Did Kansas City Council break law with its backroom messages on police funding?

A majority of the Kansas City Council may have broken the law with a behind-the-scenes group email on the milestone May 20 ordinances on police funding.

In fact, the morning of the vote, a city lawyer appears to have been worried about just that.

Mayor Quinton Lucas’ general counsel, Jane Pansing Brown, emailed the eight City Council members who teamed up on the vote. Two minutes later, she sent them a second email saying, “Please reply individually to (the first) email, rather than a reply all.” Why would she take the trouble to say that? Was it because she feared a mass email from a council member to his or her colleagues might constitute a secret, and therefore illegal, virtual meeting of a city council quorum?

One council member, Melissa Robinson, appears to have known of that danger as well. In response to a Star query Thursday about whether the email exchanges violated state law, Robinson wrote, “As long as there wasn’t a reply-all to the communications. I am not privy to all the communications, just my own — I reviewed and did not reply all.”

Problem is, one of her council colleagues, Brandon Ellington, did in fact send a reply-all response to the group, which is what Brown had warned against and Robinson guarded against.

“The obvious explanation for the lawyer’s direction to not reply all is to avoid the obligations of the Sunshine Law,” says Kansas City Star attorney Bernie Rhodes. “But just like that person in your office that always hits reply all, Councilman Ellington did as well. That’s a meeting — an illegal meeting.”

“That’s a quorum, they’re discussing public business, and there was no public notice and other members of the City Council were not alerted,” adds Chris Vas, executive director of the Jefferson City-based Liberty Alliance, a conservative public policy nonprofit that requested release of the city’s emails and texts. “In my eyes, that seems to be a clear violation. I think the members of the public will see it that way, too.”

Even if it’s not illegal, it’s the opposite of transparency and damaging to trust in government, on a vital matter concerning public safety. It left out the four council colleagues from the Northland, who say they had no idea the ordinances were even coming.

Northland City Council members left out of email chain?

Northlanders steamed about that won’t like this, either: In a released text, Lucas chief of staff John Stamm wrote, “We have all 9 votes from the not northland.” The “not Northland”? Is that what the rest of the city is considered at City Hall?

In addition, although Liberty Alliance received a number of texts by council members in its document request, Vas says he was told by the city that Lucas did not retain text messages on his city or personal phones. The mayor’s office said he does retain texts, but didn’t have any on this topic.

It also pushed back on the criticism. “No mayor in more than a generation,” his office wrote The Star, “has spent more time in the Northland and channeled more resources to Northland efforts and investments than Mayor Lucas.”

Spokesperson Morgan Said wrote, “The false narrative that Northland councilmembers were excluded is rebutted by the actual facts, should you choose to report them. Mayor Lucas met in person in the office of a Northland councilman prior to ordinance introduction for a half hour. The member thanked him for the time, but declined to co-sponsor. The mayor’s office also reached out to all Northland council members, but were unable to get a forum with several prior to ordinance introduction. Rather than meeting with the mayor, the council members chose to hold a press conference about lacking information instead of actually getting information by reaching back out to the mayor or his staff.”

Said insists, too, that “there was no substantive discussion of the ordinances via council group email. Due to a requirement from the city attorney that all co-sponsors share in writing their consent to be co-sponsors, all co-sponsors did so primarily through individual emails, with the exception of one member. Any claim that there was a prior meeting on substantive policing issues in person or electronically is demonstrably false. The mayor speaks regularly in person to all council members individually, including the Northland delegation, and will continue to do so.

The ordinances went in front of a full City Council. Every City Council member had a voice and a vote on these items. The meeting was public. The meeting was streamed live. The meeting was recorded. The meeting is available for playback. And, as recently as last month, Councilwoman Hall of the Northland used the same same-day adoption process to introduce an ordinance without public comment to approve the expenditure of millions. This is not a procedural debate, this is about substantive disagreement.”

Whatever you think of what the eight council members and Lucas did on May 20 — and The Star Editorial Board supports their decision to require the police department to negotiate how to use $42 million of its $239 million budget — leaving their four Northland colleagues out of these emails wasn’t right.

When Councilman Eric Bunch texted City Manager Brian Platt that, “I hope the mayor gave you a heads up” on the issue, Platt responded: “Sunday. In the rain secretly in my car.” What is this, a spy thriller or the public’s business? (Said says Platt and the mayor met briefly at a rainy-day event they both attended.)

Transparency from the beginning might have prevented much of the outrage and misinformation that followed.