Forget what you've heard.

The Chiefs in Germany isn't the only big headline in town.

We've got 30 minutes of other big stories to dissect from your handy dandy guide to next week's local elections on both sides of state line to a new wave of finger pointing and boiling point, tension over the Royals new ball park plan.

Is it time to hit the pause button?

Those stories and the rest of the week's news straight ahead.

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Thank you.

Hello and welcome.

I'm Nick Haines and glad to have you with us on this pre-election edition of Weekend Review.

Lifting the hold on elections and the other meaty issues, grabbing the headlines on both sides of state line.

He's been one of the busiest people in Kansas City.

Coming up for air after dozens of forums and interviewing pretty much every Johnson County candidate for political office.

Kyle Palmer from the Shawnee Mission Post is with us tracking the region's top political stories of KCUR news, Brian Ellison and KCUR's news director Lisa Rodriguez.

And rounding out the cozy confines of our Week in review table, former star reporter and editorial writer Dave Helling.

And by the way, if you hear coughing and spluttering or even chairs being thrown at us during the show, it's because we have a live audience of about 40, about Kansas City, PBS producers, society members here to see how we put this show together.

Glad to have you on our weekly journey through the news of our week.

Now, just ahead of already polarized local elections on Tuesday, a Kansas judge upends decades of abortion law in the state thanks to court action and this recent statewide vote, Kansas already has some of the nation's loosest abortion rules.

Now, a Johnson County judge has blocked some of the few remaining restriction bans, including a 24 hour waiting period requirement that's been in place for 25 years, when even local races today wade into national issues from immigration and race to transgender rights, how is this latest abortion bombshell impacting it, if at all?

Kyle Some of the contentious council and local mayoral races we have on the Kansas side of state line.

Well, you know, like you said just happened a few days ago so we haven't seen a lot of on the ground impact already.

You know candidates were, you know, dividing themselves off into partizan camps in these nominally nonpartisan races.

So Democratic and Republican candidates, whether they identify that way, I mean, those parties positions are pretty clear on abortion.

So if a voter wants to use that as a marker for who to vote for, for offices that really don't have any impact on abortion policy, than they're welcome to do that.

But we haven't seen a lot of that beyond just what you see on campaign.

For many of us thought we'd sort of ended the abortion issue with the ballot question last year in Kansas.

Lisa, why was a judge even bothering to go through this issue again?

Well, this was a suit brought by abortion providers that dealt with some old, as you said, and some new restrictions that Kansas lawmakers put in place when it comes to abortion.

And they argued that it made it that these some of these rules were not based in science, for example, rules that require a patient to print out a form in a specific font, in a specific color, in a specific format, that that that meant that abortion providers had to turn people away.

Date of or providing information that was not based in science.

And so that's why they argue that it made it difficult for people to seek this procedure, which is legal in the.

State and most of the energy around abortion right now is on the Missouri side, where there's a lot of debate over what that ballot measure may be next year.

In Missouri, a statewide ballot on the abortion question.

But will this reignite the abortion issue in Kansas, where we might see another statewide vote in Kansas or an effort to try and rein in judges as a result of this?

I'm not sure, Nick, that it ever stopped being ignited in Kansas the day after the Supreme Court ruling, legislators in Kansas were already planning the next set of legislative measures that might restrict in some way that is within the Kansas Constitution access to abortion.

And that was the way some of these provisions that were challenged in this lawsuit came about.

I think there will be more, as well as funding for so-called crisis pregnancy centers, other steps that abortion opponents are taking, those will continue to be debated in the Kansas legislature, I think, for years to come, as the country as a whole continues to sort this out.

The challenge now is that Republicans have begun to recognize that this is not the political winner of an issue that it used to be.

And so I think they're proceeding with some caution.

So you don't see it having an effect in Kansas at the statewide level, where you would see the lawmakers coming back to try and put another way.

Well, I don't know if they'll put something on the ballot any time soon, Nick, but there will, as Brian points out, to be a continued debate about this because there is and was a misunderstanding about what the Kansas Supreme Court actually said.

The Kansas Supreme Court did not legalized abortion.

It simply said that your rules must meet what's called the strict scrutiny standard.

That standard is it has to be a compelling state interest and it has to be the least restrictive way of meeting that state interest.

And courts decide that all the time.

And so the legislature will continue to probe what strict scrutiny means for abortion regulations in Kansas, and that'll continue in 2024.

In the years beyond.

