Money Changes Everything

And that was all the city's leaders needed to chuck their "guiding principles" out the window.

A mere month after Kansas City's orgasmic review in Governing mag, high-flying tech stocks plummeted, triggering a long economic slide. People started earning less, buying less and paying less in taxes.

This past winter, city officials opened up their capital improvement budget and began deleting numbers. They crossed out more than $31 million they would have spent over the next five years on bridges, curbs and sidewalks; on all the buildings the city has to take care of, like Bartle Hall and Kemper Arena; on parks and on special projects such as sprucing up Swope Park and Starlight Theater.

They also decided to neglect their healthy habit of adding $5 million each year to the backlog budget. Worse, they proposed cutting that budget by $1 million.

But in looking over the distressing numbers, City Manager Bob Collins found one bit of good news.

His staff had noticed that the city was about to make its final payment on a couple of old bonds. With voter approval, these governmental credit cards could be charged back up to the max, netting a slick $35 million -- just about enough to cover all the cuts.

To most Kansas Citians, the question of what to do with the money would have been a no-brainer. Just pull up Resolution No. 971326 and read the list of "guiding principals." It says right there: renew the bonds and let PIAC decide how to spend them.

Instead, the $35 million fueled a hasty money grab that has once again divided the city's elite from its masses and could end with everyone losing.

The meltdown occurred at the utterance of one word.

Downtown.

The idea of diverting some of the $35 million toward the city's bleak commercial center first appeared, at least publicly, in a March 14 letter signed by six city council members: Jim Rowland, Paul Danaher, Bonnie Sue Cooper, Troy Nash, Terry Riley and Becky Nace. Two weeks before they had to pass the budget, they were battling over such issues as whether to fund child care and neighborhood police officers or bankroll federal lobbyists and municipal judges.

Among other things, they proposed earmarking $30 million "for strategic downtown capital improvements."

Rowland takes credit for the idea.

"Stroke of genius, wasn't it?" he says, only half kidding.

"It was a way to get the debate started," he explains. "I offered it as a first shot, as a strategic way to make a long-lasting impact."

Looking back, Rowland says a downtown makeover wasn't the only wish on his list. He would have been happy to spread a bunch of the loot across the city's crumbling roads, which, City Hall surveys show, infuriate residents more than anything else.

But he didn't say so at the time.

Rowland just didn't want the city trying to split this $35 million cupcake into six council-district slices as if it were a $195 million sheet cake. He wanted impact. He wanted his colleagues on the city council to step up and act like the leaders they purported to be.

It's hardly surprising that Rowland chose downtown for his rallying cry, though. Saving downtown is the city's cause du jour.

More specifically, it's the latest passion for one of the most powerful -- if not always politically savvy -- interest groups holding sway over City Hall.

The Civic Council formed in 1964 to, in the words of its original, stodgy mission statement, "act upon any matter, educational, health, cultural, civic, charitable, economic or other which may be deemed to affect the general welfare of Greater Kansas City." Its members aimed "to be politically nonpartisan but to study, maintain, promote and act upon governmental organizations, entities, authorities, compacts, powers and administrative principles."

In other words, they wanted to toss their weight around.

They had plenty to throw. The council was composed of eighty or so men who'd made their fortunes through the area's wealthiest corporations -- white dudes like E. Bertram "Bert" Berkley, then-president of his grandfather's company, Tension Envelope, and Richard C. Green, top guy at the Missouri Public Service Company (originally the Green Light and Power Company).

Then, as now, politicians needed money to get elected, and the Civic Council had it. Keeping one eye on the corporate booty, most local politicians have tried not to alienate this Jack Henry crowd.

Over the years, though, the group has been jeered by commoners for doing its business in secret and for its legacy of political failure. History shows that the Civic Council is adept at influencing politicians but not particularly good at gauging the mood of Kansas City's middle-class majority, which plays its trump card at the ballot box.