County prosecutor claims ‘no favoritism’ for new wife

Jan. 23--CHARLESTON, Wv -- At the height of the water crisis, Kanawha County Prosecutor Mark Plants was interviewed by a television reporter as he was checking into a Morgantown hotel with his new wife and the couple's five children.

This might have been the first public reference to Plants' new wife and growing family.

Plants' wife, Sarah Foster, 31, whom he married last month, is a former employee who worked for nearly four years in his office.

During her time with the office, she was ticketed three times for non-moving violations, two of which were dismissed by an assistant prosecutor's motion or approval. She also received thousands in pay raises each year she worked for her future husband's office.

Plants, 37, married Sarah Foster on Dec. 27 in Catlettsburg, Ky., according to a clerk at the Boyd County Clerk's Office. The wedding was held at Catlettsburg United Methodist Church.

Foster worked for Plants at the prosecutor's office from 2009 to 2013. In a 2013 office directory, she was listed as "prosecutor's assistant."

It is not clear when their relationship began. Multiple sources who have asked to remain anonymous have told the Daily Mail the two were involved as early as February 2012.

Plants would not answer any questions about the relationship.

A search through public filings in newspaper archives turned up no results on the dates of divorce for Allison and Mark Plants, a Republican first elected in 2008 and re-elected in 2012. According to the Kanawha Circuit Clerk's office, Allison Plants filed in circuit court to end her marriage to Plants in June 2012. The divorce was final as of November 2012.

The entire time Foster worked at the prosecutor's office, she was married to Charleston Detective Andrew Foster, from whom she filed for divorce in October 2013. The divorce, which was sealed, was final 11 days later, according to a clerk in the Kanawha Circuit Clerk's Office.

n n n

She was to appear in Charleston Municipal Court on Jan. 14 to answer for a Dec. 10 ticket but didn't show. A municipal court clerk said Foster called earlier in the day and asked for a continuance.

A new appearance date was set for 3:30 p.m.Jan. 28.

Foster has been ticketed at least five times since 2009 for driving with an expired vehicle inspection sticker. Three of the tickets were dismissed in Kanawha Magistrate Court. Assistant prosecutors signed off on two of the dismissed tickets.

A review showed that all but the latest two, one issued by Charleston Cpl. K.W. Oldham on Dec. 10 and another issued on Oct. 25 by Kanawha Sgt. J.H. Thaxton, were dismissed in Kanawha Magistrate Court. Two were dismissed without apparent evidence that the infraction had been rectified.

The first ticket was issued Sept. 29, 2009, after Foster was pulled over in St. Albans and ticketed for an expired inspection sticker and no proof of insurance. Magistrate Pete Lopez dismissed it Oct. 1 with a prosecutor's motion.

The motion, signed by Assistant Prosecutor Ben Freeman, stated "defendant obtained valid inspection sticker and showed proof of insurance." However, there was no proof that Foster had obtained an inspection sticker or had valid insurance filed with the ticket in Kanawha Magistrate Court.

The motion was filed before the original ticket had been received in the magistrate clerk's office, according to a letter filed with the ticket and the motion written by Deputy Clerk Michelle Cook.

The letter states, "The enclosed citations have been taken care of through court; however, I do not show the court has received the original citations yet."

Freeman, now Plants' co-chief of staff, said prosecutors dismiss cases at the request of magistrates frequently and that non-moving violations, such as an expired inspection sticker, are dismissed because of the large volume of those tickets.

Typically, in non-moving violations, a person has a set number of days to either provide proof that they have rectified the problem or pay the imposed fine.

A person can bring proof -- a receipt for a vehicle inspection, for example, to show that he or she has had the car inspected -- to a magistrate who can then dismiss the ticket, unless the inspection sticker was more than three months overdue at the time the citation was issued, according to state code.

The fine for not having a valid inspection sticker is no more than $100.

"If I don't have written proof in front of me, I take it on their good word," Freeman said of dismissing non-moving violations when reached by phone Tuesday.

Foster was ticketed again seven months later on April 20, 2010.

State Police Cpl. B.H. Moore stopped her for driving 45 mph in a 35 mph zone but then found that she had no proof of insurance for the vehicle and that the inspection sticker and registration were expired.

In that instance, copies of a receipt for a temporary registration sticker, inspection sticker and Foster's insurance card were filed with the tickets in magistrate court. The charges were dismissed.

The April ticket listed the expiration date for the vehicle registration as July 2009 and the expiration date for the inspection sticker as June 2009. The June 2009 expiration date on the April 2010 ticket infers that the September 2009 ticket was dismissed without a valid inspection sticker.

When asked about the inspection sticker and registration expiration dates on the April 2010 tickets in relation to the September 2009 ticket, Freeman said he didn't remember the details of the September 2009 case.

Kanawha Sgt. J.H. Thaxton stopped Foster on July 11, a week before she left the prosecutor's office, on Corridor G near Ruth Road and wrote her a ticket for driving with a vehicle inspection sticker that expired in January 2013.

