Who's on City Hall's watch list? Unless you're stopped, you may never know

There are a number of lists, if they existed, for which Clay Chastain could easily qualify at City Hall.

The one for perennial candidates and single-issue gadflies. He's run for mayor three times and pushed ten light-rail proposals onto Kansas City ballots since 1997.

Or for litigious political activists. He's sued the city at seven times in the last two years alone, alleging all manner of malfeasance, with no success.

But threat to public safety, requiring an armed escort to enter the building?

City officials confirm that following the 2015 mayoral election, in which he was crushed by incumbent Sly James, Chastain was placed on a little-known security "watch list." They said it is for individuals who have made threats or exhibited menacing behavior while in City Hall. Some can enter only with an escort, while others are barred from the building altogether.

Officials declined to release the list and said there is no written policy governing who gets placed on it. In general, they said, it might include former employees who made threats when they were fired, or persons with restraining orders placed on them by current staff.

"We rely on the judgment of our security manager based on complaints or information provided by KCPD," City Manager Troy Schulte said in an email.

The list is part of a security program intended to balance the public's access to a government building with the violent realities of the world in 2018, officials said.

While the federal government's terrorist and "no-fly'" watch lists are well known, local rolls are less common.

"We do not have such a list," said Sgt. John Payne of the Jackson County Sheriff's office, which is responsible for security at the courthouse. Nor does the Municipal Office Building of the Unified Government of Wyandotte County/KCK, according to spokesman Mike Taylor.

Such lists, and their potential for abuse, have generated controversy in other cities. Memphis faced two lawsuits last year over a list that included political activists to be escorted in city hall. According to published reports, of the 81 people listed, just 27 were identified as disgruntled former city employees or subject to protective orders.

What's peculiar about Chastain's situation is that his name was removed from the list in June 2017 after he threatened to sue, according to city spokesman Chris Hernandez.

Which raises the question of just how much risk he actually posed if all it took to be delisted was the mere mention of litigation.

"If you're dangerous, you're dangerous, right?" Chastain, 64, a semi-retired home renovator, said in an interview Friday from his home in Bedford, Va.

It's the rare city hall or county courthouse that doesn't have at least one Clay Chastain: the single-minded advocate who sees himself as the lonely crusader against a remorseless and corrupt bureaucracy. He even published a memoir titled "Tilting at Windmills."

For Chastain, the windmill is light rail. Ten times since 1997, he's taken advantage of Kansas City's minimal petitioning requirements to place projects on election ballots. Most recent was last year's $2 billion, 40-mile system connecting KCI and south Kansas City. All failed save one, which was thrown out by the City Council because it failed to pass legal muster.

Along the way, he launched a recall petition against then-Mayor Emanuel Cleaver and ran for mayor in 1995, 1999 and 2015.

Although he was removed from the watch list, Chastain sued anyway, filing a $3 million defamation action against the city last week. He asserts that his inclusion on the list was intended to smear his reputation. The city has yet to respond.

"I've never threatened anybody in my life with violence," Chastain said. "I'm a peaceable individual and a professed Christian. I'm certainly impassioned for my causes."

Exactly what got him onto the watch list is not clear. It seems that much of the institutional memory around the list was lost when City Hall's long-time chief of security, David Severenuk, died unexpectedly last September. A permanent replacement has yet to be named.

Schulte said Severenuk, "decided out of caution to place him (on the list) after the most recent (mayoral) election because he was heard making threats, or what sounded like threats," against Mayor Sly James. He said he could not recall the specifics.

James said Monday evening that he also could not recall.

"All I remember is he got pretty verbally pushy during the campaign," he said.

Chastain said there were never any threats, although there were certainly occasions when he succeeded in getting under James' skin, like when he announced during the 2015 campaign that the mayor failed to pay his personal property taxes on time.

Schulte said it was decided remove him from the list not because he threatened to sue, but because there had been no complaints about his behavior for an extended period.

In his defamation suit, Chastain claims that for the last six years of James' mayoralty, he has been "repeatedly" stopped by security from entering City Hall. In each instance, he said, he was "detained, unduly frisked" and told he would have to wait for an armed security guard to escort him.

On one visit in 2017, Chastain said, he met with Severenuk, who he said refused to remove him from the list and declined to say why. A couple of hours after complaining to City Attorney Cecilia Abbott and threatening to sue, he was informed that he had been dropped from the list.

Chastain is not without his issues. In 1997, he left notes on petitions he submitted, describing some of the female signatories as "blond bomb," or "short cute." Some said that he later called them. Last summer, in the southern Virginia town where he now lives, Chastain was charged with two misdemeanor counts of animal cruelty in connection with the deaths of three dogs. The charges were later dismissed.

In the meantime, neither City Hall, nor his absence from the rolls of registered voters in Kansas City have stopped him from pressing on.

He's currently gathering signatures for a light rail system that includes gondolas running from Barney Allis Plaza south to Penn Valley College.

This would be number 11.

This story was originally published March 13, 2018 at 5:30 AM with the headline "Who's on City Hall's watch list? Unless you're stopped, you may never know."