It's the week of the angry town hall.

There are jobs available.

God has a plan.

The stadium ultimatum.

The time is running out.

And a big change on the plaza.

Your week reviewed.

Next week in review, is made possible through the generous support of Dave and Jamie coming Bob and Marlys Gourley at Courtney S Turner Charitable Trust, John H. Mai and Bank of America na Co trustees, the Francis Family Foundation through the discretionary fund of David and Janice Francis and by viewers like you.

Thank you.

Hello and welcome.

I'm Nick Haines, and thank you for joining us on our weekly journey through the week's most impactful, confusing, and downright head scratching local news stories.

Hopping on board.

The Week in Review bus with us this week, writing for The Beacon and the Tribune News Service.

Mary Sanchez keeping tabs on the region's top political stories for Casey One News Brian Ellison, star contributing opinion writer Patrick Toohey and former star reporter and editorial writer who still writes for The Star.

Yes, Dave Helling.

Now people are getting testy out here.

Kansas City area Congressman Mark Alford got a taste of that this week, as he was jeered and booed by fired federal workers as he hosted a town hall in Belton.

He captured national news attention as he declared, God has a plan for those who just lost their jobs.

Not all chaos is bad.

I think you're living in the greatest time in American history.

The crowd drove their spoke over most of all for his answers.

All told, federal employees who've lost their jobs to keep faith there are jobs available.

God has a plan.

We don't need thoughts and prayers.

That's not what we need right now.

We need people to stand up for us.

Also, the former Fox four news anchor and Week in Review panelists also told the crowd, just because you have a government job doesn't mean it's a lifetime appointment, like being on the Supreme Court.

How did that go down, Brian, as you noticed?

Not very well.

And and it is true.

It's not a lifetime appointment like the Supreme Court, but it was understood to be a job that if you did it well and you worked hard at it, you the government had made a commitment to you.

And so people are very upset about these, these layoffs.

And and although we're not exactly sure how many there will be or how far this will go or when a court might stop some of these layoffs from happening.

The uncertainty is creating a lot of havoc and a lot of internal turmoil for people.

Does he deserve credit, though, Patrick, for putting himself in a situation like that?

Do you see Sharice Davids or even a Jerry Moran in Kansas, putting themselves in audiences where there be people who disagree with you?

You don't often, and I think anybody who goes into a hostile audience to be accountable and to explain themselves is absolutely worthwhile.

Yeah, I would say somewhat, yes.

definitely.

Just for showing up and being there.

I don't know if he really realized how much backlash he was going to get.

I wanted him to have de-escalation training.

You know, it sounds like when when you know that you're going into an audience that is so angry and from the get go, you need to listen.

And so the moralizing and some of the things that he's been overly quoted on saying, that's where it really went wrong.

People just need to vent.

I think that's true.

But this was staged.

This was agitprop.

the state Democratic Party was encouraging people to attend.

I heard some audio.

They were chanting, hey, hey, ho ho!

Which if this were a TV show, it's just bad writing.

But but largely, if the Democratic Party have decided that their path on this is to defend federal employees, that is politically a bad mistake.

This wasn't a town hall, though, by the way.

Like Bartle Hall or the downtown library or a huge venue.

This was a small coffee shop in Belton.

So this is a very small portion of the public there.

and some of the reporting we've seen on this, you know, we had, for instance, last week we were talking about potentially a thousand people losing their jobs at the IRS building downtown.

It ended up being about just only a hundred people.

Yeah, but I don't think the, concern at this town hall, whatever you want to call it, Nick and the other ones across the country are just limited to lost federal jobs.

I think there is great and growing concern about unelected people, particularly Elon Musk, making what appear to be random decisions about, political spending in this country.

Nobody elected him.

he wasn't confirmed by the Senate.

And I think so there's a general concern about that.

You know, let's be clear.

This is not a unique event with Mark Offord.

I mean, Jeremy Ran has had town halls.

He has a lot of town halls, has a lot of senators do in small coffee houses in Outstate, Kansas, where you don't get this kind of, attention paid.

But I've covered them with Kevin Yoder, a, one in Olathe, a town hall.

Claire McCaskill famously had a town hall in the middle of, in Kansas City, in the middle of the Obamacare debate.

And, while Patrick is right, this one had some, planned agitprop in it.

So did those.

I mean, that's the how it works.

You you rally your troops to go and heckle whoever the opponent is.

So the long lasting input I'm not sure is, in this area is as important as the more broad concern across the country.

