Kansas City Council members boycott meetings until ‘racist’ committee chair is removed
Most members of a Kansas City Council committee boycotted Wednesday’s meeting, saying Mayor Quinton Lucas has failed to act in not removing Councilwoman Teresa Loar as chair for her “unprofessional, racist and unethical behavior.”
Council members Kevin O’Neill, Melissa Robinson and Eric Bunch announced in a press release ahead of the 10:30 a.m. meeting that they would skip the proceedings. Without them, the five-member committee did not have quorum to meet.
Every item on the agenda — including contracts for road improvements and to replace water mains along the streetcar extension route and an agreement to put a solar farm at the airport — was pushed to next week’s meeting.
Loar, who is white, has received backlash over multiple comments and an interaction from earlier this summer where she physically mocked Robinson, who is Black, and questioned her intelligence. Last month, a coalition of civil rights groups called on Lucas to remove Loar from her post as chair of the Transportation, Infrastructure and Operations Committee.
O’Neill, Robinson and Bunch then sent Lucas a letter Aug. 18 with a similar request. According to their release, Lucas has made “multiple verbal commitments” to do so. Still, Loar remains chair.
They said Loar is “not the only person accountable for poor leadership and inappropriate behavior as long as Mayor Lucas retains her as chair.” Lucas, they said, has the power to name members to committees, which comes with an “expectation that members of each committee can trust the leadership of the chairperson.”
“When that trust is broken and professional decorum is no longer possible, the mayor is obligated to act,” they said. “Failure to do so raises serious concerns about his ability to be steadfast and decisive in the face of such challenging times.”
Lucas said in an interview Wednesday afternoon that he had promised the council members he would evaluate Loar’s leadership post and said he has met with the aggrieved members and Loar herself.
“We have not made a final decision yet one way or the other,” Lucas said, “and frankly I continue to evaluate each day frankly all of my committees in the sense that we want to make sure that we’re delivering in the best interest of Kansas Citians.”
Asked when he might reach a decision, he said he had promised to “continue to evaluate” performance of the council committees — not just Loar’s leadership.
“So I guess I’d say in so many words, this is something that will be ongoing as I think it’s my job to do …” Lucas said. “Let’s say hypothetically tomorrow we say she’s sticking around, but in two months you see something that is incredibly challenging with performance, then I think it would be my job to make sure that I address that then.”
In a statement later, the mayor’s spokeswoman, Morgan Said, said Lucas required Loar to attend implicit bias training and publicly apologize, which she did, and had “very challenging conversations with her about her performance, about implicit bias and about how she can and should do better in connection with the committee that she currently chairs.”
“The mayor’s top priority each day is ensuring that he and the city are doing good work on behalf of the people of Kansas City, and that he is fair in any determinations that are made along the way,” Said said. “Although she was duly elected by the people of Kansas City, the mayor expects the same standard of Councilwoman Loar and all of his colleagues.”
Robinson addressed the issue on Twitter Wednesday afternoon.
“Now is not the time to be lukewarm about racism,” she said. “Either you are pro-racist or anti-racist — there is no in between.”
Loar’s response
In an interview Wednesday morning, Loar said the three members’ letter has “nothing to do with race.” Rather, she said it’s about “steering contracts at the airport.” Loar claimed to have the mayor’s support.
But at a press conference before the meeting would have started, she said she had talked to Lucas but he was still working through the situation.
“The mayor put me in a position because he knew my experience, knows my knowledge,” Loar said.
In a news release, Loar, who was on the council previously from 1995 until 2003, outlined her years of experience on transportation committees and said “mature leadership” is more important now because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Loar said she would consider stepping down as chair if Lucas asked her to but she will not give up the post on her own.
She also repeatedly told reporters to “follow the money,” saying the demands for her removal are a “ruse.”
After the press conference, she walked alone into the City Council Chambers to announce to the public that the committee would not meet and listed off the agenda items that would have to be held until next week.
“Hopefully we’ll have a committee then,” she said, before picking up a few pieces of paper and walking out.
In the earlier interview, Loar said that she had not spoken with Bunch or Robinson but that O’Neill told her there was a “lack of leadership” and that members were out of the loop. She said she told him City Council was hectic, like drinking from a fire hose, and encouraged him to learn more.
“They’ve been here just at a year,” Loar said. “I’ve been doing this for 30 years. I’ve been at City Hall for 25 years. I would think if I was a racist it would have surfaced by now.”
O’Neill could not immediately be reached for comment to confirm the conversation.
Asked if she saw the interaction between her and Robinson as a race issue, Loar said she had apologized to Robinson.
“I have apologized three times,” Loar said. “I did my implicit bias training. I have done everything I can do for what happened between Melissa and I.”
Origins of a controversy
In a July City Council meeting, Loar and Robinson clashed over whether to outsource the city’s animal control operations to KC Pet Project. Loar sponsored the resolution.
Robinson spoke in opposition, and then Loar stood up to respond.
“That was a very nice speech someone wrote you, Miss Robinson,” Loar said. “My guess it’s labor somewhere.”
Robinson replied that she had an MBA and didn’t need anyone to write for her. She told Loar not to question her intellect, at which point Loar made what Robinson said was a mocking physical gesture, placing her fists on her hips and shaking as though she were imitating someone angrily sniping.
In an open letter to City Council in August, local chapters of the Urban League, Southern Christian Leadership Conference and NAACP called on Lucas to remove Loar as chair and likened Loar’s gesture to a “Sapphire caricature,” a racist portrayal of Black women as angry and irrational often played by obese white men in blackface.
At the City Council meeting immediately following those groups’ press conference, Loar apologized, and Lucas asked her to attend implicit bias training.
“To me more important than which committee you’re on is actually that if you’re still on City Council you understand that we won’t tolerate racist comments, that they understand that we won’t actually allow the type of situation where people are feeling unwelcome and uncomfortable,” Lucas said at the time.
The council members boycotting Wednesday’s meeting also cited Loar’s behavior with regard to selecting bidders to work on the new single terminal at Kansas City International Airport.
Earlier this summer, a coalition of local trade groups objected to airport developers’ decision to award a large concrete contract to an out-of-state firm. The City Council voted to ask that firm, ESCO Construction, of Colorado, and the losing bidder, Ideker Inc. of St. Joseph, to submit best and final offers. The airport team then chose Ideker.
“The behavior displayed during the latest airport bidding decision from sending salacious emails in favor of contractors, using intimidation tactics, refusing to allow council members to finish their statements during committee and storming out of the Council session is unacceptable,” O’Neill, Robinson and Bunch said.
Loar accused the three of wanting to steer contracts to friends and supporters.
“Think this is more about getting their way on the contracts because they want me gone so they can steer these contracts,” she said.
Loar has missed several City Council meetings since the civil rights groups called on Lucas to remove her in early August. She said she took family leave to care for her sister who has cancer.
This story was originally published September 16, 2020 at 10:16 AM.
