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

In an article published early this morning, KC Star reporter Mike Hendricks recounted a six-month-long, cloak-and-dagger tale highlighted by three dramatic meetings leading up to the decision to fire Robbie Makinen as president and CEO of the Area Transportation Authority.

As it turns out, the main reason Makinen will either be fired today or asked to resign is that he had strongly resisted the city’s extraction of federal Covid-relief funds from the ATA to pay for a $20 million, improved street-lighting program.

The first of the three pivotal meetings was in January when Kansas City Public Works Director Michael Shaw, one of 10 members of the ATA’s Board of Commissioners, met with Makinen and supposedly told him, “I have already committed to LED streetlights, and I don’t have the money to pay for them, so you’re going to.”

I have a passing familiarity with Shaw and have a hard time envisioning him making such a declaration, but I suppose it’s possible. He could have been emboldened by the fact that he is married to a City Council member, Ryana Parks-Shaw, and that the Council had approved the street-light plan.

However it was conveyed, Makinen decided to fight, and fight he did, including by pushing unsuccessfully for a bill in the Missouri General Assembly that would have short circuited the city’s money grab.

That effort failed, as did an appeal to the Federal Transit Administration, and as time went on Mayor Quinton Lucas and City Manager Brian Platt, who were behind the street-light financing plan, decided he had to go.

The second pivotal session took place recently, according to Hendricks, when Platt met with the ATA board chairman and vice chairman. Hendricks’ story quoted Platt as telling them, “If Robbie Makinen isn’t fired, we will send out an RFP and we will find somebody else to handle our bus service in Kansas City.”

…That meeting and that astonishing statement represent, by far, the most assertive and risky policy position Platt has staked out since coming to Kansas City from Jersey City 17 months ago.

It was risky because it would be extremely difficult to find a comparable agency to the ATA that could handle the bus service in Kansas City, much less the metro area. But it must have worked because the ATA chairwoman, Melissa Bynum of Wyandotte County, and the vice chairman, Reginald Townsend of Cass County, fell in line.

While some people undoubtedly will view Platt’s action as heavy handed and dictatorial, consider his position. The City Council had approved the $20 million plan and expected it to be funded. If Platt failed to find a funding source, his job could well have been on the line.

From Platt’s persepective, it was either him or Makinen. It was political brinkmanship at its highest level.

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The third and final meeting took place last week when Louie Wright, another KC-appointed ATA board member, informed Makinen that a commission majority would either accept his resignation or fire him.

I’ve known Louie Wright a long time, and my dealings with him have been, for the most part, unpleasant. As president of Local 42 of the International Association of Fire Fighters, he staked out an anti-Star, anti-City Hall position and fought for what he thought was best for the union – that is, more firefighters, higher firefighter pay and better benefits. The rub, however, is that what is in the union’s best interest is not always in the city’s and the public’s best interest. But that was of no concern to Wright.

He went on to get a law degree and become a lawyer but has always stayed close to Local 42. He owes his spot on the ATA board to Local 42’s political activism and, specifically, to the fact that the union endorsed Lucas for mayor three years ago.

…In closing, all I can say is the last place in the world I’d want to be, besides a trench in eastern Ukraine, is in a room with Louie Wright telling me I was being fired.