I mean, to that earlier question, Mark Alford does get credit for being available for these sorts of conversations.

And and in fact, he he should get credit for that.

In a lot of cases, he'll appear on news programs and interviews, including at Kcrw, when a lot of Republican legislators and Congress members are not doing that these days.

but I do think that it will be interesting to watch whether that continues to be the case as, as folks anxiety and anger at the Trump administration starts to spill out into more and more of these.

It was interesting looking at some of that video.

As Dave pointed out, it wasn't just about federal workers.

A lot of the signs were about Save Our Schools.

And while a lot of the attention, of course, is on those federal workers schools in universities in Kansas and Missouri are also feeling the political heat.

They've been issued an end of week deadline to eliminate diversity programs or risk losing federal funding.

Local school administrators were sent the ultimatum in a letter from the US Department of Education.

What has been the response, Mary?

Are they ditching those programs, closing diversity offices or largely ignoring the order?

I think it's a little bit of everything.

There are many universities that are completely just trying to do away with or renaming something that had a Dei component.

A lot of what seems to be happening and what is part of the anger, is that there just seems to be this like algorithm that's looking for Dei equity, multicolored, or any of those words is like a catch phrase and just completely then eliminating that from any type of funding.

There are ways to still do the right thing.

We are an incredibly racially diverse population.

Schools know that, and they know that they need to serve all students properly in many different ways.

I think they're going to figure it out.

You know, I saw The New York Times talking about that.

How much change is really taking place?

there's a term, Patrick now being use called rainbow hashing, where you say you're going to remove some of those words that Mary talks about, but ultimately you're doing exactly the same things as you did before.

Yes, we've seen that already.

under the Biden administration that refused to enforce, decisions, court decisions.

And we're going to see it again.

And ultimately, it's going to be a long slog of, prosecute of withholding federal funds.

Maybe people, at the schools will, start lawsuits.

But this is a point to get rid of racial discrimination and part of the challenge is because over the past 20 years, people have tried to play word games.

It's the same policy, but they use all the different terms.

I don't envy anybody who's here about it has been illegal to use race as the only reason to hire, no matter what the race, forever.

And then it's gone through the courts against the civically within colleges and universities.

They do not use race as a one only that, oh, we're going to just take this one for that, this one for that.

They don't do that.

They've always looked at a myriad of issues.

That was the argument that Harvard and UMC made for the Supreme Court and they lost.

Next up, are you fed up of hearing about it?

I know many of you are suffering from stadium news fatigue, but there were a lot of interesting developments in the ongoing stadium saga this week.

Before we get there, though, I couldn't help noticing that this time last year we were preparing to host our big televised stadium tax debate at the Kansas City Library.

I've lived in Kansas City long enough to know that if this is defeated, John Sherman will be right back at the table with the county, maybe a little chastened, and he will work on all these things, and we'll be voting on this again in a year.

He ever talked to John Sherman about this?

So how the heck do you know what he's going to do if this vote fails?

Because I take these years.

All righty.

Patrick.

He got a little testy there, didn't he?

Did you end up having any make up, coffee or lunch with Sly James, the former mayor after that?

We did talk afterwards, and it was pleasant, of course.

But, you know, I am kind of surprised that almost a year later, the team has yet.

Yeah, you said it was going to be coming back to the ballot, I think.

I think all roads run through Jackson County.

I think the team needs to work with the county executive.

They don't want to, but until they put numbers like a proposal out there, we're all just kind of spinning our wheels.

I don't know how it is, Nick, that we can talk about this week after week.

And instead of it becoming more clear what's going to happen, it just gets more and more confusing.

We saw this week, conversation at the Missouri legislature about the possibility that that there's a, there's a bill to create a Clay County Sports commission.

There is, an insistence from the speaker of the House, John Patterson, that time maybe running out, on the Kansas side, we've seen a new push for, creating the financial incentives or extending those so that so that they might move to the Kansas side.

And we just we know less than we did before.

Pat, just push back on a little something Patrick just said.

I don't think the Royals and Jackson County have any relationship at all and won't, but they can negotiate with the city.

The fact that the teams are related to Jackson County is an accident of history.

Really, the only reason Jackson County is involved with the Truman Sports Complex is the city was out of bonding authority back in the 60s, and so they said, well, we'll just go to the county.

And the relationship has developed over time since then.

I think the royals want to cut a deal with, but, Mayor Lucas Quinton Lucas, if possible, with the help of the legislature.

