Why is it that the only thing people want to talk about this week are the Chiefs?

Believe it or not, there are some other things going on.

Potholes are back with a vengeance.

There were two high profile bereavements in Kansas City.

Leaders want you to join them in the Power and Light district Sunday afternoon for the big World Cup announcement.

Plus, are our schools superintendents being paid for too much?

The new push to cap their salaries.

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

Week in Review is made possible through the generous support of AARP, Kansas City RSM.

Dave and Jamie Cummings, Bob and Marlese Gourley the Courtney S Turner Charitable Trust.

John H Mize and Bank of America NA co trustees.

The restaurant at 1900.

And by viewers like you.

Thank you.

Welcome I'm Nick Haines Glad to have you with us on our weekly journey through the News of our week.

On this action packed edition of the program.

KCUR's Lisa Rodriguez has joined us on the Week in Review Bus and a newsroom colleague, Brian Ellison, who tracks the region's top political stories from our metro's newest newspaper.

Next page, KC, Eric Wesson and Kansas City Star contributing writer Dave Helling.

I think I have to say that now you still be writing in the staff.

Writing some additional things on local issues of interest in the weeks ahead.

Okay.

So retirement is not fully on board with that right now.

We are a program that lifts the hold on big, important political stories and holds our public officials to account.

But let's be honest, Is there any biggest story in Kansas City this week than the Kansas City Chiefs?

Few people seem to want to talk about anything else.

Eric, can you think of any other event or news story that could beat the number of eyeballs and energy that our hometown football attracts when there's a Super Bowl on the line?

No, I can't think of anything.

And it's not just the Super Bowl.

It's Taylor Swift.

Every place you turn, there's a Taylor Swift and the Kansas City Chiefs story.

So I don't think there's anything more important than that right now.

You know.

You think about there's a World Cup coming up.

It still doesn't seem to get the same type of energy.

You could say, if we brought a Republican National Convention, the Democratic National Convention here, it still wouldn't get the same type of energy as the Chiefs right now.

Right.

Political conventions don't get energy anywhere.

I mean, people don't really care about them anymore.

I will say my own impression is that the Chiefs, having gone to the Super Bowl now four out of the last five years, there is a little bit of mayor attitude among some Kansas City ends like we expect to go every year.

Everyone who follows professional sports knows that's not true, that it's hard to get to the championship game in any sport, let alone just the NFL.

But maybe my colleagues see it differently.

But you do get the sense that where we've been there before, not quite the excitement you saw a couple.

Of years ago that they did it on the road.

Now, they had always had all the games at home, so it's always been an issue.

And Kurt Patrick went on the road and he proved them wrong by going.

Other than perhaps Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey getting married this year in Kansas City, which will be the equivalent of a royal wedding, I think.

Well, is there anything else that would ever measure up to this?

I don't know.

And I and I think it's hard to overstate the the Taylor Swift ness of it all right.

Now, because this is really all eyes in a global way are on Kansas City.

Their profile has never been higher than it is now.

And it is because of the Taylor Swift, Travis Kelsey romance.

But I mean but the football is good, too.

And this is something that people are really excited about.

It's one thing we can agree on now.

You know, there's a pesky conspiracy theory here and there, but it's all eyes are on us.

Sorry, I was just drinking.

That was the fourth dimension of Taylor Swift.

And I'm going to drink every time she's mentioned in the tape.

Having talked about, you know, the the mayor, for some people, however, there was a lot of jubilation, of course, but that they did come with a downside.

Kansas City police said they were a documented 174 rounds of celebratory gunfire after the Chiefs beat Baltimore to earn their Super Bowl spot.

Brian.

I thought that was really legislature passed a measure just last year that finally criminalized celebratory fire.

The legislature did pass Blair's law.

Representative Mark Sharp of Kansas City was a big part of that.

Unfortunately, the governor, unfortunately for those who support the law, the governor vetoed that law because it was part of a broader crime package and it was actually concerned with other parts of that package that caused the governor to veto it.

It has been moved already through committee again this session and it has bipartisan support.

The interesting question as to whether the Chiefs success will have any impact in Jefferson City on the stadium debate, as we talked about last week, as you know, there was no money in the budget for the chiefs or the royals and the governor, Governor Mike Parson sort of said, well, we'll see.

I think that there are some interesting ramifications for it, particularly if the team wins for what the April 2nd vote might.

Trigger that Super Bowl parade if the Chiefs win is going to take place.

Eric, on Valentine's Day, the city says they're going to earmark about $1,000,000, the most money they've ever done for this event.

They say it would be the biggest parade we've ever had.

What impact would that have?

This will come just weeks before that stadium vote.

I mean, there's that all those giddy Chiefs fans are going to propel that issue over the finish line on Election Day.

