Kansas City Council allegedly cut corners to keep powerful official from leaving town
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It was by no means a unanimous decision when the Kansas City Council recently authorized Mayor Quinton Lucas to negotiate extending City Manager Brian Platt’s four-year employment contract on the condition that he pull out of the running for a similar job in Austin, Texas.
The council voted 9-4 to move forward with those contract talks after what Lucas described as “an extensive discussion” during a nearly 90-minute closed-door session Thursday night. Among the topics were objections by some council members that the normal negotiating process was not being followed in the rush to keep Platt from leaving Kansas City.
The council authorized contract negotiations before officially reviewing Platt’s performance. As this is the last year of his contract, planning for that process had begun only recently.
“If I were to write a press release, it would be talking about the need for the council to follow its processes, and make sure our city manager had an evaluation before we offer a contract extension,” Councilwoman Melissa Robinson said Monday.
Robinson was one of the four no votes, all of which were cast by the only Black members of the council, with the exception of Lucas. Joining her were Melissa Patterson Hazley, Mayor Pro-Tem Ryana Parks-Shaw and Darrell Curls. Together, they represent the largely non-white 3rd and 5th districts.
The vote to hire Platt in 2020 was also along racial lines. The makeup of the council has changed since that 9-4 vote. Curls and Patterson Hazley are in their first year.
Curls told The Star Monday afternoon that he did not feel comfortable taking steps to extend Platt’s contract before he has a good idea of how Platt intends to lead city government over the next several years.
“I’m new, this is my first time, and I have not really had a whole lot of interaction with the city manager,” Curls said. “I mean, I’ve been there all of what, six, seven months, maybe eight. And so I’m kind of really just kind of getting to know him.”
Patterson-Hazley declined to comment. Parks-Shaw did not respond to a request for comment.
Last May, civil rights leaders called for his resignation at a news conference in City Hall after Andrea Dorch, the city’s director of the civil rights and equal opportunity department, resigned for allegedly violating the residency requirement for city employees. Dorch, however, claimed she was forced out of her job because she had insisted that construction contractors comply with minority hiring requirements on the Meta development project in the Northland. She and Platt differed on her aggressive approach, she said.
Speaking to reporters outside the City Council chambers that day, the Rev. Vernon Howard Jr., president of the Kansas City chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, said Dorch’s situation was emblematic of a culture in city government that discriminated against Black women employees.
Robinson was unsuccessful that day last year in urging her council colleagues to cast a vote of no confidence in Platt.
On Monday, she said her objection in moving forward with contract negotiation was due mainly to the council side-stepping normal process by not first conducting a thorough performance review. Platt’s contract now pays him $265,000 a year and will almost certainly include a pay raise, if it is renewed.
That he was in the running for another job shouldn’t have circumvented normal procedure, she said.
“We should not be in bidding wars with other cities around our staff,” she said. “We should be doing our due diligence and being prudent.“
News that Platt was a finalist for the Austin job broke on Tuesday, after Austin Mayor Kirk Watson announced it on a city message board. The closed-door meeting the resulted in Lucas being told to offer him a new deal occurred two days later.
While Platt agreed on Thursday night to withdraw from consideration, he told Austin’s executive search firm on Friday that he was still in the running, Watson announced that day.
Platt told the search firm on Sunday that he was pulling out, the message board said in a follow-up posting.
Platt did not respond to a text message seeking comment on Monday.
In a post on the social platform X, formerly Twitter, last week, Lucas said he would work to keep Platt in charge of city operations.
“We appreciate Austin’s recognition of the success of Kansas City and its government over the past four years and our top administrator, Brian Platt,” he wrote. “I was proud to recommend his hire four years ago and we will work hard to retain him and his team in Kansas City.
This story was originally published March 11, 2024 at 1:24 PM.