And then, as I wrote a year ago after the failed vote, I do think Kansas is a potential place for the Chiefs to land.

And the first step has to be John Sherman and the royals putting forth what they want.

And, Governor Kehoe said they have to make the first move.

Mike Parson, previous governor, said they had to make the first move.

I don't know what they're waiting on.

I suspect that they've seen the numbers in Kansas.

They've seen the numbers north of the river, and they realize we have to stay in Jackson County.

We need that sales tax because nobody else can make this deal work, and they just don't want to deal with Frank white.

Two top, Jackson County lawmakers who were in Jefferson City this week told lawmakers that the only way this is going to happen is if you tie this issue to changes and reforms of the property assessment process in Jackson County.

If you solve that, voters will say yes.

If you have an elected assessor, if you put a cap on how much property values can raise, be a rise from one year to the other, that will be enough for voters.

Do you buy that?

No, no, I think these are two completely independent issues.

Just keep this in mind.

If Kansas City is involved rather than Jackson County, the taxing district for Kansas City includes north of the river in Clay County, in Platte County in Cass County.

And you eliminate the problems east in eastern Jackson County.

So the idea of passing something publicly in Kansas City, Missouri, may be more palatable than trying to go back to Jackson County again.

But when the, history of this era is written, Nick, I do think that everyone will be faulted, everyone, for not using this year to engage the public more aggressively in deciding where this will go, how much it will cost, the idea that the Royals and the chiefs and legislators and mayors are all sitting in a room cooking this deal up is no way to engender trust among the public.

And they should have done a much, much, much better job of building from the ground up enthusiasm for a new ballpark rather than this is what we want, and take it or leave it, which is what happened a year.

Well, believe it or not, our state legislature has actually involved themselves with other issues other than stadiums.

Yes they do.

Kansas City currently is the only big city in America where the state controls its police department.

But this week that could change.

Not because Missouri lawmakers have had a change of heart, but because they also want to put the Saint Louis Police Department and the state oversight.

The measure has already passed.

The House is awaiting a final vote in the Senate.

The measure is part of a larger crime fighting bill pushed by new governor Mike Kehoe, which also increases the penalties for stunt driving and street takeovers, boosts fines and jail times for burglaries and organized retail theft, and requires law enforcement to report the immigration status of suspects.

Now, I know many of our elected leaders are adamantly opposed to the state controlling local police departments, but wouldn't most of these items in this bill be supported by a large majority of Kansas City and Bryan?

I think some of them would.

I think that's one of the most vexing things about the state control of the Kansas City Police Department.

And now potentially Saint Louis, is that often the debate is is really about who's controlling it, not about what the current state board of police commissioners would do versus what a locally controlled, police board would do, I think here's the issue, though.

A locally controlled board has accountability to those local voters.

If they're really upset, they can throw them out and and try something else.

They can hold their their elected officials to, to to holding that board accountable.

Right now, the the people of Kansas City have very little control over that.

would people support certain measures, to, to step up enforcement, to, to tackle small burglaries and things like that?

Possibly.

But I don't think that's really the issue.

But as one, lawmaker argued this week, Patrick, quote, if the key to stopping crime was state control, there would be no crime in Kansas City.

Is he right or is that faulty logic?

I don't think how police commissioners get there changes anything about what's going on in Kansas City, in Saint Louis.

So unless the governor has a particular task, he wants his appointments to the Saint Louis Police Board to do just deciding differently who who chooses those people doesn't change anything.

And I looked into it.

And he does want a police board that is more amenable to the police, which again presents its own risk.

Do you agree with that, Mary?

Well, yes, because when you look at when you look at what drives crime, it's not who's on the commission.

You know, it's poverty, it's opportunity, it's displacement, it's so many other factors that drive crime.

So this idea that you're going to fix crime by who you put on a commission from a state level, as opposed to allowing people to elect, is just ridiculous.

It's a circular argument that doesn't get at the real issues.

Yeah.

two things we know about the Missouri legislature in its current state one, they don't care what voters do because voters were the ones who approved local control of the police in Saint Louis in a statewide vote.

And, of course, the legislators want to disregard that sentiment, completely.

And then we also know that legislators believe they can run Saint Louis and Kansas City better than the people in Kansas City, in Saint Louis, and they spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with legislation that deal just with those two municipal parties, rather than focus on the problems of the state.

Both of those dynamics, I think, are at work here.

A new week brought yet another round of protests in Kansas City, immigrant crackdowns bringing these people out onto the streets around Southwest Boulevard.

