UPDATE 11:10 p.m. This is an updated version of an earlier Prime Buzz post on the mayor's clash with the council.
BY DeANN SMITH and LYNN HORSLEY
Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser said Wednesday that he was prepared to defy any City Council ordinance that would bar his wife from continuing to volunteer in his office.
“I am not going to respond to the ordinance,” Funkhouser said. “I think this law is targeted at me, and I will probably ignore it.”
And that could mean a standoff between the mayor and the council, some council members say, but they hope the mayor backs down and ends wife Gloria Squitiro’s role as a full-time volunteer in his office.
“We are on a collision course,” Councilwoman Cindy Circo said. “It is his choice.”
On Wednesday, the council’s Finance and Audit Committee discussed a proposed volunteer ordinance — and a counterproposal from Funkhouser — but took no action. The committee will again take up the issue in two weeks.
Jan Marcason, the prime author of the push to create volunteer guidelines that would include training and background checks, said the recent lawsuit by a former mayor’s office staffer against the city, Funkhouser and Squitiro underscored the need for a policy. A former mayoral aide has sued for discrimination and harassment and has alleged that Squitiro created a hostile work environment, which Squitiro has denied.
The ordinance also would bar family members from volunteering in the same office in which a close relative works.
Funkhouser told the committee that it was not uncommon for spouses to work together and that he and his wife had been unfairly targeted by The Kansas City Star.
After the committee meeting, Funkhouser praised his wife’s role in his office, her invaluable advice and the perspective she brings to his efforts.
He said laws “big and small” are ignored all the time, specifically noting Jim Crow laws in the past. He also pointed out that the police chief recently said he would not have his officers enforce a panhandling ordinance he considered unconstitutional. Funkhouser said the police chief was correct.
But several council members noted that they and the mayor took an oath that included a vow “that I will observe the provisions of the charter and ordinances of Kansas City and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of said office, so help me God.”
Mayor Pro Tem Bill Skaggs, one of Funkhouser’s biggest supporters on the council and a critic of the volunteer ordinance, said Funkhouser would have a problem if he ignored an ordinance passed by the council.
Councilman Russ Johnson, traditionally a stalwart ally of Funkhouser but a supporter of the volunteer ordinance, agreed Funkhouser should abide by whatever the council adopted.
“If the mayor decides to pick and choose which ordinances to follow, why shouldn’t everybody?” Johnson said.
What would happen if Funkhouser defied the ordinance was still uncertain, council members said.
Marcason said the internal auditor or the city’s Ethics Commission could pursue such an issue. But, she said, “I cannot imagine the mayor would ignore the law.”
Councilman Ed Ford, one of two lawyers on the council and a critic of Funkhouser’s, said the mayor would be opening himself up to a possible recall on grounds of malfeasance.
On Wednesday, Funkhouser offered his own proposal involving volunteers.
He said he was not arguing against volunteer policies, just the proposed ordinance. Funkhouser wants the council to adopt a resolution that would direct the city manager and park commissioners to develop a policy governing volunteers. He said the council needed to approach the subject as thoroughly as it would any other and not rush it.
But the city attorney’s office noted that the city manager did not control elected officials. As a result, Funkhouser’s proposed policy would apply only to city departments and not to the mayor and council. Council members could choose to abide by the policy if they wanted to.
Circo and Ford said they believed that even with Funkhouser’s proposal, they still had a veto-proof majority for the ordinance.
Funkhouser said Wednesday that his colleagues were wrongfully targeting him and his wife. During the committee meeting, he said council members had been misled into wrongfully thinking it is rare and a problem for spouses to work together.
He distributed a list of two dozen companies in which relatives worked together in key roles, and he mentioned Mark Zieman, president and publisher of The Star, and his wife, Rhonda Chriss Lokeman.
Lokeman is a national columnist for Creators Syndicate, and her column appears on Sundays in The Star. She stepped down earlier this year as a Star columnist and employee when her husband was elevated from editor to publisher. As editor, Zieman did not supervise Lokeman.
Zieman said his wife is not an employee or volunteer at the newspaper.
“She has never worked in my office or for me, has never greeted visitors, has never acted as a member of my office staff, and has never involved herself in Star business affairs,” he said. “In fact, the only similarity I can find between her and Ms. Squitiro is that they are both married women.”
Funkhouser also said the newspaper had been unfair to him and his wife.
“Gloria and I have been a target of a vendetta by The Star,” he said, adding that other entities and elected officials had also been targets of The Star, citing specifically Kansas City school board President Marilyn Simmons and former Jackson County Executive Katheryn Shields.
“They are unaccountable, and they are the only newspaper in town, and it pays,” Funkhouser said. “And woe be unto you if it happens to you.”
Later, Funkhouser said in an e-mail issued by a spokesman: “Maybe vendetta is too strong, but it’s obvious to anyone who reads it that The Star is biased.”
