Who’s behind those campaign-style phone calls looking to discredit Edgemoor on KCI?

It’s been a nuisance for Kansas City Council aides this week: fielding inquiries from Kansas Citians getting phone calls from a Jefferson City number saying that Edgemoor isn’t the right company to develop a new terminal at KCI.

They’re the type of calls normally associated with politics. What’s usually the stale procurement process of choosing a municipal vendor was never supposed to be a political campaign.

Last year Edgemoor Infrastructure & Real Estate was chosen from among a field of four vying for the $1 billion contract to finance and develop the terminal project.

AECOM was the runner-up bidder to Edgemoor. It has since announced it has teamed up with Burns & McDonnell, which was disqualified from the process.

A Burns & McDonnell spokeswoman said the firm was not involved in the calls. An AECOM spokesman did not return a message seeking comment.

According to several people who received the phone calls, the caller follows the same general script:

▪ Edgemoor’s financing plan has been kept secret;

▪ Edgemoor has been cheap on its community benefits agreement, which includes paying for transportation to and from the KCI construction site and extended child day care hours for construction workers.

▪ Edgemoor is demanding a $30 million advanced payment.

“Clearly somebody is trying to disrupt the negotiation process,” said Dan Fowler, a Kansas City councilman who took one of these calls. “They're disrupting it with distorted and inaccurate information.”

Exactly who is behind these calls remains unclear. A call back to the number provided by one source goes straight to a recording that says phone calls coming from the number isn’t trying to sell anything, but is instead a political message.

Fowler said he asked the person who called him where the call was coming from.

“He said, ‘Thank you for your time,’ and hung up,” Fowler said.

Kansas City’s official Twitter account cautioned followers that the city was not in any way involved with the calls.

Geoffrey Stricker, managing director of Edgemoor, said the calls have spread inaccurate information about his company. He added that it’s the first time in more than 16 years at Edgemoor that he’s encountered political campaign-style calls over a municipal project.

“I’ve never seen an entity, whoever it is, doing negative campaigning after the fact,” Stricker said, adding that he’s “disappointed.”

Stricker said Edgemoor hasn’t been evasive about the financing plan, describing it as a 100 percent debt-only plan that he projected will save $90 million. Stricker said the savings come from not having to pay an equity return on the financing. He added that the terms of financing are still in negotiation with City Hall.

“We’re not a fund,” Stricker said. “We don’t have capital to invest.”

He also said that Edgemoor has increased its initial pledge for a community benefits agreement to $24 million from $15 million.

Those benefits include $3 million for transportation to and from the job site, a plan to extend hours for a licensed child care facility and an agreement with a minority-owned bank for financing assistance for small businesses.

Stricker also said that the $30 million reimbursement agreement was in no way an advance. The $30 million agreement allows the city to retain ownership of Edgemoor’s and its partners’ work product in case the agreement with Edgemoor is terminated.

That way, the city doesn’t necessarily start from scratch if it moves on to a different developer. The $30 million amount is an upper limit to costs that can be reimbursed.

Stricker said he did not know who was behind the campaign phone calls and declined to speculate.

Edgemoor continues to be locked into a negotiation process with City Hall, which the Kansas City Council will ultimately have to approve or discard. An early version of an agreement between Edgemoor and the city was rejected by the city council.

The city council held a public meeting Thursday where each member was allowed to make their requests and issues known. Stricker said he didn’t think any of the requests were onerous or anything he hadn’t heard in previous discussions with council members.

This story was originally published January 19, 2018 at 4:18 PM with the headline "Who’s behind those campaign-style phone calls looking to discredit Edgemoor on KCI?."