JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

The final, tawdry move in the KCMO sales-tax ambush of 2020 came to light very quietly three days before the June 2 election.

I wrote on Friday, May 29, that Freedom Inc., the influential Black political organization, had endorsed the proposed quarter-cent, Fire Department sales tax and said Freedom “either has been paid or will be paid tens of thousands of dollars by…Local 42 to help get out the vote on Kansas City’s east side.”

As it turns out, I — and nobody else — knew then how much Freedom got because Freedom was late filing a campaign finance disclosure report due eight days before the election, that is May 25 .

Freedom finally filed the eight-day-prior report on Saturday May 30, five days late and just THREE DAYS before the election. I found the report recently when I returned to the Missouri Ethics Commission’s website.

The report shows Local 42 paid Freedom $15,000 for endorsing the sales-tax proposal and helping promote passage at the polls.

I imagine Freedom can be fined a nominal amount for the late filing, but I’m sure Freedom officials would regard it as a small price to pay for concealing the Local 42 payment until the last minute.

Freedom’s endorsement was probably worth at least a few thousand votes in the June 2 election, although probably not enough to overturn the final result, which was 20,578 “yes” votes to 16,092 “no,” or 56 percent to 44 percent.

Yet, the endorsement was very troubling. As I’ve written many times, sales taxes are the most regressive of all taxes, hitting poor people the hardest, because the tax represents a much larger proportion of their incomes than the incomes of middle-income and wealthy people.

To those of us who care about egalitarianism, it’s just galling to see a bad tax — which the Fire Department tax increase unequivocally was — promoted by an organization that purportedly works in the interests of the city’s neediest people.

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I’ve watched Kansas City and Jackson County politics for about half a century now, and Freedom has a history of not consistently taking positions that represent the best interests of its constituents.

I’ve always loved Freedom’s motto: No Permanent Friends, No permanent Enemies, Just Permanent Interests.

Unfortunately, Freedom has too often sold out rather than stood on what should be its top permanent interest, improving economic opportunities and the quality of life for African Americans living in Kansas City.

Certainly, Freedom spends a significant portion of the money it derives from endorsements to produce campaign material, including mailers and yard signs, and to pay poll workers to distribute sample ballots.

But a significant amount of money also goes into the pockets of Freedom leaders. Sometimes it’s big money, and sometimes it’s “walking-around money.” (The first time I heard that term was when Bobby Hernandez and the late Charles Hazley were on the City Council, and developers and others who were interested in obtaining their votes reportedly provided them, as well as some other Council members, with “walking-around money.”)

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In the two issue campaigns I’ve worked on in recent years, Freedom was on the right (proper) side once and the wrong side the other time.

In 2013, Freedom opposed a half-baked proposal put forth by civic leaders for a sales tax for “translational medical research.”

I don’t think the civic leaders even bothered to take the tax proposal to the City Council because they knew it wouldn’t fly. So, they leaned on then-Jackson County Executive Mike Sanders, who brought it to the County Legislature, which voted to put it on the ballot. (Sanders, of course, turned out to be a crook.)

I was so mad after that vote I quickly filed paperwork to form an opposing committee, Committee to Stop a Bad Cure.

I worked hand-in-hand with Freedom on that campaign, and the tax lost in a record-breaking landslide: 86 percent “no” to 14 percent “yes.”

Freedom leaders and I celebrated that victory at a bar at 31st and Gillham. Memorable night.

The following year, instead of voting to increase Missouri’s gas tax, one of the lowest in the nation, the Missouri General Assembly voted to put on the ballot a three-quarter-cent sales tax for highway improvements.

It was a patently ridiculous proposal because the public would be paying for it, while the truckers, who inflict the most damage on the highways, would pay nothing.

I worked against the proposal in Kansas City, in concert with a newfound St. Louis friend, Tom Shrout, a regular commenter on this blog. We came up with great yard signs saying, “You pay. Truckers don’t!”

We really wanted Freedom Inc. to join us in opposition to the proposal, but to our chagrin the organization sold out to the Heavy Constructors Association, which paid Freedom tens of thousands of dollars.

In the end, it didn’t matter: Voters crushed the proposal 59 percent to 41 percent.

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Freedom’s inconsistency is very regrettable. Its current president is Gayle Holliday, a retired Area Transportation Authority executive. If she and other Freedom leaders, including Beatty, the treasurer, would adhere to the organization’s slogan, Freedom would have a lot more credibility, and its constituents would be a lot better off.

Freedom could start by committing to do the little things right, like filing timely campaign finance disclosure reports and not trying to hide the booty.