Funkhouser pushes for Kansas City Chamber

The Kansas City Business Journal reports that the future of a Kansas City-specific Chamber of Commerce hinges on the re-election of Mayor Mark Funkhouser.  The Kansas-friendly Greater Kansas City Chamber has consistently endorsed programs that favor the business interests of Kansas at the expense of those in Missouri, most recently and notoriously the so-called PEAK program, which the mayor re-designated as "Poaching Employers Across Kansas City."  If re-elected, Funkhouser will likely lead the effort to create a KC chamber.  If not, it is unlikely that anyone else will.  One suspects too that a Kansas City chamber will not be paying its president $600,000 a year as GKC Chamber did to its past president, Pete Levi.

Kansas City Business Journal Poll Shows Mayor Mark Funkhouser in the Lead

A 2011 survey conducted by the Kansas City Business Journal of who should be the next Kansas City Mayor shows most Kansas City voters who participated prefer Mark Funkhouser.  The second most votes went to Mike Burke followed by Sly Jones with all other canidates significantly far behind.

Star's Sneaky Boost of Funkhouser Bid

To no one's great surprise, the Kansas City Star editorialists have decided that Mark Funkhouser ought not be re-elected mayor of Kansas City.  Given the history of Star endorsements, however, one has to wonder whether they were not subconsciously hoping to boost his candidacy.  One recalls, for instance, the stirring Star endorsement of Kay Barnes for Congress.  That and a $2.5 million war chest netted Barnes 37 percent of the vote in an election that Star reporters predicted would be a nail-biter.  As Wikipedia notes, "[Sam] Graves even trounced her in the areas of the district closer to Kansas City."  The closer to Kansas City the more clearly the voters remembered how she and City Council collaborators like Deb Hermann and Jim Rowland nearly bankrupted the city through a series of ill-inspired tax breaks to developers.  Barnes was the Star's kind of mayor.

KC Survives Storm "Incredibly Well" with Quick Cleanup and Snow Removal

At a press conference held hours after the snow stopped, Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser praised city workers' response to an epic blizzard.  "We just went through what everybody said was a storm of historic proportions, and did a pretty good job by all accounts,” said Funkhouser.  “Nobody was hurt….Things went incredibly well.”  

The mayor also lifted the state of emergency and resumed the city's trash pick-up and recycling.  There is no truth to the rumor, although it is understandable how it might have started, that Funk conjured up these storms just to look good.

Some Snow Jobs Are Better Than Others

As Mayor Bloomberg of New York can attest, the mayor will inevitably catch heat when the city does a poor job removing snow.  Misty McNally of Kansas City is one citizen who recognizes that good snow jobs don't happen by themselves.  When she and her husband moved here from Colorado in 2003, they learned that Kansas City, Missouri, had a "terrible downside," namely its inability to remove snow.  So bad were the city's efforts that the couple considered moving to Kansas.   "But not this year," writes Misty in a letter to the Star.  "This winter we have seen timely, repeated, adequate snow removal from the streets around our home in Waldo. We appreciate that Mayor Mark Funkhouser and public works officials listened to citizen complaints and made changes for the better. While there is still room for improvement, we now can truly enjoy living in Kansas City even in the winter."

BLC Stings Star for Preposterous Funkhouser Slight from Kansas City Star

As Bottom Line Communications observes, "It is enough to make a journalist embarrassed to be part of the profession."  The BLC editorialist refers here to the Kansas City Star's high-fives for those born-again mayoral candidates who have shifted positions on using city-backed bonds.  

The Star praises by name Deb Hermann, Jim Rowland, and Mike Burke for coming to recognize that city-backed bonds had been issued promiscuously under past mayors.  In an impressively petty little slight, however, the Star editorial fails to credit--or even mention--Mayor Mark Funkhouser for his principled stand against bond abuse dating back to his initial candidacy.  

Indeed, in its logic-twisting conclusion the Star editorial seems to imply that the sudden awakening of these candidates reverses "what’s happened the last few years," presumably under Funkhouser, and promises "a more fiscally responsible city government."  And we wonder why the paper is shedding backers faster even than President Mubarak.

