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ST. LOUIS — The commission that oversees the city’s personnel department will hold a public hearing to consider formal charges against its chief, an unprecedented action that could lead to the first removal of a sitting personnel director.

At a special meeting Wednesday, the Civil Service Commission scheduled the hearing for Jan. 6 to review formal charges against Sonya Jenkins-Gray. The public hearing and formal charges are required steps under a process laid out in the city charter that is meant to make it harder to fire the director for political reasons.

City voters created the civil service system in 1941 in order to promote professional city staff and curb patronage machine politics. The charter amendment gave the personnel director, who oversees hiring and promotions in the city, unique independence in City Hall. Unlike other department heads, the mayor can’t unilaterally hire or fire the director.

Some mayors never even got the chance to choose a personnel director.

Mayor Tishaura O. Jones, however, was given a rare opportunity to hire her own personnel director when, early in her term, the longtime former director retired. She chose Jenkins-Gray in October 2022 from a slate of three candidates assembled by the Civil Service Commission.

But Jenkins-Gray’s relationship with Jones has frayed, and the director last week sued the city and mayor, alleging Jones’ office was pushing the removal for “petty, self-serving political reasons.�

Further, she said the charge, delivered to her by the mayor’s chief of staff in August, was flimsy and wouldn’t normally prompt discipline: She took a city car in July to Jefferson City for personal reasons. Jenkins-Gray says in her lawsuit she has admitted the mistake and reimbursed the city $170.30 for mileage.

The mayor, Jenkins-Gray asserts, is retaliating for her refusal to bend hiring rules at the administration’s request, for opposing a mayor-backed charter change that would have given the mayor more power over the director’s hiring, and because of her husband — influential clergyman the Rev. Darryl Gray.

This summer, the Rev. Gray broke with U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, a Jones ally, and endorsed St. Louis County prosecutor Wesley Bell’s successful challenge to the Congressman’s reelection, contributing to the mayor’s decision to try and oust Jenkins-Gray, the personnel chief alleges.

Jenkins-Gray’s lawsuit asks the court to block the public hearing until it weighs in on her lawsuit’s other objections to the process. St. Louis Circuit Court Judge Joan Moriarty set an emergency hearing on the motion for Jan. 3.