Jackson County won’t settle lawsuit with fired former assessor, interim exec says
Jackson County is currently facing a lawsuit from its former assessor — and county leaders say they have no plans to settle.
Former Jackson County Assessor McCann Beatty filed her lawsuit against Jackson County on Dec. 22, alleging she was wrongfully terminated after objecting to property assessment policies planned and created by the county legislature.
Interim Jackson County Executive Phil LeVota said Wednesday that the county will not entertain a $975,000 settlement offer proposed by McCann Beatty’s attorney.
“Everyone has a right to sue, and she’s welcome to take this case to a Jackson County jury,” LeVota said Wednesday. “But as county executive, it’s my decision on settling cases and how this case moves forward, and I will not pay one cent of taxpayer dollars in a settlement.”
McCann Beatty was appointed director of the Jackson County Assessment Department in July 2018 by previous County Executive Frank White Jr. She had previously served in the Missouri House of Representatives from 2010 to 2018, acting as House Minority Leader in her last year.
LeVota announced Nov. 5 that he planned to remove McCann Beatty from her county office, saying she had 24 hours to resign or face termination.
When McCann Beatty declined to resign, LeVota removed her from her role the next day.
Jackson County was formally served with McCann Beatty’s lawsuit Wednesday morning. The county will hire outside counsel to take the case to trial, LeVota said, which he expects will cost taxpayers “tens of thousands of dollars, if not hundreds of thousands.”
LeVota, a trial attorney, called McCann Beatty’s lawsuit “the most frivolous claim I’ve ever seen.” The county’s position, he said, is that her termination was legal and her suit should not qualify as a whistleblower action.
Meanwhile, McCann Beatty’s attorney Dennis Egan, an employment lawyer at Popham Law in Kansas City, told the Star that he remains confident Beatty’s case will hold up in court.
“All she has to do is object to something that she believes is illegal or against public policy,” Egan said.
Whistleblower lawsuit rules
LeVota maintains that he did not dismiss McCann Beatty for retaliatory reasons but that he was acting out a perceived “public mandate” to clean house in county government after the recall of former County Executive Frank White Jr., including Beatty’s appointed position.
“Gail Beatty was someone who was not going to be a county employee any longer,” LeVota said. “It had nothing to do with her blowing any whistles or frankly about her performance of her duties.”
LeVota said Tuesday that he does not believe McCann Beatty’s termination was illegal under Missouri’s employment law. Missouri is an at-will state, which means that an employer can terminate an employee at any time — as long as nothing illegal, such as the discrimination and whistleblower retaliation McCann Beatty is alleging, is at play.
LeVota said that before she was terminated, McCann Beatty never reached out to him formally to disclose her concerns, which LeVota feels would present an issue with classifying her case as retaliation against a whistleblower.
“This petition has pages and pages talking about all sorts of stuff that happened at Jackson County while she was employed,” LeVota said. “...But I never talked to Miss Beatty, and she never reported misconduct by Jackson County to me.”
McCann Beatty’s lawyer, however, told The Star that this communication did take place in written form. According to court records, McCann Beatty sent a letter directly to LeVota on Oct. 15, detailing her concerns with the county’s assessment process as proposed by legislators in late 2025.
Property tax disagreements
LeVota also reiterated Wednesday that the county disagrees with McCann Beatty around the legality of recent county actions manually adjusting the value of some Jackson County properties.
In December, LeVota re-issued property tax valuations to thousands of property owners and promised tax credits to qualifying residents.
“Gail McCann Beatty is not an attorney,” LeVota said. “She doesn’t make policy on what’s right or wrong in defending or deciding what tax policy is correct.”
Egan said McCann Beatty’s lawsuit relies on her raising “good faith legal concerns” about the assessment process, regardless of any differences between how she and LeVota interpret Missouri law.
“Nobody’s going to make a determination as to whether or not she’s correct in the law,” Egan said.
The whistleblower element of McCann Beatty’s lawsuit primarily focused on interactions between herself and a legislator identified as M.A. — believed to be Manny Abarca — who repeatedly sponsored legislation supporting caps on property values.
The legislator allegedly sponsored a resolution that recommended the county executive set aside its assessed values in favor of a 15% flat rate increase to owners’ 2019 tax assessment values, according to the lawsuit, which would have had a similar effect to LeVota’s December policies. McCann Beatty reportedly warned that this would violate the law, according to the lawsuit.
“The county is required by law to make sure that all parcels of property are valued at their real value,” Egan said. “Gail Beatty was doing her job.”
LeVota said Wednesday that it’s atypical for a county official to make detailed public statements about pending litigation. Egan agreed, saying that the interim executive was “a bit hasty” in his remarks.
“I’ll be happy to take his deposition and question him and query him about the comments he made in public today,” Egan said.
A case management conference for the lawsuit has been scheduled for April 16, according to court records.
