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The losers in these fights often are Kansas City taxpayers.
Mayor Mark Funkhouser, council members and City Manager Wayne Cauthen need to work more off the same page on projects such as light rail, sewer repairs and capital improvements.
So far, that kind of professional understanding has been elusive. Among the examples:
• Last week, Cauthen’s staff announced the city would not eliminate nearly as many positions as council members had ordered in the 2008-09 budget.
The elected officials took a lot of grief from the public and from city workers for daring to make the difficult budgetary move in March to slice employee expenses at City Hall.
Essentially, Cauthen is thumbing his nose at Funkhouser and the council, working mightily to keep as many people on the payroll as possible.
But if the council had known balancing the budget would have been this easy, it could have freed up funds to hire extra police officers promised to the public.
• Also last week, council members Ed Ford and Cindy Circo embarrassed colleague Jan Marcason, who has been working for more than a year on a costly plan to repair Kansas City’s sewers.
Without a public hearing on the subject, Ford and Circo circulated a letter that was eventually signed by eight council members who want to mandate more spending on “green” initiatives (such as rain gardens) in the $2.5 billion or so sewer proposal.
The council members’ extreme demands look rash. Marcason opposes the requirement because it could swiftly drive up customers’ sewer rates as well as crowd out more efficient ways to solve the problem.
• Ford vs. Funkhouser has become a routine drama at City Hall.
Last December, Ford led the effort to unreasonably extend Cauthen’s contract for three years over the mayor’s strenuous objections.
A few weeks ago, Funkhouser removed Ford as chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, creating a political enemy who’s not afraid of “gotcha” politics over the next three years.
The mayor made the move because Ford doesn’t support Funkhouser’s idea of a regional transit system on the November ballot. Instead, Ford has backed a less costly, more practical light-rail line.
Then, just days ago, Ford introduced a resolution that — if approved by the council — could require Funkhouser and wife Gloria Squitiro to repay the city if they are found liable for any racial discrimination complaints made by a former mayoral aide.
Gosh, just a coincidence, Ford said of the measure’s timing. Right.
• In April, council members Russ Johnson and Marcason prepared a list of recommendations about how the city should oversee capital improvements in the future.
The key one: “The management of capital projects should no longer be performed by an internal office such as CIMO (Capital Improvements Management Office).”
This recommendation was aimed at stripping some power from Cauthen and his office, which includes CIMO, and then allowing existing departments to oversee construction projects.
I asked Cauthen for his response to the Johnson-Marcason ideas a few weeks later.
“I disagree with that,” the city manager said.
Again, Cauthen is snubbing council members as well as Funkhouser, whose chief of staff — Ed Wolf — also worked on the recommendations.
Given the millions spent by CIMO, the council’s ideas on this topic deserve more scrutiny and discussion than they have received so far.
Political gamesmanship is part of toiling at City Hall.
But the ongoing level of animosity among elected officials as well as toward Cauthen is high, and it’s harming the city’s ability to efficiently deal with its many problems.
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