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

Time for another news digest, bringing you up to speed on what’s going on in KC and the region.

:: Once again, our governor, “Farmer” Mike Parson, has shown how much he detests Kansas City. (Same for St. Louis, he just hasn’t exhibited that in a while.)

There’s been story after story about wrongly convicted Kevin Strickland, the Kansas City man who has been imprisoned for more than 40 years for a 1978 triple homicide that prosecutors are now convinced he did not commit.

Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker’s hands are tied until a new law takes effect in August, when she and other prosecutors will be able to start asking judges to overturn convictions in cases of erroneous convictions. But Farmer Mike’s hands are not tied; he has the power to pardon. This week he pardoned 36 people, but he passed over Strickland, whose case he knows about.

Parson’s failure to act prompted Tricia Rojo Bushnell, director of the Midwest Innocence Project to say: “It’s hard to imagine how everyone can know someone’s innocent and he’s still there. At this point, no one with power has done the things to let him out.”

Farmer Mike doesn’t seem to care. His police board is going to war, legally, with Kansas City over the City Council’s decision to redirect $42 million that is part of the Police Department’s budget. That and Strickland’s plight are just two instances of how Parson and his Republican cohorts — most of them hailing from towns of 10,000 or less — like to hold the largest city in the state hostage to their whims and biases.

For the record, Parson, when he’s not in Jefferson City, lives in Bolivar, a town of about 10,500.

:: The new McClatchy Company, now owned by a New Jersey-based hedge fund, didn’t fight a unionization effort by the approximately 40, non-management editorial employees at The Star. This week, McClatchy said it would voluntarily recognize the Kansas City News Guild, which formed last month under the leadership of longtime columnist and reporter Mike Hendricks.

I suppose the reason McClatchy didn’t fight it was twofold: First, it would make the company look even more shark-like than it already is, and, second, McClatchy recognized fighting the movement would be a losing effort because the vast majority of eligible employees were on board.

You won’t see any more reporters hired as a result of this development — or more substantial coverage of local news — but at least those remaining employees will have some leverage with management.

The Star union will become a unit of the NewsGuild-CWA, the nation’s largest union for journalists and other news industry employees. The News Guild is a sector of the Communication Workers of America, representing about 24,000 journalists.

:: In the interests of linking downtown “islands” with downtown proper, several U.S. cities have removed, or are removing, some of parts of downtown interstate loops. One city that has done so with great success is Rochester, NY, which, in 2013, won a nearly $18 million grant from the Obama administration that enabled it it to remove a segment of its inner loop. In an exhaustive report about loop extractions, The New York Times said…

“People have already moved into townhouse-style apartments where the highway once stood. Scooters and bicycles share space with cars along the new Union Street corridor, a once unlikely sight. Several cross-streets cut off by the highway have been reconnected, encouraging more walking in the area. And the big fear of removing a highway — terrible traffic — hasn’t materialized.”

Could it happen here in Kansas City? Sure, and I hope it does. Kevin Collison, who for several years has written and published the website CityScene KC, reported this week that the Washington D.C.-based Congress for The New Urbanism (CNU) had published a report that advocated removal of part or all of Kansas City’s North Loop, which separates downtown from the River Market and the Columbus Park neighborhood.

As envisioned, the approach to the Heart of America Bridge, also known as the Missouri 9 bridge, would be lowered to grade, reuniting the River Market and Columbus Park neighborhoods and establishing easy access to Independence Boulevard.

A related idea is to fill in and cover up to four blocks of the South Loop with a downtown park. That would establish a seamless connection between Downtown and the Crossroads district.

Both ideas are just in the conceptual stage, but sooner or later one or both of those hideous loops will be going away, replaced by multi-lane roads that move traffic but allow easy access to the downtown, the River Market and the Crossroads.

For people like me, who are always looking for ways to avoid freeways, it will be a godsend.

:: The final step toward resolving the honoring of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. will take place this weekend as city Public Works crews will place Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard signs along Volker Boulevard and sections of Swope Parkway and Blue Parkway. A KCMO news release said the project will involve switching out of 37 standard street-name signs, as well as five traffic signal signs equipped with LED lighting at Volker and Oak, Swope Parkway and Prospect and Blue Parkway and Eastwood Trafficway.

If, like me, you are a supporter of the legacy of businessman and philanthropist William Volker, don’t worry: A nonresidential section of Oak Street between 45th Street (the Nelson Gallery) and 52nd Street (near UMKC) will be renamed Volker Boulevard.

:: Last but not least, we finally have a new trial date for 83-year-old David Jungerman, who is charged with murdering Kansas City lawyer Thomas Pickert outside Pickert’s Brookside home on Oct. 25, 2017. Jackson County Circuit Judge John Torrence recently scheduled jury selection to start on Monday, Dec. 13, with the trial beginning immediately after a jury has been sworn in.

Even though Jungerman, a mean and hateful man, has been safely off the streets for more than three years now, it will be good to see him finally brought into court and facing the assistant prosecutors and police investigators who have worked so hard to bring him to justice.

Dec. 13 will be a gratifying day for many people, assuming Jungerman doesn’t die in the Jackson County jail before then.

Here’s a photo of him from 2019.