I don't think it will go back to voters any time soon because it's difficult in Kansas and because the voters were pretty loud and clear in August of last year.

Now, early in-person voting continues this week, ahead of next Tuesday's local elections.

Let's start in Kansas.

Who's of local school board and council seats are up for grabs on Tuesday.

A number of local cities are picking new mayors, including in Leawood, where Peggy Dunn is calling it quits after being one of our region's longest serving leaders.

From Blue Valley to Leavenworth, the teaching of race and gender in the classroom, a dividing candidates in contentious school board races and sharp divides over affordable housing and zoning laws are heating up.

Council races in prairie Village already.

Kyle Palmer What's the race or trend that you are fixated on on election night?

Well, I mean, you just mentioned it in the video, but I mean, I think the Prairie Village City Council race is kind of a harbinger for what housing policy could be realistically tackled in Johnson County.

So I think a lot of other cities in Johnson County, city officials, in places like Overland Park clinics and elsewhere are watching to see the results in Prairie Village to what's.

Really at stake here.

Is it possible that there would be no more apartment complexes ever built in Prairie Village as a result of this election?

In a word, no.

But so that was, you know, the the apartment kind of specter has been brought up by the opponents to the privileges, housing recommendations.

But that was never a realistic possibility.

It was never on the table.

But that has been brought up as certainly campaign rhetoric and campaign fliers that you read.

But, I mean, I will say from an outsider's perspective, watching this, the the proposed changes at the city, at least dip their toe into a year ago were relatively modest.

They have walked back a lot of those recommendations because of the pushback they've received from this group of residents.

And so now some of those residents are now running for office trying to challenge those recommendations.

And so it will set the tone for how the city approaches housing in the future.

But no specific policies about apartments being built in certain places of the city, like that's not going to happen anytime soon.

But there is definitely a tone, a tenor, to how housing will be discussed in Johnson County, in Prairie Village is political.

Is the housing issue now really become the biggest political dividing line now in local elections?

Because it also in the, y'know, county races for commissioner affordable housing.

One of the top issues, Shawnee has also tried to block apartment complexes.

BLOCK co-chair bring what people don't don't you know, are not related to each other, can live together.

Is this now the biggest dividing line when it comes to local?

I think I think in local races it is one of the biggest issues and one that that voters really do care about.

And I think a lot of it boils down to in each community, what identity does each community purports to have.

We've heard discussions in Leawood and some candidates even saying we want to remain an exclusive luxury community.

We've heard rhetoric in Prairie Village about it, you know, the moniker Perfect Village.

And this is and we want to maintain the character that we have.

Of course, there are lots of layers to those arguments as well.

But certainly at the same time, we're seeing in the suburbs a lack of affordable housing.

And so it's about access and who gets to live in these communities as well.

I think it's also worth noting the way that that as a dividing line, it transcends it cross cuts other partizan or other ideological dividing lines.

You have Democrats in the winter of people who have identified previously as as Democrats identifying with this luxury community line.

And in Prairie Village, I think to Kyle's point, you know, there is there are six city council seats on the ballot.

There are not going to be enough votes to shift policy overnight.

But I really do believe that that everyone is watching how these issues are discussed, what buttons they're pushing with voters.

It's going to change the tenor of the conversation, even among the city council members who are not on the ballot this election cycle, but who have to make some important decisions in the next two and four years.

One other thing we've heard is a big trend is the fact that we've had that nationalization of these local elections.

We have local parties, Democrats and Republicans, now putting out their own slates of candidates, sending out mailers saying even for water boarded school district, these are our Democratic candidates.

These are our Republican candidates.

Are we now at a stage where we need to rip the Band-Aid off and say, let's not have this pretense anymore, let's just have partizan elections because people are seeing through it all.

For some voters, we must say this it is helpful in some ways because you have so many elections and so many candidates among whom you must decide.

And sometimes party identification can be a shortcut to understanding a world view of a candidate so you don't have to dig deeply into backgrounds and voting record.

You can just say, Oh, I generally agree with Republicans, generally agree with Democrats.

So I think it's a trend that will continue.

Because you are dealing with hundreds of races from water district, school board, council races.

Will there be an effort to try and push that again?

I know it has happened in the past where we want to have back to party labels for candidates.

I mean.

Certainly some candidates have pushed that idea.

I mean, the political parties themselves, I mean, I take the line that they've articulated that, you know, this is a way this is a helpful tool for for voters to understand a candidate's position when maybe they are, you know, running for offices and talking about arcane issues that they don't normally pay attention to.

