Kansas City mayor accused of skirting city gift ban by using nonprofit to pay for travel • Missouri Independent

Between January 2020 and April 2021, the Mayors Corps received more than $30,000 in donations from unspecified sources, which Lucas’ office declined to identify.

In March 2022, following an email conversation with Said, the Kansas City Royals donated $15,000. A spokesman for the Kansas City Royals did not return a request for comment.

After that, the organization didn’t receive any donations until the Heavy Constructors Association’s $24,000 donation in February 2023. 

The donation from the Heavy Constructors Association, which was very close to the cost of Lucas and Said’s Super Bowl trip, could be seen as a way to circumvent Kansas City’s ordinance barring elected officials from accepting gifts valued at more than $200, Holman said. 

“This…appears to be an organization that’s really set up just to entertain themselves, entertain the mayor and, probably, a whole bunch of lobbyists,” he said.

Tuohey agreed the solicitation of the donation looked like an attempt to get around the city’s gift ban.

“If it would have been illegal or unethical to give money to the mayor and his chief of staff to travel,” he said, “it seems to me that it’s questionable to do the exact same thing through a third party.”

Bridgette Williams, executive director of the Heavy Constructors Association, said the trade group responded to a request for a donation from Said and didn’t ask what particular expenses its contribution might finance. 

“We gave the money as a request,” she said, ”and we rely on (the mayor) to spend it wisely.” 

The Heavy Constructors Association didn’t view the contribution as a gift, she said, “but an opportunity to showcase Kansas City in other markets and potentially bring new companies and jobs.”

Lucas denied trying to circumvent the city’s gift ban. 

“I would certainly challenge your premise that it is to get around some sort of gift rule,” he said. 

Concerns about the spending and donation were raised internally to Lucas and Said at the time, documents show, along with the suggestion that to avoid any hint of impropriety the $24,000 check should be refunded and the cost of the trip be paid for and disclosed by United We Stand PAC.

Berkon did not address a question about whether Lucas and Said considered following that advice.

Philip Hackney, a professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh, said if Lucas and Said were using the trips as opportunities to network and promote Kansas City for economic development, the spending could be a legitimate use of the Mayors Corps.

“But it’s really kind of sounding sketchy to me,” Hackney said. 

“It’s sounding like it’s just kind of a petty cash account that they use to deal with situations that they don’t want to put on some other (credit) card,” Hackney said, “and that would be problematic.” 

Greim said while charging travel to the Mayors Corps might save the city a little money, it’s important that city expenses are paid by the city, not private sources. One way to make officials accountable, he said, is by ensuring their salaries and expenses are paid by the public they serve.

“But if others begin to pay for that, then you can argue that the city officials become beholden to the people that are actually paying part of their salary and expenses,” he said.

It’s nice to save taxpayer funds, he said, “but is it more important to save a few thousand dollars, or is it more important to ensure that our public officials owe their livelihood to the people they’re supposed to serve?” 

Danielle Caputo, legal counsel for the Campaign Legal Center said the spending didn’t appear illegal on its face, but she said the donation from the Heavy Constructors Association the day after the Super Bowl is worthy of further scrutiny. 

“That does raise a real question,” Caputo said, “of is that c4 operating in good faith or with the intended purpose of being the go-between to give the mayor gifts?” 

Both Lucas and Berkon insisted that all spending by the nonprofit was reviewed at the time and deemed legal and appropriate. But that isn’t the only standard public officials must abide by, said Julie Allen, a former executive director of the Missouri Ethics Commission. 

She said her advice is generally that in addition to “making sure you’re following the law, you should use the smell test. What will the public, voters or a (nonprofit) board think?

Mid-way through Lucas’ first term, United We Stand PAC was established and has primarily been used to pay for fundraising and communications as well as the mayor’s second inauguration in 2023.

The PAC, which has no limits on contributions, received donations from a variety of corporate and individual donors. By far the largest was a $50,000 donation from the Heavy Constructors Association in January 2022.

It kept taking donations when Lucas began his second term even though he is term-limited and cannot run for mayor again in 2027. Since his reelection, the PAC has taken more than $110,000 and spent on his inauguration event. 

It’s currently sitting on $60,000, according to its most recent filing.

One of those inaugural expenses was a tuxedo from Halls, a high-end department store in Kansas City, which cost $1,694.42.

Said, who was serving as Lucas’ chief of staff at the time, was reimbursed from the PAC for that expense. 

But when it came time to file the PAC’s quarterly report with the Missouri Ethics Commission, she asked that the expense be described as reimbursement for an “inaugural expense,” not specifically as a tuxedo. She asked that the name of the store, Halls, not be listed but was told that information could not be withheld. 

The PAC also paid $9,500 to Bold Decision Consulting LLC in the summer of 2023 for a poll of 300 Clay County voters that showed 70% opposed the idea of a new sales tax to fund a Royals stadium in North Kansas City. The poll was seen by many to be an attempt to ensure the stadium would land in Jackson County, not Clay.

In an attempt to keep the source of the poll a mystery, Said requested the description on PAC’s quarterly filing be changed from “polling” to simply “research.” At the time, Lucas side-stepped questions about who funded the poll in a response to Fox 4 reporters.

Greim said while he did not believe Said’s involvement in United We Stand’s quarterly filing to be a violation of campaign finance laws concerning coordination between candidates and PACs, it would be inappropriate for her to work on the issue while on the clock at City Hall.

The Independent’s Jason Hancock contributed to this story.

Correction: This story was updated at 2:15 p.m. to correct a misspelling.

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