KC city manager ordered staff to ‘get rid of’ social media criticism, ex-official says
Kansas City Manager Brian Platt was not only seemingly willing to lie to the news media and exaggerate the city’s accomplishments on things like street repaving goals, he once ordered his communications team to erase critical comments from the city’s social media accounts.
Those were the main points of the testimony that the city’s former communications director, Chris Hernandez, gave Monday at the start of the second week in the trial of the civil lawsuit that Hernandez brought against the city.
Hernandez claimed in that lawsuit that he was demoted from that job in August 2022 because he challenged Platt on several occasions when he felt Platt had crossed ethical lines.
The jury that will decide the case later this week has heard repeated testimony about a Jan. 3, 2022 meeting between Platt, Hernandez and three other communications staffers in which Platt allegedly suggested that it was ok for city officials to lie to the news media and exaggerate the city’s accomplishments.
Hernandez called the meeting about one year into Platt’s tenure as the city’s top administrator to see if he and his staff were meeting expectations. Platt had ordered a restructuring of the city’s communications staff. And he had put a higher emphasis than his predecessors on promoting his and the city’s accomplishments, rather than simply providing unadorned factual information, Hernandez said.
Different philosophy
“Mr. Platt came in with a different philosophy,” Hernandez said. “...more in the direction of less information and more fluffy stuff, more promotional.”
In his testimony last week, Platt denied suggesting that the communications staff lie to the news media.
But Hernandez said Monday that he believes Platt “was 100% serious” when in that Jan. 3 meeting Platt allegedly asked why it would be unacceptable to lie to news reporters.
After Hernandez said it would hurt the city’s credibility if reporters learned they had been lied to, Platt told a story about a former mayor in Jersey City, New Jersey – where Platt had worked before – who made up statistics at public events and reporters never challenged him on those numbers.
Hernandez and two other former staffers who attended that meeting testified that they were shocked and demoralized by Platt’s attitude.
“It revealed something about his character that just sickened me,” Hernandez said.
Evidence and testimony show Platt began the process to get rid of Hernandez around the time of that meeting.
His testimony Monday included two other instances in which Hernandez alleged that Platt and his top lieutenant, Assistant City Manager Melissa Kozakiewicz, had made suggestions that he considered improper and unwise.
Neither has been reported before.
‘Dumpster fire idea’
Hernandez told a story about an instance a couple of weeks after that Jan. 3 meeting three years ago. Platt and other city officials held a press conference to announce a new program to help the homeless.
They felt they were being compassionate by offering secure storage for the belongings of people who live on the street and had no place for their stuff when they had to see a doctor, apply for a job and other reasons.
But activists and others called the city clueless about how City Hall went about it. Officials rebranded 70 rolling garage containers as “Heart Carts.” People could put their belongings in those trash carts and the city would keep an eye on the carts while they were away.
As it turned out, the optics were terrible. Critics savaged Platt’s idea on Twitter and other social media platforms as being disrespectful.
“Trash cans? More like heartless cart,” was one of the more typical responses.
“An actual, rolling dumpster fire idea!” said another.
Platt’s response to the PR nightmare? Hernandez said Platt ordered the city’s PR staff to eradicate all critical comments on its social media posts and bar further comments.
“What we were being told is turn it off, take it down, get rid of it,” Hernandez testified.
He told Platt that deleting the post and negative comments would create even more unfavorable reactions and possibly violate the state’s Sunshine Law, as even social media posts are considered public records when they are on the city’s official account.
In another fresh revelation, Hernandez testified that Kozakiewicz recommended that the city end the practice of announcing on social media when the city website was off line due to some glitch.
Kozakiewicz said she felt doing so was calling attention to the city’s failures for the tens of thousands who followed the city’s account on Twitter, now X, when only a few hundred people were inconvenienced.
Kozakiewicz was Platt’s top assistant in Jersey City and followed him here in May 2021. Before arriving, she studied the city’s official social media accounts, Kozakiewicz testified last week and felt they did not celebrate the city as much as she felt it deserved.
Platt had a similar philosophy, Hernandez said. And when Platt pushed him out as communications director, he put Kozakiewicz in charge of citywide communications.
“He said Melissa shared his vision more than I did,” Hernandez said.
Hernandez filed suit as a whistleblower complaint yet did not report Platt’s perceived ethical lapses to the city ethics hotline or other authorities. The city’s attorneys have challenged his lawsuit for that reason.
After being forced out as communications manager, he found another job at City Hall that had fewer responsibilities and ultimately had little work to do. He took early retirement as of Oct. 1, 2023. His lawsuit seeks compensation for the paychecks he missed out on and to make up for the lower monthly pension checks he is receiving than he might have received had he left his job when he planned, in his 60s.
He was 58 when he quit the city. He turned 60 last month.
This story was originally published March 3, 2025 at 7:04 PM.
