Could Brian Platt be fired as KC’s city manager? Rising lawsuit costs give us a clue
When news broke last March that Kansas City’s city manager was a finalist for a similar job in Austin, Texas, Mayor Quinton Lucas and the City Council begged Brian Platt to stay.
They sidestepped normal protocol and gave Platt a big raise and added three years to his contract, which wasn’t set to expire until the end of 2024.
Now Platt could be on his way out the door. The same council that voted 12-1 to keep Platt in charge of city operations through the end of their terms in 2027 are now set to decide in two weeks whether to fire him.
Platt’s chances do not look good. Lucas, the guy who most wanted to hire him back in 2020, is the one who informed Platt on Thursday night that he had been suspended immediately. He said he had the support of his council colleagues.
Why now?
Can it be as simple as this week’s jury verdict in which the city must pay former communication director Chris Hernandez $930,000 in damages because, according to Hernandez, Platt suggested he and his staff should lie to the news media?
But that was no bombshell revelation. The lawsuit Hernandez filed against the city more than two years ago detailed how Platt exaggerated facts, seemed to encourage his subordinates to do the same and forced Hernandez out of his job because he insisted on being truthful.
The council knew all about that when all but Councilwoman Melissa Robinson voted to give Platt that big bump to $308,000 a year, up from the $265,000 he had been making.
Similar lawsuits
Five of the 12 who voted for that extension had been in office the year before when civil rights leaders gathered outside the City Council chamber and urged them to fire Platt for alleged discrimination against Black city employees.
Four of them were in a closed door meeting that day in which Robinson was unsuccessful in urging her colleagues (Lucas was absent that day) to take disciplinary action against Platt.
He had come under fire from those civil rights leaders for forcing the resignation of Andrea Dorch, the Black woman who had run the city’s department of Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity.
Platt, through his top lieutenant, Assistant City Manager Melissa Kozakiewicz, insisted that the firing was due to Dorch violating the city’s residency requirement for employees. Dorch alleged that was merely a pretense to get rid of her because she had insisted that a big construction project in the Northland needed to comply with minimum minority hiring guidelines established by the city for projects receiving tax breaks.
Platt said she was wrong. Dorch alleges in a pending lawsuit that Platt forced her out much as Hernandez was because she wouldn’t bow down to his wishes when she believed she was following the law.
Every member of the council that extended Platt’s contract was or should have been aware of Dorch’s allegations at the time. She filed her lawsuit two weeks before they approved Platt’s new employment contract.
Likewise, it was common knowledge at City Hall then that another former city administrator, Kerrie Tyndall, had also filed a lawsuit making similar allegations against Platt back in July 2023. Members of the current council had been elected weeks earlier.
Put in dead-end job
Like Hernandez, Tyndall had an important job. She was the assistant city manager in charge of economic development when Platt came to Kansas City at the end of 2020. She had an office down the hall from him on the 29th floor.
One of Platt’s biggest goals as city manager was to boost the local economy by helping developers with big real estate projects.
Tyndall’s job was to help them, too, while also looking out for the city’s interests.
Testifying at the Hernandez trial last week, Tyndall described Platt’s economic development goals as “bigger, taller, faster.”
She was more cautious in greenlighting development deals, wanting to follow the rules and protect the taxpayers from possible harm, she said.
Her cautious approach to greenlighting development deals frustrated Platt, Tyndall alleges in her lawsuit. Eventually Platt sidelined her, according to her employment discrimination lawsuit, and excluded her from important meetings.
He began assigning some of her duties to younger and male co-workers, according to court documents, and then removed her from her post as assistant city manager and director of economic development.
Platt told her to find another job with the city. She transferred to what she concluded was a dead-end job at the aviation department and quit a month later.
Those aren’t the only lawsuits that former employees have filed against the city claiming they were unfairly fired, sidelined or denied promotions during Platt’s administration.
But they are the most prominent ones and nearing trial later this year.
Growing legal costs
In an interview a few hours prior to Platt’s suspension, Robinson declined to comment on the allegations raised against him in the Hernandez trial.
“I’m not going to go into any personnel matters,” she said. “But I am concerned about the ballooning legal claims that the taxpayers are paying for.”
She provided a chart showing how since Platt became city manager, legal settlements and court judgments have increased from $9.3 million in fiscal 2020-2021 to $13.2 million in the current fiscal year that ends on April 30.
That does not include this week’s jury award, which would make it $14 million with six weeks to go.
The total includes every kind of legal claim, from city vehicles getting in wrecks to paying damages for sewer backups. But most notably, she said, is that almost half of that total is for what the chart calls public official liability, such as the whistle blower lawsuit Hernandez filed.
The amount paid for those kinds of lawsuits more than doubled during the Platt years, from $3 million to $6.2 million as of Feb. 28. The Hernandez award will push that to more than $7 million.
Meanwhile, those other types of damage awards have risen 12% during the same period.
Robinson said those figures were presented at Tuesday’s risk management committee meeting at City Hall, one day before the verdict and two days before the council decided to suspend Platt.
She wouldn’t say whether those numbers played a role in Platt’s current exile.
But she volunteered that “I feel like this is something that the council has to take a hard look at, because ultimately, we’re the ones responsible for these outcomes. This isn’t just like a line item on a budget. These are people’s lives. There are stories behind what is happening.”
The Star sought comment from Lucas and the other 11 council members. We asked them via email or text message why Platt was suspended. But only Councilman Kevin O’Neill would comment as of late Friday afternoon.
Asked why Platt’s days at City Hall may soon be over, O’Neill said it was a combination of things.
“I believe it was a series of public events including lawsuits, as well as several internal issues involving staff and council,” he said in a text message.
His main beef?
“Probably his inability to strengthen relationships in the urban core,” O’Neill said. “We have a great city with multiple styles of living, that includes urban, suburban and rural. It is important that a city manager has strong relations in each of those communities. He struggled in the urban core.”
Four years ago, Platt’s hiring was approved 9-4. In the majority were Lucas, who is Black, and the eight white council members.
The four Black council members representing the 3rd and 5th districts were opposed because they felt Platt was less qualified than the other finalists for the job, all of whom were Black.
A majority of the council is still white, but there is more minority representation with the current council elected in 2023.
Short tenure
If Platt is forced out of his job later this month, his tenure will have been among the shortest of the nearly two dozen men (and yes, they were all men) who held the job before him.
Other than a tumultuous four-year span (1959-1963) when there were nine different men in the job, Kansas City city managers tend to stick around awhile.
Four held the position for a decade or more, including Platt’s immediate predecessor, Troy Schulte.
Of the nine men who had the job on a permanent rather than an interim basis since that revolving door era closed in 1963, only two have served less time in charge than Platt.
A.J. Wilson lasted a year in the 1980s. And Larry Brown lost the council’s confidence after 3 ½ years in the 1990s.
Of Brown, then-Mayor Emanuel Cleaver famously said: “Overall, Larry was found wanting.”
Should Platt be found wanting, his contract provides for a severance payment. Unless the council can show they have “cause” to fire him due to some sort of illegal activity, Platt will get a payment equal to a full year of that $308,000 base salary.
Assistant City Manager Kimiko Gilmore is now serving as interim city manager. Earnest Rouse was the interim who filled in when Schulte resigned.
Rouse served until Platt came on board a year later. Finding his replacement might take awhile, too.
This story was originally published March 7, 2025 at 4:56 PM.