But there is also certainly a segment of voters who is turned off by this, who is bothered by this.

They still hold on to this idea that these these offices should be nonpartisan and they chafe at the idea of political parties being so directly involved.

And I think that's becoming especially true when we move from city council elections to school board elections, where I think for generations we've said, well, clearly that's an area that should be nonpartisan.

And yet that is where we're seeing some of the strongest partizan divides, where the slates of Republicans are talking about things like the teaching of race, the teaching of sexuality and the slates of Democrats are focused on on accreditation standards and other other issues.

We're seeing areas that we never thought of as Partizan Arenas have become that.

Now.

I think it's interesting, too, we need to remember and we've seen this in Johnson County, especially often those those municipal elections are sort of the proving grounds for future partizan elections.

People who will go on to serve in the in the legislature, for example.

And so it serves a purpose for the political parties as well as potentially for the voters who are trying to get some sort of shorthand help.

Now, in Missouri, there are tons of issue questions on the ballot.

Kansas City voters will be deciding whether to renew a sales tax that funds the bus service.

Without a transit lead has worn the case.

They will be forced to cut weekend and night service to some bus routes and eliminate others entirely.

With billions of dollars now flowing in from the federal government for transit related projects.

Is that just election scaremongering?

Lisa I don't think it's scaremongering because I think the federal dollars coming in for federal for transportation projects are designed for new initiatives and not just sustaining ongoing service.

The KC 88 does get a significant portion of their budget from this tax.

And so I do think it's fair to say that we would see a reduction in bus service in Kansas City if it doesn't pass.

At the same time, the KTA has been dealing with lots of financial issues and questions we haven't quite seen the answers to.

So and bus service as it is isn't ideal.

It isn't the most efficient.

So I do think it'll be interesting to see how voters how voters act on this issue and whether they believe in their bus system.

Some are questioning why during Mayor Quinton Lucas's first term, they made bus service free in Kansas City, eliminated all fares.

That was bringing in about $12 million a year.

If money is such an issue, why did they do away with that?

Well, $12 million isn't that large a portion of the overall budget.

The reality is that the number of people who are turned away from access to busses by having to pay for them might be greater than the money that is saved.

In practice, the tax is a is a far more important source of income for our busses.

There was concern also in the bus tax, Dave, that there may be efforts by the city to take some of the money that goes to the bus service to put to other types of transit related matters from possibly a trail train link to the airport or East-West streetcar lines.

How can we guarantee that money for a bus tax would actually go strictly for that?

Yeah, well, because the people who run the bus service are a party zealous about protecting their access to that money.

Otherwise, they do have to start shutting down some service routes and that becomes a problem for the entire community.

So I think the argument is, has been for some time that bus service, bus, transit is an essential city service, like cleaning the streets or having a police department or a fire department, and your taxes should pay for it.

We should point out that this is a sales tax.

Sales taxes are regressive.

They tend to hurt the poor more than the rich.

And that may be a factor as people go to the polls.

It's interesting on the transit issue, it seems that every week there's a different headline saying there's more money coming out of the Biden administration to fund transit related projects.

But it was also a headline about Johnson County, Kyle, in the Shawnee Mission Post about also looking to cut back service to the bus.

They're actually raised or even put fares back on the popular bus route from Johnson County Community College to CU.

So they're also having transit related issues there.

Yeah, these.

Are preliminary discussions, but it is kind of a result of the fact that Johnson County has seen trends and patterns in ridership changed drastically over the last three or four years.

They've seen an explosion in the use of so-called micro transit, which is like ride hailing.

You can call a small bus, kind of like a public Uber.

So they're thinking about raising rates on those rides.

But then also, you know, doing something with some more traditional bus routes that are not getting as much ridership as they used to.

And so, yeah, there is a changing a changing pattern in how the people in Orange County who do use public transit are using it.

Just a quick note, Nick, And this election sort of shows or is proof of this idea that public transit does not pay for itself anywhere.

I mean, you know, there's no community in America where the fare box pays the cost of moving lots of people from point A to point B, Kansas City.

JOHNSON County, Wyandotte County, Other areas are all proof of that.

It does require some sort of taxpayer subsidy.

The question is always how how big should that subsidy be and where should it come.

From and who pays for and.

Who pays.

In Clark County?

911 Responses on the ballot.

We've been hearing a lot in the headlines about massive wait times to be connected to dispatch charges.

If you agree to a $1 a month charge on your wireless phone at the ballot box in Clark County, are they guaranteeing the response will be better, Bryan?

