIDS Outreach, and workshops for single mothers and domestic violence victims.

Under state law, funds can go to the following recipients:

• public schools, roads, museums, libraries, zoos, parks, neighborhood associations, athletic facilities, youth sports associations, sidewalks, trails, or greenways;
• performing arts;
• nonprofit entities that have received funding from the United Way of Central Alabama within the last 12 months;
• police and fire departments and the sheriff’s office; and
• assistance programs for low-income residents that use the county’s public sanitary sewer system.

Prosecutors also said that Rogers and Johnson Kindall diverted more public funds back to themselves through another local nonprofit in 2019. According to court records, Rogers diverted $10,000 to the nonprofit, and its founder paid back $1,800 to Rogers and Johnson Kindall. Later, Rogers publicly identified the founder – whose nonprofit was unnamed in court records – as George Stewart. Stewart is the founder and director of the American Gospel Quartet Convention.

During the most recent funding cycle, the community service fund committee rejected a request for $10,000 in funding for the gospel quartet, the fund’s records show. The meeting minutes don’t name which lawmaker recommended the funding for the group.

Brymer told AL.com that the request was denied because “it was unclear how the citizens of Jefferson County would benefit from the intended use.”