Chris McCord, once recalled from the Piper School Board, looks to regain public office on the BPU

The last day that Chris McCord served in public office was November 9, 2002. 

That’s when Wyandotte County’s Board of Canvassers counted provisional ballots, turning up enough votes to recall McCord from his seat on the Piper School Board.

McCord had served as president of that school board during a plagiarism scandal that rocked the Piper School District in 2002. Several sophomores in a biology class had been given Fs by their teacher, who discovered that the students had cribbed significant portions of a key project from the Internet.

When parents complained to the board and to the district’s administration, the then-superintendent met privately with the board. The result of that closed-door session: The teacher was told to change the failing grades.

The teacher resigned, the story made headlines around the country (including in The New York Times), the then-Wyandotte County District Attorney Nick Tomasic accused the board of violating the open-meetings law, and McCord was ultimately yanked from the board by a slim nine votes.

McCord, who now works as a real estate appraiser, says he has moved on from that controversy and is ready again to hold elected office.

“That whole thing was blown out of proportion by people who had ulterior motives,” McCord tells The Pitch in a telephone interview.

McCord is running against Norman Scott, chairman of the Wyandotte County Democratic Party, for the Board of Public Utilities Member At-Large Position No. 3 seat in Tuesday’s general election.

The Board of Public Utilities provides water and electrical service to Wyandotte County’s residents and businesses. Unlike investor-owned utilities such as Kansas City Power & Light, the BPU is owned by its ratepayers.

McCord decided to mount a campaign for the BPU after Terry Eidson died on January 10, little more than two weeks before filing deadline for candidates. Eidson, who was 69, had apparently planned to run again for the seat that McCord and Scott now seek.

McCord says one of his main objectives is lowering the “payment in lieu of taxes” surcharge on BPU bills. The PILOT is a pass-through charge on ratepayer bills that sends its funds not to the BPU, but rather to the Unified Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kansas.

Currently, the PILOT charges ratepayers 11.9 percent of utility usage, which will generate about $33 million for the UG this year.

Candidates running for BPU positions will always sound good to voters when they say they want to lower the PILOT, much as UG Commission candidates gain traction when they proclaim plans to lower the property tax rate.

But it’s the UG that sets the PILOT rate, not BPU’s board.

McCord knows this. He says, however, that BPU board members have something of a bully pulpit to bend UG Commissioners’ ears on the PILOT issue.

“Whether or not I will be able to do anything about it, again, the city has the ability to do it,” McCord says. “I will try to impress upon the commission members and the mayor to do something about it.”

McCord also has concerns about how the UG receives its electricity and water without charge from the BPU. Because the BPU is owned by the public, charging the UG for service would largely be just moving money around. But McCord says UG employees should be more conservative in their electricity and water use at UG-owned facilities.

McCord has some familiarity with the BPU. The utility has hired McCord to do appraisals a few times over the years. Exactly how many isn’t clear. BPU spokesman David Mehlhaff tells The Pitch that McCord did some appraisal work in 2006. McCord says he has done work for the BPU maybe two or three times over the past 30 years.

“If they paid me $5,000 in the last 30 years, I would be greatly surprised,” McCord says.

Some of McCord’s campaign contributors have business before the BPU. Campaign finance reports show that Pat Scherzer has donated $200 to McCord’s campaign. Metroplex Insurance, the insurance brokerage run by Scherzer, donated $500 to McCord. Metroplex Insurance has been BPU’s insurance broker for years.

Scherzer’s relationship with the BPU over the years has been closer than that of a vendor. Scherzer was a Wyandotte County Commissioner from 1976 until 1988 and was generally considered a key cog in the Democratic political machine that dominated Wyandotte County politics before the mid-1990s merger of the Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas, governments. 

Scherzer’s post-elected-office influence was apparent in 1993 when a Wyandotte County judge soft-pedaled the former commissioner’s punishment for drunken-driving charges in 1992 to house arrest instead of the 90-day prison sentence dictated by Kansas law at the time.

Scherzer also did business with former BPU chief administrative officer Marc Conklin. A Pitch investigation in 2008 uncovered how Scherzer was co-partners with Conklin in three real estate and investment companies, partnerships that also included Tom Enright (a McCord donor) and David Spehar (another McCord donor). Conklin’s 2009 death, ruled a suicide, came a year after he was indicted on charges of looting the BPU.

McCord tells The Pitch that Scherzer and others are old friends of his.

“I get saddled with the old-school people, but I’m not a politician and I’m not an insider,” McCord says. “My opposition team tried to claim I’m a shill … but that’s not true.”

But wouldn’t it make sense to refuse donations from BPU business interests like Scherzer to eliminate the appearance of being a shill? 

“Quite frankly, maybe,” McCord says. “I’m not enough of a politician to have thought about that until you asked me. I don’t think it’s going to affect my judgment one way or the other in the BPU.”

McCord is picking up key endorsements in his campaign. Tri-County Labor of Eastern Kansas endorsed McCord, as have business figures Mike Jacobi and Pat Crilly. Scott, on the other hand, claims endorsements from former Congressman Dennis Moore, former UG Mayor Carol Marinovich, the Kansas AFL-CIO and the Mainstream Coalition.