Why does Kansas City have all the responsibility at KCI? Time for a regional approach

Kansas City International Airport is one of the region’s most important assets. The need for independent regional airport oversight is now more clear than ever.

It’s time to begin that process. The Kansas City Council, members of Congress and local civic groups should reexamine how the airport is run, with the aim of naming a regional airport authority by 2023, when the new terminal is scheduled to open.

The regional authority would replace the Kansas City Council, which owns and operates the airport now.

This is not a knock on Kansas City’s management of the airport, or its oversight of the construction process. The new terminal is slightly ahead of schedule, developers say, and remains on budget. That’s good news.

Edgemoor, the developer, says it is meeting or exceeding the targets for minority and women business owner participation in the $1.5 billion project, and beating goals for hiring women and minority workers. That’s also important to know.

But the recent dust-up over procurement of a vendor for restaurants, bars and shops at the airport is a reminder of the City Council’s deep involvement in how the airport is operated. That means Kansas City’s politics are never far from KCI, to the exclusion of others who use the facility every day.

That is unacceptable. It’s time for Kansas City to let the region run the regional airport.

The Star has reported on the secret nature of the city’s airport bid process. According to the city’s own procurement rules, bids and contract details remain hidden until a special committee makes a recommendation to the full City Council. That process is nearing completion.

It’s the same process the council used to pick Edgemoor in 2017 and 2018 — after it discarded the original attempt by Burns & McDonnell, and former Mayor Sly James, to circumvent the procurement process entirely.

There’s a reason Kansas City’s procurement is closed: to avoid alleged interference in picking the best deal. “City ordinance spells out a confidential procurement,” Mayor Quinton Lucas tweeted Monday, “to avoid, as I suspect here, political actors trying to steer work to their friends.”

But those political actors will become involved anyway, once the winning bid is made public. That’s precisely what happened three years ago when a special city committee considered four secret development bids for the entire terminal construction project.

Have we already forgotten? Once the Edgemoor recommendation was made public, there was an extraordinary push to replace it with another bidder, or bidders. It was messy and confusing and political to its core.

We can expect the same aggressive fight over the restaurant and shops contract.

That shouldn’t be a surprise. Politicians are gonna politic. But it should concern everyone who uses KCI, or who benefits from it, that Kansas City’s voices are the only ones heard when airport operations are on the table.

By some estimates, 4 in 5 users of KCI don’t live in Kansas City, Missouri. Yet they have no say in how the airport is run, and of course had no vote in whether a new terminal was needed.

KCI does provide jobs. Again, though, many of those jobs go to people who don’t live in Kansas City: In July, Edgemoor told the City Council just 12.2% of workers at the new terminal actually live in the city. At the same time, 82.5% of terminal construction workers live “in the region,” which shows the stake the entire area has in KCI.

A regional airport authority need not be complicated. One board member from each of six counties, plus a Kansas City nominee, could work. The authority would then be given governance of operations and personnel.

This isn’t just about politics. Kansas City Council members have lots of other things to worry about, and can’t devote full attention to the airport. An authority, on the other hand, would only have to consider the interests of the airport and its customers.

And a regional authority would help unify the area. The region’s struggle to meet the challenges of COVID shows we must do a much better job of working together across state and county lines. The airport is a good place to start.

Again, it won’t be simple. Congress would likely have a role, as would local and state governments.

But a region that has a port authority and a sports authority and a transportation authority and a bistate commission can and should figure out a better way to run the airport. We’ll cut the ribbon on a new terminal in 2023, and a new authority should be in place by then.

This story was originally published August 31, 2021 at 5:00 AM.