That ticket was dismissed on Aug. 12. Again, no proof of valid inspection was filed with the ticket.

Magistrate Tim Halloran confirmed that he signed off on the dismissal. Doris Aliff, Halloran's assistant, said she was not in the room when the ticket was dismissed but identified the initials on the ticket as those of Assistant Prosecutor Adam Campbell.

Both Halloran and Aliff said they did not recognize Foster's name but that it would not have been unusual to "grab a prosecutor" in magistrate court to have him or her sign off on a dismissal.

Campbell, who is assigned to Circuit Judge Tod Kaufman, said in general terms that if a person tells a magistrate he or she has taken care of the infraction and the magistrate believes the person that the magistrate would try to help him or her.

He said if a person has multiple offenses but can pay the fine for one, a magistrate would seek a prosecutor to see if the rest of the charges could be dismissed. He said things are done that way because of the heavy caseload the county magistrates face.

"They try to help people over there," he said.

He said he "obviously" knew Foster but was under the assumption that the infraction had been fixed. He said he didn't remember the specifics.

When asked about the two following tickets -- one from a Kanawha sheriff's deputy on Oct. 25 for driving again with an expired vehicle inspection sticker and for driving without proof of insurance, and another from a Charleston officer on Dec. 10, for driving without a valid inspection sticker -- he said "that means then apparently it wasn't taken care of."

"We do the same thing for everybody," Campbell said. "We treat everybody the same whether they work in our office or not."

Thaxton stopped Foster on Oct. 25 in the 700 block of Kanawha State Forest Road and charged her with driving with an expired vehicle inspection sticker, again, and driving without proof of insurance.

Foster was stopped again on Dec. 10 for driving without a valid inspection sticker, this time in Charleston. Patrolman K.W. Oldham stopped Foster on Corridor G near the Shops at Trace Fork.

The ticket charged her with driving with an expired registration and an expired vehicle inspection sticker.

When initially shown the tickets during a Jan. 8 interview, Plants said he did not know the timing of the tickets. A Daily Mail reporter offered copies of the latest tickets for him to look over.

"In any event, if you get multiple tickets and then go in after the date and show people that you have proof of insurance and you have a valid registration ticket, typically those are dismissed just like everybody else," Plants said.

He later said tickets such as those issued to his wife have been dismissed thousands of times against citizens.

"There has been absolutely no favoritism" shown to Foster, he said. "It was nothing that wouldn't have been done for any other citizen."

n n n

When asked specific questions about his relationship with Foster, Plants said he was "not going to talk about my personal life in the newspaper."

"I never talk about my family or personal matters in the newspaper; of course there's safety issues for that. There have been for five years," Plants said. "For safety reasons, I don't talk about personal matters.

"I love my wife, and I just don't talk about personal matters in the newspaper or in any media."

When asked directly about pay raises Foster received, he said her salary had been comparable, if not less, than others in her position throughout the county agencies. Plants, as an elected constitutional officer, has the discretion to manage his office's budget as he sees fit.

"I don't talk about personnel matters, as you well know, those numbers are all public record," Plants said during a Jan. 8 interview. "I absolutely showed no favoritism towards any of my employees, but I don't talk about personnel matters. That's been a policy for five years now."

n n n

Foster worked at the prosecutor's office for more than four years, during which her salary rose by more than $15,000, according to records obtained from the Kanawha County Clerk's Office.

Foster made $23,169 in 2009, her first year on the job. Her salary went up to $35,625 in 2010. In 2011, it rose to $38,083, and in 2012, it rose to $43,291.

She left the prosecutor's office in late July 2013. Her salary was budgeted in 2013 for $45,500; she was paid $30,769 that year and also received a check for $6,103 in unused leave.

Plants said during a telephone interview the position she held paid a certain amount and that a move from the position of secretary to that of office manager would be cause for an increase.

He said his office is budgeted a specific amount each year and that he's had to cut his budget in the past.

In 2011, Plants gave out $73,000 in raises to employees when no other county employees received any, according to Daily Mail archives. The county commission had ordered all department heads to tighten their belts.

He told county commissioners then that he planned to rectify that by reducing the pay for 27 employees, attorneys and assistants, in his office.

Foster was not among those who saw a pay cut, but seven of the department's 13 secretaries did have their salaries slashed, according to pay records. Foster was one of three assistants to receive a raise that year.

Foster also saw a hefty bump in pay in 2012 when her salary rose more than 13 percent to $43,291. The other assistants' salaries dropped or stayed the same, except for one assistant who saw a 3 percent increase.

All but one assistant saw their pay increase in 2013.

"All of my employees know that I do my absolute best to take care of my people," Plants said in a phone interview last week. "We have great benefits.

"To say that I've done anything other is just not true."

Contact writer Ashley B. Craig at [email protected] or 304-348-4850.

___

(c)2014 the Charleston Daily Mail (Charleston, W.Va.)

Visit the Charleston Daily Mail (Charleston, W.Va.) at www.dailymail.com

Distributed by MCT Information Services