Kansas City mayor names temporary replacement for ‘racist’ committee chair: Himself
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas will take over a City Council committee after three members boycotted last week’s meeting, demanding that Lucas remove the chair for “unprofessional, racist and unethical behavior.”
Lucas announced in a letter to members Tuesday that he would appoint himself the interim chair of the Transportation, Infrastructure and Operations Committee, temporarily replacing Councilwoman Teresa Loar, who has been under fire for weeks.
Three of the committee’s five members had expressed concern about Loar’s leadership and, in a letter earlier this summer, asked Lucas to remove her.
“While the committee partnership may not be irretrievably broken, it is obviously materially strained,” Lucas said in the letter Tuesday.
Still, Lucas said, “the work of the public remains imperative,” particularly overseeing the construction of a new single terminal at Kansas City International Airport. He said he saw during his term as a councilman that disputes between the mayor and City Council members do not serve the public.
“I also saw how frustrations, beyond mere disagreements, in our body and among certain city staff distracted at times from substantive questions of how best to proceed in the terminal modernization program,” Lucas said. “I do not intend to see a return to that time either on this project or in any of the areas under the supervision of the … committee.”
In the letter, Lucas made it clear his appointment will be a temporary fix. He said he expected the committee “to return to its original constitution in due course, assuming our foundation of mutual professional respect is rebuilt and without subsequent palace intrigue.” He did not say how long he might lead the committee.
Lucas said in his letter that much had been said in “documents, interviews and statements over the recent weeks.”
“I will not add further comment to the maelstrom. I respect each of you and, as importantly, respect the voters who trusted you to hold your position.”
He added that he “will expect” to see them in committee on Wednesday.
Last week, council members Kevin O’Neill, Melissa Robinson and Eric Bunch boycotted the transportation committee, leaving it without a quorum. The committee’s business was held until this week.
In a statement announcing the boycott, the three council members said that they had asked the mayor to remove Loar and that he made “verbal commitments” to do so. Lucas said at the time that he had promised to evaluate Loar’s leadership post.
Loar has been under fire for several comments and especially a July interaction with Robinson, where Loar, who is white, appeared to mock Robinson, who is Black.
The two 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.
Following the groups’ news conference, Loar made a public apology to the City Council, and Lucas directed her to attend implicit bias training. She said last week she had completed that.
When she learned of the boycott last week, Loar claimed it had nothing to do with race and accused the rest of the members of wanting to steer lucrative contracts for work at KCI.
In their letter to Lucas earlier this summer, O’Neill, Robinson and Bunch accused Loar of “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.”
Lucas’ letter Tuesday said he preferred the approach taken by most of his predecessors in the mayor’s office that largely kept committee leadership untouched “even with at times strong committee divisions and significant dispute between the mayors and certain chairs.”
He referenced Mark Funkhouser, mayor from 2007 to 2011, who did at times shake up committee assignments for reasons that council members thought amounted to political payback.
A prominent example occurred in 2008 as tensions between Funkhouser and the council escalated, reaching the point to where Funkhouser sued the council over an ordinance it passed that banned the mayor’s wife, a volunteer adviser to Funkhouser, from City Hall.
Funkhouser relieved Cindy Circo as chair of the Housing Committee and replaced her with Sharon Sanders Brooks.
Funkhouser said at the time that he thought the switch could improve housing outcomes, but Circo said it was in retaliation for her comments at a news conference where she said Funkhouser was ineffective.
“If we don’t agree with him, we are punished,” Circo said at the time.
Loar did not immediately return a request for comment.
This story was originally published September 22, 2020 at 12:52 PM.
