Like it or not, and most people don't . . . A recent campaign designed by Kansas City Political Operatives Pat Gray and Steve Glorioso earned a victory and ultimately persuaded the Mayor and Council to bend to the will of The Heavy Constructors Association of Greater Kansas City.
It seems that in the end, The Heavies got EVERYTHING they wanted. Ed DeSoigne and Bridgette Williams took a gamble with the "Stop the Nonsense" campaign. Missouri Ethics filings reveal that they spent up to $150,000 of the contractors' cash.
And what did that buy?
In the end the campaign delivered:
A CIMO Department that was almost certainly part of their plan to speed up the construction process in this town which sadly takes away a lot of power from The City Manager;
They also earned a BIG ASS bond issue to spend tens of millions of dollars on streets and other heavy construction projects this year. Remember that the stated goal of the campaign was to pressure the Council to significantly increase this year's budget allocation for capital projects. There was only about $35 million in the budget for this . . . AND NOW, the budget passed but are STILL getting the big spending spree in addition to the smallish initial allotment.
Make no mistake, at the end of the day Glorioso and Gray had nearly all of The Council AND THE MAYOR singing the same tune about creating jobs and fixing infrastructure. In the meantime, what's evident is that this special interest took a bit of cash that wasn't even enough to buy a decent house in Brookside and turned it into a windfall worth millions.
This town will benefit with some jobs and maybe a few modest improvements but the real lesson here for any special interest is that rate of return on most media investments is rather hefty given that local politicos back down immediately when big money is involved.
Good points Tony. Some of the outcome was due to Funkhouser being obssessed with winning something from his Schools First effort. But it seems Deb Hermann made a big mistake voting against a city version of a stimulus package to put Kansas Citians back to work. Plus construction jobs are a main stay of northlanders. What is Deb going to say in the campaign---I didn't want to create jobs because the Star ordered me to protect something called the "PIAC process".
ReplyDeleteIf all the city staff that is left were not working on the 1,000 room hotel they would have had time to get these projects out the door. But no, the want to grt laid-off just like the +200 city employees that got pink slips because of the P&L Distict.
ReplyDeleteThe Heavies have not won by any stretch. They've just wasted their money on those two snakes, Glorioso and Gray. The Big Ass bond issue isn't so big, and will go through the PIAC process. There won't be major construction on this stuff.
ReplyDeletePIAC is a sham. It's just a slush fund for the in-district council people (the "neighborhood" portion of it). Those council people put up fronts to submit requests for their pet projects.
ReplyDeleteAnd then the council can and does ignore the PIAC project list and divert it where they want it.
So, I don't think PIAC is any obstacle to what Heavy Constructors and their Council puppets want.
*PIAC = Public Improvements Advisory Committee.
Media campaigns are all well and good- keep an eye on the campaign contributions if you want to see the real reason these guys have 'heavy' influence. It was big and splashy but I'd be interested in knowing how much follow-through it created from constituents. My guess is not much. The good news is there will be some jobs created and a few streets fixed.
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