In case you missed it, the Burns & McDonnell single-terminal proposal just moved from the “questionable” column to “fait accompli.”
Yesterday, two major developments took place that sealed the deal, although the City Council won’t officially vote on it until next month.
The first was Kansas City Star reporter’s Lynn Horsley’s online story that said Burns & McDonnell had, in recent years, made campaign contributions to Mayor Sly James and all 12 other council members. The second development was U.S. Rep. Sam Graves’ announcement that he was essentially endorsing the Burns and Mac proposal. Until yesterday, his public position had been steadfast opposition to city construction of a new single terminal.
It’s hard to say which of these developments was more critical to make this the proverbial “done deal.”
Let’s look at them one at a time…
Burns and Mac campaign contributions
In the last quarter of 2013 alone, Horsley reported, Burns & McDonnell employees contributed more than $50,000 to James, including more than $37,000 at a single fund-raiser on Nov. 6 that year.
That’s eye-opening and helps explain why James has been joined at the hip with Burns & Mac on the proposed airport deal from the outset. (Burns and Mac quietly began developing its private-build proposal at least a few months ago, but the deal didn’t become public until two weeks ago, when The Star got wind of it, forcing the mayor to scurry down to 18th and Grand for a meeting with The Star’s editorial board.)
In regard to the single-terminal proposal, however, Burns and Mac’s contributions to James are less important than its generosity with the other council members…And what a smart move that was, the company and anticipating it would need the council’s help on any number of fronts.
Horsley specifically named five council members, besides James, who benefitted from Burns and Mac’s generosity before and after the 2015 city elections. They are Councilman Quinton Lucas ($5,125); Councilman Lee Barnes ($5,250); Councilwoman Teresa Loar ($3,625); Councilwoman Heather Hall ($1,575); and Councilwoman Katheryn Shields ($2,625).
After a two-hour-plus City Council discussion of the proposal last week, I could not have predicted with certainty that any of those five would vote for the Burns and Mac proposal. I still wouldn’t say that, strictly on the basis of these reported campaign contributions. But…combine those contributions with yesterday’s other development, and the picture comes into pretty clear focus.
The Graves endorsement
Graves at Truman State University farm last month
Graves, of course, is a Republican, and the Burns and Mac proposal is a classic Republican deal: A private company, not a government agency, takes full responsibility for construction and debt retirement, and also gets the chance to make a nice profit along the way. Exactly how the company profits — and to what extent — we don’t know yet; that hasn’t been spelled out.
Graves has never trusted the city. He hated the Power & Light District deal, which left the city paying millions of dollars a year to retire debt, and The Star noted yesterday that Graves has a distinct “lack of trust in the Kansas City Aviation Department.” The Burns and Mac deal would relegate the Aviation Department to a supporting role, instead of landlord and owner riding herd over every aspect of the project. That has to appeal to Graves.
Campaign contributions could also be a factor in the Graves endorsement. Both The Star and the Kansas City Business Journal reported Graves’ announcement, but neither reported what I found on the website ioncongress.com — that Burns and Mac contributed $7,500 to Graves, apparently in his 2016 re-election campaign.
Whatever prompted Graves to capitulate, the significance of his shift cannot be overrated. His district lies almost exclusively north of the Missouri River, and four City Council members come from north of the river. He is their congressional representative, and they would be very unlikely to take a stand in opposition to his.
The four Northland council members are Mayor Pro Tem Scott Wagner; Councilman Dan Fowler; and Loar and Hall.
Of those four, only Wagner, as I saw it, was a solid “yes” vote for the Burns and Mac proposal before yesterday. Now, I think, all four will vote for it.
**
Taking stock, the private-build proposal needs seven votes to pass. Last week, I saw only five solid votes for the proposal: Sly James; Scott Wagner; Jolie Justus, who heads the council’s Aviation Committee; and Kevin McManus and Scott Taylor, both of whom live in the 6th District, where Burns & McDonnell has its headquarters.
Now, we add in Fowler, Loar and Hall. That’s eight. That leaves Lucas, Shields, Barnes, Alissia Canady and Jermaine Reed unaccounted for. Where do they go? Well, if they decide to oppose the ordinance, they will be in the path of a snowball rolling down hill. Not a place you want to be. In addition, they all got campaign contributions from Burns & McDonnell.
It could end up being unanimous.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Even if the council members have now made up their minds, I hope they have the good manners not to announce their decision until after the lawyers reviewing the memorandum of understanding deliver their report. It would be very depressing to learn that hundreds of thousands of dollars are being wasted on a fait accompli.
They won’t announce, Mark…Also, they’re still going to need those outside lawyers to help negotiate the “definitive agreements” that would spring from the memorandum of understanding, which, as you know, is very vague and has spawned lots of questions. The city has a good law department, but you really need specialists on a deal like this. In some ways, the city’s fate is in the hands of those two law firms. They’d better put their best people on this deal and not their interns and clerks.
Even before they need the lawyers to negotiate the “definitive agreements,” they need them to spot and assist in correcting any major flaws in the memorandum of understanding. In theory, the MOU is setting forth the basic elements of how the deal will be implemented. There better not be anything in there that will create major problems down the road.
That may very well be true but there is supposed to be a citywide vote and the people I talk to are still against a single-terminal airport. It does not seem to be about the cost, it is about convenience. The people in KC aren’t concerned about a movie theatre or a McDonalds in the terminal. Maybe business travelers passing through may not think our airport is glitzy enough but I fear citizens just don’t care. I also think talk about moving the airport to Johnson County does not motivate people to want to vote for a new airport. Judging from the pictures of people lined up at the counters at that cut-rate airline back East does not bode well for single-terminal airports. That might just be a fade like marble countertops. I’m not against a well-constructed new airport. I just don’t think it will turn out that way. I’m from Missouri. You just have to show me. So, either public or private, show me the way and you have my vote.