Secret Society
During an intermission at the November 7 City Hall budget meeting, Kansas City council member Becky Nace pulled mayoral candidate Paul Danaher aside and asked, “Doesn’t anyone here know what it feels like to be a real person anymore?”
Nace was frustrated with the council’s refusal to spend more money on the city’s billion-dollar backlog of unfinished maintenance. “I’m going to speak as a homeowner,” she had said during the meeting. “As a homeowner, if I drive around the city and I see the streets in disrepair, broken sidewalks, crumbling bridges, I tell you what I think: I think I’m gonna move.”
Yet few on the council seemed ready to join her crusade to give the people what they want. When Nace offered a budget amendment redirecting $3 million toward the city’s to-do list by nixing bonuses and cutting overtime pay for city employees, Mayor Kay Barnes and City Manager Bob Collins silenced her.
As soon as Nace began threatening the status quo, Barnes and Collins started whispering between themselves. Then Collins crossed the room to confer with City Attorney Galen Beaufort. Upon his return to the bargaining table, he declared, “If we’re going to talk about labor issues, I think we have to do so in closed session.”
“I don’t understand why we can’t talk about it,” exclaimed council member Bonnie Sue Cooper. “It’s an amendment to what we’re doing. How do we keep it quiet?”
With that, debate briefly continued.
At one point, while explaining why city employees work overtime, Collins admitted, “There’s some misuse, I’m sure.”
“We know there’s an abuse of overtime, and we need to reduce it now!” Nace replied, pounding the table.
But that could incite burly, overtime-enriched firefighters to storm City Hall. Barnes shook her head and muttered, “Can’t do it.” Then, as a true leader, she raised a hand and bellowed, “We need to stop this conversation right now.” (Beaufort later told the Pitch there was no legal “need” to end the discussion.)
“I think it was an attempt not to talk about an unpleasant decision in front of the press and the public,” Nace told us afterward. “It’s becoming a trend. Anything that’s unpleasant, they’re trying to do it more and more behind the scenes. And that’s why we’re having trouble getting things done.”