They're not guaranteeing it, but they are, in fact, committing to spend some of that newly raised money on new technology, technology that is more suited to the kinds of emergencies that might be reported from a person cell phone and not from a landline.

The percentage of calls that are coming in from landlines at this point is is I believe it was 11%.

It's almost nothing now.

The reality is that the voters are and and because that's how they funded it through the limelight and it's where it's not how they're making their calls, it makes sense to charge that fee to two phones.

At least that's the argument county officials are making.

But the point that they're making is that right now the landline tax is not actually covering anywhere near the cost of 911 services, and those moneys are coming from other portions of Clay County's general budget.

This would bring it more into a realistic it sounds like the arguments we're hearing about the gas tax and what we should do with electric vehicles because less money is coming in.

So that's at stake in Clark County.

Over the last couple of years, we've seen counties all over our metro placing online sales tax measures on the ballot to capture the revenue they're losing out on.

When you shop online on Tuesday, Jackson County is finally looking to close the sales tax loophole, charging you local taxes.

When you snag that cute necklace on Etsy or that winter jacket.

From that online story on the West Coast, Jackson County says they'll use the money for homeless projects and renovations at its two courthouses.

But stop the presses.

Stacy Lake, who ran against Jackson County executive Frank White, is encouraging voters to reject the measure, saying Jackson County is swimming in cash.

It doesn't need the money.

Is she right?

And how do we know the county will spend the money where they say they will?

Well, is she right?

I think certainly there's always merit in looking at account how a county is spending money.

But Jackson County really does, as you mentioned, join a lot of counties in Missouri and over the country who are adopting this this use tax on on online sales out of the state.

So it's not super extraordinary that Jackson County is doing it now.

But one of the reasons that a county executive, Frank White, vetoed this measure when the legislature passed, it was specifically because it outlines specific uses for this money, including for homeless services, including for renovations at the courthouse.

The legislature overrode him and put it on there anyway.

So if it is on the ballot, I believe the county does need to use it for these purposes.

Well, and I think that reflects broader tensions in the Jackson County legislature, in Jackson County, more broadly over it reflects levels of trust in the county executive and in how money is being spent.

But but for the most part, Jackson County leaders, even those who are not huge fans of of Frank White, have sort of come out in support of this plan across the board.

I think a lot of us got the flier with they're not going to be punishing the county over the property assessment, man.

I don't think they are.

And that was why Frank White said he wanted to delay the vote on this until the November election instead of August.

It seems like the kind of tax that doesn't affect the taxpayers here themselves all that much.

Now, as we end the week, we're waiting for the next shoe to drop this week in the ongoing stadium saga.

It's getting ugly.

Behind the scenes, tensions are spilling over into public view.

Last week, a confidential memo from the Jackson County executive's office was leaked, claiming the price tag for the stadium would be billions dollars more than what the club has estimated.

The Kansas City Royals blasted the numbers as erroneous.

Mayor Quinton Lucas pushed back, saying that if true, the Royals would be constructing the most expensive ballpark ever built.

With such a breakdown of trust, is there any evidence, Dave, that the Royals or Jackson County officials are now going to be hitting the pause button?

Well, I've said for some time that I think April is very optimistic for a vote either in Clay County or Jackson County.

I think it'll be more likely in November of next year.

The county and the team has about 12 weeks to figure all of this out in order to hit the end of January deadline for an April vote.

I'm just not sure they're going to get there because these questions are very difficult.

And Nick, your viewers should know that the royals situation is much more complicated in some ways than the Chiefs.

If the chiefs were a standalone entity, they went to the county, that would be a pretty cut and dried negotiation.

But in this case, with the baseball team, they're moving.

It's new construction.

There are questions about how much the team will contribute.

The league won't contribute much, unlike the NFL, which has a stadium fund.

So the questions that frankly should have been answered a year ago are still on the table.

And that's why I think April remains an optimist.

Are there any secret overtures going on in Kansas to say, let's escape the drama and let's move over there?

Would they escape the drama if they came to Johnson County, though?

I mean, I mean, we when we have a new Scooter's coffee, we have people lining up for public comment.

So I can't imagine what it would be like if you had a baseball stadium roasted.

I've said this on the show before, but I'd like to say it again.

Asking Jackson County to provide for a loan, to provide for the stadium needs of two professional sports franchises is an extraordinary ask because the costs are so high.

Stadiums are in the billions of dollars now, not the hundreds of millions.

