JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) - Days after Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba was indicted on federal bribery charges, he is attending the National League of City’s City Summit in Tampa Bay.

Director of Communications Melissa Faith Payne confirmed on Wednesday that the mayor, Chief Financial Officer Fidelis Malembeka, and Chief Administrative Officer Louis Wright were at the conference.

As a result, the three were no-shows at Jackson’s monthly One-Percent Infrastructure Sales Tax meeting.

One-Percent Commissioner Pete Perry said the mayor wanted to cancel the meeting because he wasn’t going to attend. However, he says the mayor doesn’t have the authority to do so if a quorum can meet.

“In talking to everybody else, I found that the other six were planning to be here,” he said. “The statute says a quorum is six. There’s six here.”

Perry learned the mayor was at the National League of Cities after speaking to WLBT.

“Tampa Bay? Is that where the yacht is?” he asked. “No, that’s where Tootsies is,”

Perry was referring to a federal indictment unsealed last week alleging the mayor took $50,000 in bribes in exchange for changing the deadline for a request for qualifications for developers interested in building a convention center hotel.

According to the indictment, the mayor allegedly received the bribe while meeting with developers on a private yacht back in April. After that meeting, he, the developers, and the Hinds County District Attorney went to a nearby club.

Lumumba is facing five felony counts: conspiracy to commit bribery, federal program bribery charge, use of an interstate facility in aid of racketeering, honest services wire fraud, and money laundering.

He pleaded not guilty last week in federal court and was released on a $10,000 bond. As part of bond conditions, Lumumba is not allowed to travel out of the state without prior court approval.

During proceedings, the mayor’s attorney referenced “one travel issue... that comes us less than a week from today. But our understanding is we’ll discuss that with pre-trial services.”

Payne said the trip had been scheduled about a year ago.

Perry said he was notified by a mayor’s staffer on Friday that several members could not attend, and the meeting needed to be rescheduled.

“We’ve been through this before with the city and thought we had it resolved a year and a half ago,” he said. “You can’t cancel it just for some people’s convenience... If somebody can’t come, they just don’t come.”

Five commissioners attended Wednesday’s meeting in person. A sixth commissioner, Ted Duckworth, attending via cell phone.

Commissioners were not able to meet in the Andrew Jackson Conference Room where the gatherings are typically held. Instead, they met in the lobby of the Warren Hood Building.

Perry asked the security guard if he had a key to the conference room. His response was, “I don’t have nothing to do with that.”

The meeting lasted about 30 minutes, and little work was done, in part, because the city’s contract engineer also was not present.

Commissioners had several time-sensitive questions regarding bids on two major street resurfacing projects. They also had questions about a bridge replacement project on Swan Lake Drive, and about sidewalk repairs along Woodrow Wilson Avenue.

Said Perry, “Evidently, they don’t care about the one-percent money or getting the streets fixed... It speaks to how they want to cooperate with the commission... They don’t give a damn about us.”

Want more WLBT news in your inbox? Click here to subscribe to our newsletter.

See a spelling or grammar error in our story? Please click here to report it and include the headline of the story in your email.