Journalists kicked off call where Kansas City area leaders discussed COVID-19, masks
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Members of Kansas City’s media outlets were kicked out of a meeting of officials from area jurisdictions as they discussed COVID-19.
The officials from Kansas City, Johnson, Wyandotte and Jackson counties gathered Wednesday morning, following the Tuesday announcement of Kansas City’s mask mandate.
Bernie Rhodes of Lathrop GPM in Kansas City, an attorney for local media outlets including KCTV-5 and The Star, said that kicking media off of the call was illegal and in violation of the Missouri Sunshine Law.
CORE4 is a sub unit of the Mid-American Regional Council which has long recognized that it is subject to the Missouri Sunshine Laws because they are a quasi-governmental agency, Rhodes said.
“Even if they are not associated with MARC and they are just these four leaders who are getting together to discuss government business with an agreement among themselves to conduct government business for the benefit of government, that makes them a quasi governmental unit by themselves,” he said.
Meetings held in secrecy lead to mistrust of the government, he said.
“We should be doing everything we can to encourage people to get vaccinated,” Rhodes said. “We shouldn’t be doing stupid things in secret. That just make people more suspicious.”
In a statement after the meeting, CORE4 said the meeting was one of its regular bi-weekly meetings “which are not typically attended by media or public.”
However, in addition to the regular meeting attendees, “chief elected officials from Wyandotte County, Kansas City, Missouri and Jackson County were also in attendance,” said Marshanna Smith, public information officer for the Jackson County Executive’s Office.
“After the meeting started, participants stated that they were unable to hear all of the participants so the meeting facilitator, Jackson County, decided to end the meeting and resend the invitations,” she said. “The new meeting invitation was sent to the same participants as the original meeting.”
A KC Star reporter, who was kicked off the first call, was not sent a new invitation but re-joined again and was quickly kicked off a second time. KCTV-5 assignment editor Shain Bergan also noted on Twitter that media was kicked out of the meeting.
In the statement following the meeting, CORE4 said those in attendance expressed concern for the level of COVID-19 transmissions in their communities and the health and safety of their residents.
“These neighboring jurisdictions shared input, concerns and initial reaction to the revised guidance issued by the CDC” on Tuesday, the statement said. “The public and media can expect to receive updates from the individual jurisdictions in the coming days.”
Ashley Hand, director of strategic communications for the Unified Government, sent a link to the CORE4 web page and said: “There is no quorum of elected officials that participate in these conversations.”
Kristin Johnson-Waggoner, director of communications and public affairs for MARC, said the meeting “wasn’t a MARC-led CORE 4 meeting.” She added that she wasn’t aware of any MARC staff who were in attendance.
She referred questions onto the jurisdictions in attendance.
The issue of CORE4 secret meetings arose at the start of the pandemic too after its members implement stay-at-home orders across the Kansas City area.
In a letter on behalf of KCTV-5, Rhodes wrote the CORE4 asking them to comply with the Missouri Sunshine Law and recognize that if they don’t comply with the law people will lose confidence in their government.
In response, Johnson County legal staff replied that there were no meetings but rather a number of communications between representatives of the various governmental entities in an attempt to coordinate a response to the pandemic.
This story was originally published July 28, 2021 at 5:42 PM.
