City Council has to start over again on November ballot issue after Chastain threatens lawsuit

The Kansas City, Missouri, City Council is bending to a threatened lawsuit by Clay Chastain, who claimed that council members violated open meetings laws last Thursday.

The council seemed ready and prepared to discuss on August 14 what it would do about putting two court-mandated sales-tax proposals before voters on November 4. The two measures call for sales-tax increases for vaguely defined “transportation” and “capital improvements.”

In other words, the money could be used for almost anything, which is always a good reason to vote no (the measures are the afterbirth of a protracted spat between Chastain and the council over an earlier light-rail petition initiative, which you can read more about here).

While the council was ready to discuss it, no one else seemed to know that it was about to surface for discussion. The ordinance was introduced on August 14, the same day it was passed. To Chastain, it seemed like a sneaky method of ramming the ballot issue through the legislative sausage-making process with as little debate and visibility as possible.

Chastain announced on Wednesday that he would sue. City Hall, weary of another court fight with the Bedford, Virginia, resident, declared a couple of hours later that it would vote once more on the measure, all the while denying that Chastain had a reasonable legal argument.