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Lansing retirement board members charge travel to city credit cards May 17, 2026
For weeks now, I've been trying to pin down how much Lansing retirement board members spend on travel. Board travel policy encourages attendance at conferences for educational purposes. Board members also take "due diligence" trips to learn about firms they plan to do business with. Board travel policy requires that each attendee submit an expense report so they can be reimbursed (page 8 of the travel policy). It is called the City of Lansing Retirement Board Expense & Reimbursement Form. Here is an example:
Through a Freedom of Information Act request, I got 11 of the forms for 2025 (I detailed them in this story), but I knew there are at least 10 more. I knew this because I had the registration forms for these conferences. However, when I asked for the other 10 expense reports, the City Attorney's Office told me:
They offered no explanation for why these forms were missing, so I appealed to city council president Peter Spadafore. He explained that there was no expense forms for the other trips because there was no need for reimbursement. All expenses were charged to city-issued credit cards.
In the Lansing State Journal's investigation of disgraced police lieutenant Ryan Wilcox, they found that he charged $105,000 in the 2.5 years before he was put on leave and that "Wilcox was one of 112 Lansing employees who had at least one city credit card." Also that
That is what corruption looks like.
According to the travel policy (page 8), "original receipts must be submitted for all travel related expenses including travel, lodging, and other expenses incidental to travel." But that seems to be required only if reimbursement is desired, so using a city credit card seems to mean the board member is not required to document purchases. That is a serious flaw in the policy. I don't know how long credit cards have been used by board members, but the travel policy makes no mention of them. It needs to be updated to require documentation of purchases regardless of whether a city credit card is used.
An example is Scott Dedic's trip to Honolulu in November 2025. It was for the 71st Annual Employee Benefits Conference, put on by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans (IFEPB). Registration alone cost $2,350 ($200 membership fee plus $2,150 conference fee). Dedic's full credit card statement for November is here, but here is a close-up of the detail:
You can see that there are no charges for airfare. Apparently the airline tickets were paid for back in March. Here is the March statement and here is a close-up of the detail:
Here, from the November 2025 board meeting minutes, is what Dedic said about his Hawaii trip:
And, by the way, Scott Dedic is not a city employee - never has been. The membership of ERS Retirement System always includes a member who not a City of Lansing employee or retiree. The following is from this page on the City website:
Dedic's Linkedin account says he is International Representative at the United Auto Workers.
In addition to March and November, he had charges on his May, August and September statements. He attended the NCPERS conference in Denver May 18-20. Here is the detail for May:
I am not sure why he'd go to Missouri, but there was a ACG Due Diligence meeting there sometime in 2025.
Just one charge on his August statement, and it doesn't seem to correspond to a conference:
There was a MAPERS conference at the Amway Grand in Grand Rapids September 12-16:
Those 4 hotel stays may not all be Dedic's own. In his response to my FOIA request denial appeal, council president Spadafore says:
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