Will Kansas City Discrimination Suit Really Damage Schulte?

When asked to define "paradox" at Genius School, Bart Simpson answered, "Damned if you do, and damned if you don't."  Acting City Manager Troy Schulte knows exactly that feeling.  He and the City of Kansas City were on the losing end  of a $2.6 million reverse discrimination suit filed by two white workers who had recently been laid off.  

Star columnist Yael Abouhalkah insists that the loss "damages the public standing of Acting City Manager Troy Schulte."  More likely, the loss will help educate taxpayers that in the Orwellian world of discrimination law even the best meaning people can find themselves on the wrong end of a law suit.  

Mayor Funkhouser and wife Gloria learned this the hard way a few years ago.  Now that Abouhalkah has spanked candidate Mike Burke for trying to pin this suit on Funkhouser and Deb Hermann, maybe he will come to see that the Funkhousers were not to blame for the last one.

Funkhouser Takes On the Kansas City Port Authority

The sometimes cartoonish reporting on the Port Authority scandal in the local media demands a cartoonish response.  In this one, two people debate whether it is better for Mayor Mark Funkhouser to be cooperative--or to be right.

Cauthen Watch, Week 2

This just in. Former Kansas City Manager Wayne Cauthen, the cause of a fair share of the problems from which Kansas City's City Hall is still digging out, was just bounced from consideration for the city manager's job in Savannah, Ga.
The Savannah City Council named two finalists - Alfred Lott, city manager of the considerably smaller Albany, Ga., and Rochelle Small-Toney, the city's acting city manager.

OustedKansas City Manager Wayne Cauthen Still Looking For Work

Wayne Cauthen/KMBC Photo

In 2007, Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser called for the ouster of then city manager Wayne Cauthen.  The City Council resisted.  By 2009, even the City Council had lost confidence in Cauthen's budgetary oversight and responded to Funk's renewed call for a Sayonara moment.  On the day of Cauthen's departure, City Hall Security escorted him from the building, and Cauthen rambled on to new pastures.  

As the Pitch reports,  that ramble has taken Cauthen to Savannah.  Unfortunately for Cauthen, the Savannah Morning News has shared with the readers some of the concerns that got the Funk excited years ago, and Cauthen seems unlikely to catch on.  Apparently, it took the Savannah paper only days to discover what took the Kansas City paper years.

Even Unbuilt Hotels Cost Money

The Pitch does a good job tracking some of the $500,000 that was spent thinking about building a potential 1,000-room convention hotel.  $40,000 of that amount found its way to consultant Kim Carlos for some seriously elusive public relations work.  The Pitch also found it curious that the committee which hired Carlos was chaired by the same city councilwoman, Cindy Circo, whose 2007 campaign Carlos advised.  All of this, of course, is chump change when weighed against the heavily-subsidized $350 million boondoggle that the hotel promises to be, a boondoggle that has more than a few civic leaders salivating.  This, after all, is a big pie to slice especially if the taxpayer is paying for the ingredients.

Kraske Upgrades Kansas City Mayor Funkhouser's Chances

Occasionally, the Kansas City Star's Steve Kraske gets things right.  In his "Breakfast Buzz" column, Kraske opines that the "biggest winner in the PA pushing match" was Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser.  

We argue that the mayor's solo, principled stand against insider dealing at the Port Authority deserves more respectful language than "pushing match."  Still, it is  good to see that the Star has reevaluated its "longshot" label on the mayor's re-election chances.  Soon, its group-think editorialists might even start reevaluating the mayor.

KC/Active Says Don't Underestimate Mayor Mark Funkhouser

Bruce Rodgers, publisher of KC/Active, notes that the newsroom at the Kansas City Star  has gotten so unhinged "that the newspaper’s unsigned editorials are ignoring reality." The editorialists are certain that one of what the Star's Steve Kraske calls the "fearsome foursome"--James, Rowland, Hermann, Burke--will take out Mark Funkhouser in March.  One Star writer predicts that Funkhouser will not even make it to the March primary.  