Zieman said The Star has no vendetta or bias against the mayor.
“We actually endorsed him in the last election,” Zieman said. “The multiple controversies involving the mayor and his wife were certainly covered extensively by our newspaper. But we did not create them. This is a distinction that often eludes politicians under pressure.”
Funkhouser also cited a couple at the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s business school, Lee Bolman, interim dean, and his wife, Joan V. Gallos, the new director of the school’s executive MBA program.
Victoria Prater, spokeswoman for the Henry Bloch business school, said Bolman and Gallos had distinct jobs and did not work together, so as to avoid any conflict of interest. Gallos, she said, reports to the provost and does not and has never reported to Bolman.
"I promise that our little family will always come first"
Excerpts from inaugural address:
=============================
Kansas City, Missouri
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Today marks a new day at City Hall.
But first allow me to address what’s most important. I want to thank my beautiful wife Gloria Squitiro and our daughter Tara and son Andrew. I am grateful for your support, and I promise that our little family will always come first.
And allow me please a moment to look back with admiration over the last eight years. No one can deny that the city’s skyline is more dazzling today than it was in when Mayor Kay Barnes first took oath of office, and when the outgoing City Council of Kansas City began working with her.
The sight of so many cranes in our commercial core should be a welcome one for anyone who truly cares about our city and its future. Within easy walking distance of this chamber at 12th and Oak the evidence of the hard work of Mayor Barnes and her Council is abundant:
--Housing for thousands of new downtown residents
--Beautiful buildings rescued from neglect
--Longstanding eyesores finally demolished
--Ugly parking lots replaced by gleaming new structures, with jobs for our citizens
--Historic hotels rehabilitated and reopened
--The Convention Center and Music Hall refurbished and expanded
--A splendid new library
And, of course, this autumn both the Sprint Arena and the Power & Light District will open officially—at which time I will humbly and with honor share the podium with Mayor Barnes, Mayor Pro Tem Brooks and the City Council that made it happen.
So as I turn my attention now to my colleagues on the Council, I remind us that the work that lies ahead of us is not for us alone.
Today we venture together into four years of politics, that basic component of social life. And each day, perhaps even each moment, will present us with a choice. We can engage in good politics – spirited debate and selfless compromise. Or we can play the politics of personal gain – forsaking the public’s trust and smiting one another for a petty boost in ego.
In the coming years, we will need to make these kinds of sacrifices for one another. Because we are not here to serve ourselves. We are here to serve the citizens.
And I have little doubt that we will make the right decisions. With the most recent election, Kansas Citians voted themselves a council that together has decades and decades of solid, honorable community and electoral experience. I was thrilled when I saw those last vote tallies come in, and it occurred to me that I have the humble honor of serving with women and men of such intelligence and passion for serving a greater good.
With that in mind, the first tax increment financing proposal that reaches my desk had darn well better be on the East Side.
And we will craft a “micro-TIF” policy that gives small business owners the same financial tools used by the city’s bigger companies. Developers and large businesses need not fear me, as long as they help us nurture smaller enterprises throughout the entire City.
The most important basic City service is maintaining our neighborhoods. In fact, when it comes to improving basic City services, I promise a passionate, permanent, relentless focus, the likes of which has not been seen in a very long time. We will plow the snow more quickly; equip and clean our parks to a higher standard; remove rubbish faster; repair those streets under the City’s purview; and—a personal mission of mine—remove from our roadways once and for all those blasted metal plates.
I figure that if I mess up too badly, and eventually get run out of town on a rail, at least let it be a “light rail.”
As ever, none of this will be easy in light of the current financial situation. I’m bothered by the city’s debt and am keeping a watchful eye on our revenue base. Fortunately, to “be smart with the money,” we have a lot of in-house help.
The employees of this City are the finest, hardest-working, most committed public servants that I have ever seen in my long career in government.
This administration will pay close attention to the views of all our employees and their representatives.
All these are not idle pledges--issued today, only to be forgotten tomorrow. As you know, for many years I measured the City’s performance in the eyes of our residents by surveying their opinions.
Those citizen satisfaction scores will be a built-in grade card of my performance. If those scores don’t improve significantly, you won’t see me making this speech in 2011.
The faith and trust that Kansas City voters placed in me 5-1/2 weeks ago is both gratifying and humbling. I will not fail them. I promise not to cover up mistakes, but to learn from them, and keep moving forward.
In the meantime, I and the members of my administration will be out in all parts of our great community: asking questions, soliciting feedback, sharing the hopes and dreams of regular folks, and responding as best we can.
I pledge to do this, and I implore you to take a similar pledge, because as one of this nation’s earliest settlers, John Winthrop, once declared: “we must consider that we shall be as a City upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.”
Today, the eyes of the people are indeed upon us.
Expectations are high. But I am certain we can meet those expectations.