But local activists have found a new target for their venom plans to open a new immigrant detention center in Kansas.

The former civic private prison in Leavenworth is being looked at by the Trump administration as one of a half a dozen mass detention sites around the country.

It has 1100 beds.

The city is evaluating a formal proposal for the Trump administration as we record this program.

Mary, I don't think I've heard anything from Governor Laura Kelly about that.

Are they getting pushback?

Oh, yes.

And the pushback will only increase.

And it's been going on for a number of years.

I mean, that facility closed as a federal prison that's privately owned by Core civic.

It back in 2021.

There were many, many problems that were there.

But realize that is a whole different population.

That is a federal pretrial criminal facility.

Now they want to reopen it.

They've asked for a special use permit.

core civic has and it is at the city level at this point.

It's a special use permit has to go.

They were planning commission, and then it has to go to the full commission.

and that's like a whole 90 day process, at least a huge pushback, though, and historically through the years, I mean, since it closed in 2021, the city and the county have said, no, we're not going to allow it to come in.

We'll see if that changes.

You said it's a different population in the sense also, you think about Leavenworth is a different population of Kansas City.

They're not looking to open a detention center in Jackson County.

Leavenworth voted very comfortably, for Donald Trump.

Yeah.

I don't see that there is a big long term political problem here.

the president ran on this.

everybody understands we need a place to put these people until they're deported.

And Leavenworth is stepping forward with space.

Even Wall Street Journal not exactly a liberal rag, was reporting this morning that the Trump administration is actually sweeping through and gathering up people who have no criminal record but do have a status violation of they don't have the paperwork.

So what was promised and what he ran on is not what's happening.

I think it's very telling, Nick, that the main opposition in Leavenworth to this has been around the possibility that the detainees might be released into Leavenworth when their detention ends.

That's been where the most of the objection has been, and they've been assured that that won't be the case.

Four months after Missouri voters approved sports betting, there's yet another delay.

Missouri gaming officials say the state's new sports betting system is unlikely to be set up by the start of the NFL season in September.

You know, when Kansas legalized sports betting, Patrick, they got it up and running in less than four months.

What could possibly be taking Missouri so long?

God only knows what the state run is.

Okay, these are the committees.

You know, I'm general.

Look, anything that puts this off, I'm for.

Because I think, more gambling in Missouri and Kansas is just a horrible thing for the people.

So I'm not too excited if it's if it's taken them too long.

Just quickly.

The secretary of state is Denny Hoskins.

Denny Hoskins in the legislature was one of the major roadblocks to statewide gambling, in part because he was involved in the discussion over whether slot machines and gas stations, lottery machines were, were, to be legal or not to be legal.

So he his position on gambling is fairly well known.

So he's still rolling it and he has in a position to make it go slowly.

And he is doing just all right now while sports betting, by the way, may be delayed, some other issues decided by voters in November may never be enacted.

how about that?

Children's tax in Platte County, which voters approved to expand youth mental health programs?

Four months after that?

Yes, vote a group of Platte County residents and this week suing the county because they're refusing to collect the tax or fund any of the mental health programs.

So is it optional whether our elected leaders have to make good on our ballot choices?

Me well, it's not supposed to be.

I mean, this all goes back to the local control issue.

The people voted, you know, so you need to do it.

You need to figure out how to put this in place.

And the fact that they're some of the arguments against it are just a little insane as well.

It was a low a low voter turnout, which is true.

We do tend to have low voter turnout.

So I'm going to stand up for the people who didn't vote.

No, you need to stand up for the people who voted.

Yeah.

The, statute here seems to me to be pretty clear.

It says that the, the county commission may, levy a tax if the voters approve, it does not require them to pass it.

The difference between shall and May is stark.

The legal case is not quite as clear cut as Patrick is suggesting that the plaintiffs and other supporters are actually arguing it's a moral imperative, which is more to Mary's point, that, looking at a 56% yes vote, county commissioners, it's a three person commission in Platte County, a small number of people with a lot of power, are asserting their interest and their will and their priorities over the will of the people.

That's the argument that's really.

Well, there's also, though, the issue of what it was all about, and it's mental health services, which no one, law enforcement, anyone in any civic capacity will not tell you that, that that's not an issue.

It is introducing politics into charity work.

Charities have to start paying attention to who do I want to support on the commission because they control how much money I get.

It is absolutely a bad idea.

Children's Mental Health Fund may be a worthwhile thing to fund, but this is not the way to do it.