With Funk in a commanding lead in the polls--27 to 11 over the most fearsome of the foursome--Rodgers wonders whether "this great mayoral race so announced by the Star is so much smoke and not a lot of fire."  As the saying goes, where there is smoke, there is usually a bong not too far away.

Star Praises KC's Lucky, Unguided Snow Removal

For those of you who think the "Uncaused Cause" refers exclusively to the Creator of heaven and earth, think again.   In an editorial praising how "nicely" Kansas City handled this year's first big storm, the Kansas City Star could discern no guiding hand behind it.  As Mayor Bloomberg of New York City can attest, when a city mishandles a snowstorm, all fingers point at the mayor. In Kansas City, however, when snow removal goes well and as planned, the Star at least chooses to credit no one, let alone Mayor Mark Funkhouser.  There is a rumor that City Councilwoman Deb Hermann has taken credit for the good work, but that rumor may have emerged because of Hermann's historic reputation for snow jobs.

City Response To Snow Best Ever

Kansas City residents have been expressing surprise at how well the city has responded to its first significant snow of the season.  The city has more plows on the streets, more workers out plowing, and better equipment than ever before, including plows equipped with GPS devices to let management know what streets have been plowed and which need plowing.  “We’ve got a ways to go,” Mayor Mark Funkhouser told the Kansas City Star, adding “I think that with these changes our residents will see a substantial improvement in our ability to respond.”

Glorioso Links Funk, Darla Jaye to Arizona Shooting

Professional provocateur and Jim Rowland backer Steve Glorioso threw a perverse note into Mayor Mark Funkhouser's State of the City address at the All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church on Sunday.  As the Kansas City Star noted, Funk "talked about tough decisions he made to improve the city’s finances, efforts to make the city safer, neighborhood improvements and his own frugal nature."  But Glorioso, in full demagogic mode, blamed the shooting on right-wing  talk radio shows and wondered why, during his frequent appearance on local shows like Darla Jaye's on KMBZ, Funkhouser did not challenge the hosts to change their imagined ways. Never mind that Glorioso himself once hosted a highly charged talk radio show or that the Arizona shooter was a left wing pot head who burned American flags and read the Communist Manifesto.  For his part, Funkhouser argued that both sides were guilty of overheated rhetoric--he experienced his own series of death threats after appointing a conservative to the Park Board--and asked for bi-partisan sanity, a state of mind with which Mr. Glorioso has little familiarity.

Rowland Likens Funkhouser to Joe McCarthy

In an impressively intemperate outburst, mayoral candidate Jim Rowland, paraphrasing Joseph Welch's famed denunciation of Joe McCarthy, asked Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser, "Have you no shame?"  The dastardly deed that prompted Rowland's imprecation was--hang on here--Funkhouser's congratulating the Kansas City Chiefs for making the playoffs.  Confused?  Well, a few weeks earlier Funkhouser opposed the spending of $2 million of public money on the same sports complex that employs Rowland as its director.  Since the Chiefs play at that complex, Rowland considered it an "hypocrisy . . . that knows no boundaries" for Funk to cheer the Chiefs on.  Since nearly half of the county residents voted against public subsidies of the complex last time it was on the ballot, should they be pulling for the Ravens?  Only Jim Rowland knows.

Funkhouser Fights the Ghost

Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser finds the ghost of Tom Pendergast wandering around the Port Authority and sics the Feds on him.  Too bad he has had so little help from the City Council, including self-styled team player Deb Hermann.  Indeed, they have criticized him for not adding his eyes to the collective Council blind eye turned towards the cronyism and cluster backscratching of this self-serving enterprise.  'Click Here to Read More'

Hermann Praises Own Honesty, Character, Dignity, Humility

In a lengthy interview with the Hispanic News, City Councilwoman Deb Hermann praised herself lavishly for a wide variety of virtues.  These include her "professionalism, honesty and strength of character."  Beyond these, Hermann also admires her own "calm, dignified leadership."  If these were not enough, Hermann stuns even herself with how "caring," "thoughtful," and "serious" she can be.  Above all, Hermann is enchanted by her own humility and promises to take the "'I' out of your sentences as often as possible and replace it with 'we.'" Obama-Hermann 2012?  Or should it be Hermann-Obama?