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ST. LOUIS — Alderwoman Cara Spencer resigned Monday from the board of the St. Louis Development Corporation in the wake of ongoing questions about its management of a north St. Louis grant program.

Spencer, of Marine Villa, is running to replace Mayor Tishaura O. Jones, and her resignation from the board of the city’s economic development arm both distances her from the embattled agency and keeps its problems in the headlines.

“Recent events,� Spencer wrote, “have destroyed my confidence in SLDC as well as community trust that this organization is properly managed or is serving the best interests of the city.�

The quasi-independent agency has been under scrutiny since the Post-Dispatch reported in September that nearly $1.3 million of a $37 million grant program for north city had been slated for organizations with ties to the family of SLDC board member and Alderwoman Shameem Clark Hubbard. Clark Hubbard has said she had no involvement in the selection and recused herself from the vote.

SLDC now says it will bring the awards back for another board vote and emphasized most of the money has not been paid out while it finishes vetting the organizations. The newspaper has also found that some winners have addresses outside the city or in vacant, abandoned buildings.

The SLDC board is made up of the chairs of several economic development agencies, such as the St. Louis Port Authority, that SLDC manages. Spencer has an ex officio board seat because she chairs the Board of Alderman’s Budget and Public Employees Committee. Clark Hubbard’s seat is due to her position as chair of the aldermanic Housing, Urban Development and Zoning Committee.

It’s unclear whether a new board member can be seated since Spencer’s seat was based on her aldermanic position. And her resignation could remove one of the few skeptical board members overseeing the important agency. Spencer has used her position on SLDC’s board to question the agency’s process to award grants and other contracts, raising among the most questions on a board that rarely casts dissenting votes.

Asked why she isn’t staying on to provide oversight, Spencer said, “I just don’t feel like serving on the board of directors in its current orientation can be effective.�

“It’s my intention to be the next mayor of the city of St. Louis and I can tell you we’re going to have some real oversight at this point,� she said.

In a statement, Jones dismissed Spencer’s move as a “stunt� that followed a “a history of absence, abstention, and abdication.�

“SLDC leadership will continue to do the hard work of creating equitable growth in St. Louis, even without her there to arrive late to meetings and vote ‘present’ on important issues,� Jones said in a statement.

In her resignation letter, Spencer criticized both SLDC’s practice of using the City Counselor’s office attorneys to staff the agency and allowing its CEO to also serve as board chairman.

“These are barriers to transparency and achieving the purposes for which SLDC was formed,� Spencer wrote in her resignation letter.

Both practices, however, predate the Jones administration.

It is longtime practice for the city counselor’s office to assign attorneys to staff SLDC. Spencer said the agency should have its own attorneys.

Spencer’s letter also pointed to the mayor’s appointment of Neal Richardson as chair of SLDC as well as its CEO. Past SLDC directors, including Otis Williams and Rodney Crim, have served as both board chair and CEO of SLDC. But Spencer said it was “bad practice� to have someone serve as both because as chair, they control the agenda and can stymie effective oversight. Spencer said she had recently spoken to Williams, who agreed.

Williams confirmed that he believed the two roles should be separate. When Jones asked him his thoughts before he retired, he recommended having a chair independent of the CEO, he said. Former mayors had in the past appointed their top development advisor, rather than the SLDC CEO, to chair SLDC’s board. And Jones initially appointed Nahuel Fefer, who heads her Community Development Administration, as SLDC chair. A few months after he was hired as CEO, though, the mayor appointed Richardson chair.

A spokesman for Jones said she does not recall that conversation with Williams.