Lie to local media? KC’s City Manager Brian Platt tells jury that wasn’t his strategy
Kansas City Manager Brian Platt said in court this week that he never suggested that the city’s communications staff lie to the news media.
That’s counter to the impression that some staffers gleaned from Platt’s comments during a Jan. 3, 2022 meeting that is a foundational element of a lawsuit now being tried in a courtroom across from City Hall.
Former city communications chief Chris Hernandez sued the city in late 2022 after Platt removed him from his position overseeing a 20-member staff that supplied public information to reporters and the public at large.
“Why can’t we just lie to the media?” Platt allegedly asked during that meeting, the lawsuit says.
To which Hernandez said, “That’s not a good idea. We shouldn’t do that.”
Platt acknowledged in his testimony this week that he told communications office staffers that day a story about the mayor of the city where Platt used to work in New Jersey. That mayor, who later went to prison for fraud, believed it was ok to lie to the news media, because there was a good chance reporters would never check him on his facts.
Hernandez alleges that Platt was clearly conveying that he had no problem exaggerating Kansas City’s accomplishments with inflated statistics on how many miles of road were repaved, for example.
That’s how others at the meeting understood his meaning, as well.
“Go ahead and make up numbers for the media,” is the message former city water department public information officer Brooke Givens took away from that meeting, she testified on Wednesday. “They won’t check it anyway. That’s what they did in Jersey City.”
But in his testimony on Wednesday and Thursday, Platt denied that he was suggesting anything of the sort. He said he was merely telling a “sarcastic anecdote” to lighten the mood during “a tense conversation,” with a communications staff of whom Platt had been critical for not being more aggressive in promoting his initiatives.
In fact, he went so far as to tell them not to lie, Platt testified on Wednesday afternoon.
But Hernandez’s attorney Lynne Bratcher challenged that assertion when Platt returned to the stand on Thursday morning. Why, she asked, was he able to now recall so clearly what he said three years ago? But in a 2023 deposition he said he had no recollection of what he said at that meeting.
Platt credited his improved memory on having time to think about the meeting as he prepared for this trial.
“It’s all starting to come back,” he said.
Hernandez contends in his lawsuit that he was pushed out of his job of nearly a decade in August 2022 because Platt had become increasingly perturbed when Hernandez would challenge the statistics Platt would cite in public statements about city accomplishments.
In one email submitted as evidence, Hernandez wondered if Platt had exaggerated the number of homeless people the city had found temporary shelter for. Platt suggested telling radio station KCUR that it was 100, but Hernandez said he thought the number sounded as if it had been “rounded up.”
That May, the communications office put out a press release announcing that the city planned to resurface more than 300 lane miles of streets that spring and summer. When Platt posted on social media that the city was going to repave more than 400 lane miles during that period, Hernandez asked him where the number had come from and whether his department should revise its public statements to reflect that.
Instead, Platt lowered the figure he used on his Twitter account and testified in court that he did so in the name of consistency, while believing at the time that the city would end up repaving more than 400 miles.
Three months later, Hernandez was removed from his position.
Testimony and evidence presented at trial showed that Platt had been looking to get rid of Hernandez since late in 2021 or early 2022. Around the time of the Jan. 3, 2022 meeting, a year had passed since Platt had become city manager in December of 2020. As he settled into the job, Platt said he concluded that the city communications department needed to be reorganized.
Instead of having a spokesperson for every city department, there would be one for all of city government. Both he and the top aide who followed him here from Jersey City in May of 2021, Assistant City Manager Melissa Kozakiewicz, agreed. And they felt Hernandez and his staff fell short of expectations in promoting the city’s accomplishments.
“It wasn’t a right fit,” Platt said of Hernandez in the communications director role. “We were always disagreeing on things.”
That was why Hernandez was pushed out of his job, Platt said. It was not, as the lawsuit contends, because Hernandez had high ethical standards and refused to lie and exaggerate city achievements, Platt said.
Hernandez kept his salary and benefits, but transferred to another city job with fewer responsibilities and filed for early retirement in the fall of 2023. He is seeking damages for lost income, emotional distress and harm to his career, among other things.
A jury is expected to decide the case after closing arguments next week.
This story was originally published February 27, 2025 at 5:57 PM.
