Mayor Lucas on KC city manager Platt’s suspension: ‘I’d never say it’s just one thing’ | Opinion
I would love to live in a world in which Kansas City Manager Brian Platt was just suspended because a jury found that he’d advocated lying to reporters. But I do not live in that world, and neither do you.
“What? He scoffed at the people’s right to know? I am gravely disappointed!”
“As am I!”
That conversation happened only in my dreams.
We know that Platt was suspended right after a jury awarded a $928,829 payout to former city spokesman Chris Hernandez. Hernandez alleged he was forced out of his job because he would not give in to Platt’s suggestions that he should feel free to mislead the media, just like they did back in Jersey City. Platt, such a kidder, said that whole discussion about lying was simply meant to lighten the mood at a tense staff meeting, but the jury obviously took it seriously.
The facts of the case have been known for years, and the amount of the mounting payouts during Platt’s tenure have, too.
He was hired in 2020. Since then, Kansas City’s legal payouts have increased from about $9.3 million per year to more than $13 million annually, according to 3rd District Councilwoman Melissa Robinson.
Again, all of this was known when Platt had his contract extended and was given a big raise.
So what changed on Thursday?
Nothing, which is why, embarrassing and costly as Platt’s trial was for the city, this cannot only have been about this suit per se, or even about the money.
In a Friday interview, Mayor Quinton Lucas said he couldn’t go into detail about a personnel issue, but he did confirm that this is about a lot more than this lawsuit: “Myself and the City Council had a conversation about a number of issues. I’d never say it’s just one thing,” but is instead the result of a “totality of issues.”
Naturally, because I’ve been writing about the horrible conditions that Kansas City inmates have been subjected to in Vernon County’s jail, I wondered if Platt’s lack of oversight of and potential lack of honesty about that situation had something to do with this suspension. Did it, I asked Lucas, or was that just wishful thinking?
“When I say ‘totality,’ I mean that. I mean issues important to all of Kansas City and not just City Hall.” Though that sounded a lot like a ‘yes,’ others in the meeting said that subject didn’t even come up.
A ‘totality of issues’
At a minimum, Platt’s handling of the jail contract seems to me to be an example of his willingness to provide alternative facts. In December, Platt told me that his staff was in regular contact with Vernon County officials and was addressing conditions in an ongoing way: “We’ll continue to have conversations with them. Our team has been in touch about what we can do better.”
When the new sheriff told me later that same month that the only conversation he had had with any city official was about whether they were going to continue to take our detainees, that only deepened my skepticism about whether those gotta-do-better conversations were happening at all.
The “totality of issues” surely does include how city employees are treated.
During Platt’s trial, former media relations manager Maggie Green testified that she was “terrified” that she was going to lose her job because Platt was unhappy about an accurate story in The Star about how many miles of road had been repaved. Officials need to know, if they don’t already, whether the suspended city manager often had that effect on employees in trouble for doing their jobs.
There are two other lawsuits being brought by former city employees who allege that Platt urged them to do the wrong thing.
One is from ex-civil rights and equal opportunity director Andrea Dorch, who has sued Platt and the city for race- and age-discrimination. It was her job to make sure that construction of the new Meta data center in the Northland would comply with city requirements to hire minority- and women-owned businesses as subcontractors. When she found that wasn’t happening, she says Platt urged her to pretend otherwise. And when she wouldn’t, he not only forced her out but spent taxpayer dollars on a private investigator to show that she was in violation of the residency requirement for city employees. Was that another Jersey City move? It was a shameful one, regardless. But this, too, we’ve known.
Another suit is being brought by Kerrie Tyndall, former assistant city manager and director of economic development. She has filed a sex and age discrimination lawsuit alleging that she was forced out in part for failing to share Platt’s unalloyed enthusiasm for development deals.
The civil rights community, along with most Black members of the City Council, have opposed Platt from the beginning, citing a disqualifying history of discrimination. But now, even Northland council members and Platt’s longtime champion Lucas, too, seem to see him as a potential liability, and we who have paid the city manager’s salary all this time deserve to know why.
There needs to be a serious, independent outside investigation into what happened here. What was the level of deception, and what else went on that we haven’t heard about?
When I told Lucas that, he said, “I don’t immediately reject that investigation,” though nor did he immediately support it. “You never look at anything in isolation,” he said.
All we know for now is that we’ve seen only a corner of the full picture.
This story was originally published March 7, 2025 at 3:11 PM.
