The Star’s City Hall reporter, Bill Turque, reports this morning that the members of the Kansas City Council have spent more than $155,000 in taxpayer funds on travel between January 2016 through March of this year.
Council members have gone to Germany to promote the city’s jazz heritage; they’ve gone to sun-splashed places like Las Vegas, Hawaii and Palm Beach; and they’ve gone to big cities like Montreal, Charlotte and Dallas.
The headline on the front-page story asks this pivotal question about all that travel: “(W)as it worth it?”
Turque doesn’t answer the question himself, but high up in the story he quotes Councilman Scott Taylor, a minimalist when it comes to city-funded travel as saying…
“We have plenty of meetings to go to every night here in Kansas City that don’t cost a dime to go to and represent our constituents.”
I like Taylor’s reasoning, and that’s one reason I’ve contributed to his 2019 mayoral campaign.
Earlier this summer, Taylor introduced an ordinance that would have curtailed council travel, but his proposal got the wave-off. And so it died.
I’m hoping, though, that if Taylor is elected mayor and is able to resurrect that ordinance, he will make an exception on travel restrictions for a particular council member who has zeroed in on a particular country.
Counciman Dan Fowler
That’s Dan Fowler, 2nd District councilman, who has traveled to Cuba twice since 2016. Fowler’s goal, in Turque’s words, is to “make valuable ministry contacts to help connect Cuban and Kansas City markets.”
The first trip, Turque said, cost taxpayers $4,900 and was “the priciest trip by a single council member.”
Now, everybody knows the U.S. has had a trade embargo on Cuba for nearly 60 years, and, beyond that, President Trump imposed even tighter restrictions on trade and travel before Fowler’s most recent trip, last fall.
So, some people might wonder exactly what Fowler hopes to accomplish by spending thousands of dollars to make “valuable ministry contacts.”
…But, I’ll tell you, I think there’s more here than meets the eye.
I don’t have anything to back me up on this, but I suspect Fowler has a secret, beautiful agenda:
I think he’s trying to establish a back-channel conduit to get Cuban cigars from Havana to KC.
Not just a few cigars but lots and lots of cigars. Tens of thousands of cigars so that not only area residents but people who come to town to party in the Power & Light District or come to see Chiefs and Royals’ games, the Liberty Memorial and Union Station, and our many other attractions can also enjoy the finest cigars in the world.
(Attesting to the singular quality of Cuban cigars, before President John F. Kennedy imposed the trade embargo on Cuba in 1962, he had someone in his administration buy as many as many H. Upmann Cuban cigars as possible. The emissary returned with 1,200.)
Fowler has taken on a considerable challenge, of course, because even if he is able to firm up contacts in Cuba, he’ll have to figure out the logistics of getting a steady supply of Cubans (cigars, I mean) from there to here.
I imagine he’ll have to engage the owners of yachts, fishing vessels and maybe even rubber rafts to get the cigars from Havana to Florida. And from there it’ll take a mighty “underground railroad” consisting of planes, trains and automobiles to transport the goods from Florida to the Heartland.
A lot of “mules” are going to have to be hired, and they’ll have to be well paid to ensure their silence.
Not only that, but in setting up his retail network in Kansas City, Fowler will have to buy the silence of cigar sellers and have the retailers beg the buyers to stay mum about where they got their Cuban “sticks.”
Luckily for Kansas City, though, Fowler looks like a shoo-in for re-election next year, and he’ll have four more years to make numerous trips to Cuba to work out the kinks.
And think of the benefit to Kansas City. Why, we’d be the “Cuban Cigar Capital of the Country”!
Of course, we could only talk about that among ourselves because the whole dang enterprise would have to be on the down low.
But I’m pulling for Dan and his mission, and I’m hoping Mayor Scott Taylor will give him a wide berth on travel between 2019 and 2023 so he can get this operation up and running.
One request: Dan, if you’re taking orders yet, make mine Partagas.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Fitz,
What the hell you smoking?
And I don’t mean Cubans!
Your supposition on Fowler is off the
mark. Your just dreaming of a outcome
you would like- more Cuban cigars.
Not sure why Fowler explored Cuba via
2 trips. Maybe he is fascinated by the culture?
I KNEW you had a horse in this race …. a method to your madness.
But has your wife approved adding the humidor to the back of the house?
I don’t smoke ’em much any more, Gayle, unless I can find a Partagas from Havana. Last ones I found were in Athens in March. No humidor in the works.
I’m no smoker, but when I went with a group to Cuba in 2004, it was made abundantly clear that as tourists we could take home Cuban cigars. I bought a whole box — sorry I cannot remember the name, maybe they were Partagas — at just under $100.00. (They were later auctioned off at a regional SPJ meeting.) Not a true jazz fan, I did attend a jazz event. Waiting in line at the entrance, a guy from Canada overheard in my conversation with friends a mention of Kansas City. He immediately jumped right in and began asking questions about the Kansas City Jazz Museum. Highlight of the trip for me was a stop at a famed coffee house, sometimes frequented by Hemingway, where I joined with a roomful of strangers in a spontaneous karaoke version of Mama Inez.
Cuba’s a wonderful place…to visit. Dan Fowler should pay his own way, like you and I did, Peg.
Jim, I don’t have an informed opinion of the trips taken by the KC Council members. I would, though, offer this observation: I was involved in civic life in Missouri for over 50 years, mostly in the not-for-profit world. Travel dollars were precious and worthwhile. I would go to a couple of conferences a year, often arriving mid-morning of the opening day of the conference, after having taken the first flight in the morning to avoid a day in a hotel. Same idea for the return trip, taking the last flight out to St. Louis and skipping the last half day of the conference.
Too often Missourians think the sun rises in St. Louis and sets in KC. A lot is happening elsewhere, and Missourians need to learn from what others are doing and risk slipping further behind. I seldom saw St. Louis officials at the conference I attended that were directly related to making cities better even when I hosted the conference once in St. Louis. I can directly track ideas I learned at conferences to funding for my organization that was enough to fund it for multiple years.
Continuing education is important. Junkets are a waste. The trick is to know the difference.
P.S. I loved Cuba and learned a lot. I don’t know how it might apply to KC.
I hope some City Council members read your comment and take note, Tom.
Councilman Jermaine Reed, a candidate for mayor, took 26 taxpayer-funded trips totaling more than $31,000 in expenses — about $9,000 more than the mayor.
Twenty-six trips in a little over two years. That’s about one a month. That’s what you call “junketing.”
A little under $1,200 per trip doesn’t make for a very long or extravagant trip. OTOH (there’s another pesky acronym for you), those little short jaunts can be refreshing and rejuvenating.
Emulation of Col. Fox, or Perry White @ Jimmycsays? Stop the presses, get me Kent, on the double!