And to ask Jackson County is without the help of Johnson or Winkleigh and Plat is an enormously complicated, difficult issue.

And won't be solved by a couple of meetings.

I did meet with Curt Skoog, the Overland Park mayor who happens to be the head of the bi state commission, currently the chair of that.

And I asked him that question and he said he's heard nothing from anyone about this.

So I don't think there's going to be any shared tax revenue coming from.

With an open space at the corner of Johnson Drive and Road.

Boulevard downtown.

Maybe the Royals could move to Frankfort.

Maybe that could be okay for them.

Hey, don't don't tempt them.

Now, 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?

More than 2000 idled auto workers finally back on the job at the GM Fairfax plant.

That after General Motors reaches a deal with the union to give workers a 25% payback.

More Republicans calling for the Missouri House speaker to resign.

The chamber's top leader embroiled in an expense scandal.

This is big.

More than 200,000 homeowners in Kansas and Missouri could be getting a big windfall after our federal jury in Kansas City finds realtors have been inflating their commissions.

The National Association of Realtors ordered to pay $1.8 billion in damages.

The verdict could change the fee structure for buying and selling homes for everyone.

Union Station announces its latest blockbuster exhibit Disney 100, marking the 100th anniversary of the Walt Disney Company.

It's currently making its world premiere at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.

It'll be here next year.

From Denver to Deutschland, the Kansas City Chiefs now in Germany for the NFL's first game in Frankfurt.

Sporting KC continues its playoff run at Children's Mercy Park.

And this may be overkill, but just a reminder, it's clock changing time again.

On Sunday, we will full back and get an extra hour of sleep.

All righty.

Before we ask our reporters for their pick, we have a late breaking entry to consider.

If you already thought it was tough to get people who disagree with each other to sit in the same room together.

Look at what happened this week at a Kansas City Library forum featuring two historians trying to educate the public about the Israeli conflict.

Frazier secured.

A part time now.

The chanting and the disruption worked.

The event at the downtown library was canceled 20 minutes after it began.

Did you pick one of those stories or something completely different, Lisa?

More drama in Shawnee, Kansas.

Yes.

This week.

The city manager now on administrative leave after the city council was back, became aware of a lewd video that had been sent to some city employees.

This just another symptom of of dysfunction in Shawnee City government.

Between the city council and the mayor and may factor into elections next week.

Maybe not, but but we'll certainly see.

You were being kind by saying, Lou, some people would say sexually explicit on that count.

Yeah, that was actually the one that I was going to say as well.

I mean, I think the electoral consequences of that late breaking news will remain to be seen on Tuesday.

But it's been a long standing issue within Shawnee City Hall.

City turnover, high level staffers leaving tensions within the city council.

And so this latest ado kerfuffle, if you want to call it, that could indeed have implications for those who are still yet to decide who they're going to vote for in that city council.

It's also an implication of early voting because a lot of people vote early in Johnson County and they don't have a chance to weigh in on these matters when they come in just before the.

Election that started last week.

And that will continue this weekend.

So certainly some people have already cast their ballot.

Brian, you mentioned the Missouri House speaker, Dean Blocher calls for his resignation after questions about expense reports that he submitted that had already been paid for by his campaign.

I think that story to some extent will blow over.

It wasn't a huge amount of money we're talking about.

But what I think that story revealed next is the deep fissures within the Missouri Republican Party.

It did not take long for other elected officials and other candidates for office to go hard after Dean Blocher call on him to resign.

For him to respond with some very snappy comebacks criticizing them.

I think Missouri Republicans, who, of course, remember, have supermajority control of both the House and the Senate and every single statewide elected office are themselves going to start having to separate out their divisions, maybe in a way that we've seen in Washington, D.C., as the Republicans there have shown their divisions, too.

And the vacancy rates in Kansas City office buildings continue to climb.

The 13 year high.

Yes, the nature of office work in the urban areas is changing dramatically after COVID, and it's a trend this city will have to deal with going forward in terms of its incentives and also because of its employment base and the earnings tax and other things in terms of how people work here.

And then if I could go international for a minute, the Beatles have a new record out now and then, and it's great.

All right.

Got on that.

We will say our week has been reviewed courtesy of KCUR Lisa Rodriguez and Kyle Palmer from the Shawnee Mission Post on the KCUR's , Political beat Brian Ellison and former Star newshound Dave Helling.

And I'm Nick Haines from all of us here at Kansas City, PBS.

Be well, keep calm and carry on.