It's been a while since we talked about the Country Club Plaza on this program, but its new owners have revealed an audacious new plan.

I'm not sure how well it will go down with Kansas citizens, but they want to put a 19 story office tower on top of what is now a large hole.

That would have been the Nordstrom space.

It's been three years since the upscale development store abandoned.

department store rather abandoned its plans to move to that site.

Is this viewed as the best solution?

Mary I think it's the first one out of the gate.

So I think a lot of people are still going to be waiting.

What happened to target and all of Dillard's and all of these other big retailers who are supposedly interested in it.

Well, now, I mean, the longer things go on, the more people shopping habits change.

And with the new ownership, I don't know that their vision for the Plaza really is for that type of a price point in terms of to put a big target there.

but then again, there's a lot of people who just love the the country Club Plaza and the idea of having it being this crazy bowl with all these giant brand new office towers encircling it, kind of rubs people the wrong way as well.

Kind of, okay.

I mean, the fight over high rises around the plaza is one of the first things I bumped into in the 1980s in Kansas City when developers wanted to build something called the Sailors Project, on the east end of the plaza.

And it was high rises, and it was a massive dispute that ended up at the ballot box, after a referendum was filed.

And then there was a fight over building high rises, on the north, part of the plaza, sort of the center part of it.

And now this proposal, it may be different now because the health of the plaza is so precarious that there may be some feeling that we need to expand our vision of what that district can be.

But if past is Prolog, there'll be a huge fight over this.

When you put a program like this together every week, you can't get to every story grabbing the headlines.

What was the big local story?

We missed?

So apparently Travis Kelce is staying after all.

Cutting the cloth Jo-Ann fabric shuts down all its stores, including its five Kansas City locations, and the party is finally over for Party City.

Its remaining stores on both sides of State line closed today.

And what's going on in the Center school district.

Its superintendent abruptly resigned.

She hasn't been seen in weeks.

And Kansas tightening voting laws.

Lawmakers getting ready to send to the governor's desk a measure ending the grace period for Mail-In ballots.

Right now, those votes are still counted if they come in by the Friday after the election and the symphony killing off one of its longest running and most popular events after 20 years, the symphony in the Flint Hills bites the Kansas dust.

If it's on your bucket list to go, tickets for this year's final show go on sale this weekend.

All righty.

Mary, did you pick one of those stories or something completely different?

You know, I'm going to go with the Flint Hills.

Yeah.

my mother grew up in that area, and so I grew up with her constantly talking about that constantly.

But.

Sorry, mom, just with the beauty of the Flint Hills.

And if you haven't, then try and go.

That is an amazing event and it just really makes absolutely stand and and value.

Kansas.

The tickets are always premium.

You have a chance to get them on the symphony website this weekend.

Dave.

Let's hope it doesn't rain because oh yes, cancel it.

And then you have all kinds of problems.

My, friend and former colleague, the star Melinda Henneberger, has been doing some extraordinary work on the history of incarceration of inmates by the city of Kansas City, not the county, but the city and the history of what we used to call the farm or the farm, the MCI out by the stadiums.

And the decision to close that and how local officials have fumbled that issue ever since sending some city inmates to Vernon County, where they're apparently have been mistreated.

I recommend everyone, take a look at those columns before they vote on the tax that's on the April ballot.

Patrick.

so the big story this week, and I'm surprised we haven't talked about it, is a press release from Clay Chastain suggesting that we move the stadiums to the downtown airport and build a monorail to KCI.

I know we all like to laugh at Clay Chastain, but frankly, his ideas are no dumber than anything coming out of the downtown Council or the streetcar.

it doesn't purport to be a local story.

It's Congress, the House passing, a new, budget proposal that would make significant cuts to social programs.

it is a local story, because as we've talked about on this program many times, Medicaid expansion is a story.

When Kansas, the governor of Kansas wants it, the legislature is refused.

And in Missouri, voters approved it many years ago.

And that 90% of those Medicaid expenses that are to be paid by the federal government, that money may no longer be available.

And that's going to be a problem for low income Missourians.

And on that, we will say a week has been reviewed courtesy of KCRW's Brian Ellison and former star reporter and editorial writer Dave Helling.

writing for The Beacon in the Tribune newsroom, Marie Sanchez and star contributing opinion writer Patrick Touhey.

Next week there is no show as we head into our March membership drive and what truckers like to say, we will see you on the flip side, I'm Nick Haines from all of us here at Kansas City PBS.

Be well, keep calm and carry on.