I don't know about that, but it would be a great deal of momentum toward that.

And I did talk to one of the people at the statehouse and they said the reason why it wasn't a part of the budget conversations was because it wasn't on the ballot yet.

They were just talking about it.

And then by the time they got it on the ballot, the legislative session on the budget was through.

But if they had had done it earlier, it probably would be a part of that.

And let me just say one more thing maybe, Dave.

How long's new haircut should be Part of it.

Seems part of our Big Story Miss segment, which we'll be doing a little later.

By the way, we are hearing from more and more viewers who are fed up with this whole stadium debate.

By the way, stadium fatigue is real, folks.

Here's an email I received from Jan after last week's show.

I tuned in again in hopes of some real news, she writes.

But there's another story about the royal stadium.

Must this be covered every week?

Isn't there anything else happening in the area?

You must be weighing this up too, as the news director over at KC.

You are.

I mean, there's there's lots of stuff happening happening in the area.

And we do run the risk of giving too much attention to this one story and letting other really important things slide slide by.

But for for all of us here, we're so in the government process.

We love watching all of this stuff.

And this is maybe the one opportunity for the whole city to be so interested in something that they're looking at the back and forth between between legislators, between different jurisdictions here.

So it is an opportunity to really show our audiences what this government process is on a topic that's hugely interesting.

I heard the same, though, about the airport.

People were fatigued about that too.

Dave Yeah, and the vote was important and people were interested in turnout was high.

We are two months from Election Day.

They were taping on February 1st, the election April 2nd.

So we're two months away.

I checked this morning, Nic, there does not appear to have been any campaign committee established for the vote.

Now two months away, where contributions could go in and ads bought and doors knocked on.

I think the Chiefs being in the super Super Bowl delays focus on this issue.

People don't really want to hear about it.

Let's watch them play.

Let's find out what Taylor Swift is up to or whatever.

So it's really a six week campaign for a $2 billion tax.

It's going to be rushed to the.

But but all that Super Bowl coverage, a victory parade, I can imagine we'll all be in those campaign commercials for that stadium vote.

Right.

And if you need a reminder of why it was so important to the royals that the Chiefs and Royals tax be combined on the same ballot and not separated as many Ibaka had proposed at one point, This is it.

So people will forget the 100 and something losses of the royals and riding the excitement and enthusiasm over the Chiefs.

Now everyone is being told to head over to the power Light district on Sunday afternoon for a big World Cup announcement.

After months of delays, Kansas City will finally find out how many matches it will host when the global soccer games come to town in 2026.

By the way, we still don't even know when the tournament will begin.

Apparently, all will be revealed on Sunday.

While we're the smallest city to have ever hosted the World Cup, local leaders are dreaming big.

In addition to multiple opening round games, they have their fingers crossed that FIFA will award Kansas City a quarter final match.

Our civic leaders are really pumping the event, but will we be crushed?

Listen, if the only games we get are first round matchups between Senegal and Cameroon, Tunisia versus Morocco.

I think there will there will be some, including our civic leaders, that will be disappointed by that.

But but you're right to mention we're the smallest city to ever host a World Cup.

We were our you know, our profile when it comes to soccer is just beginning to rise.

So I think the the amount of of people and fans and interest even in those first round games will be high enough that Kansas City will see a big boost either way.

But don't everybody think that we're going to get a little Messi here and all these top world stars?

That might not happen.

They may think that.

But but look, if you think Kansas City is big on soccer, right now, go to Cameroon or Senegal or Tunisia and see how big soccer is.

I mean, when those if those teams come here, it's going to be huge.

We're going to sell out every game.

There'll be millions of eyes watching those games on TV.

There is no small World Cup match and Kansas City will enjoy those benefits.

Now, like the villain in a horror movie that back potholes are once again menacing drivers, Some motorists telling local stations they are worse than they've ever been.

Is that just because we have short term memories, Eric, or are we experiencing conditions we haven't seen for a long time?

We haven't seen them for a long time, and it seems like they're multiplying daily.

When the town when the temperatures dropped.

I think that was the difference this year in years past and it just I-70 side streets, even main thoroughfares are ridiculous.

If potholes are like a serial killer in a horror movie, you have been one of those first victims.

Brian.

I can speak from personal experience.

The potholes are terrible.

I've been to RIM the last last winter on this on this front.

I think it's a serious problem.

But I will say you can you know that city leaders are are they know how much people care about this.

I saw the number that was published this morning of 21,151.

Potholes as of today's taping had been filled.

That's a that's a very precise count.

They know that people care about it.

But I remember when Quinton Lucas and you were the city hall reporter at the time were running for office.

Potholes was one of the biggest issues of that campaign.

People complaining about them.

Do we?

We lay the blame on the feet of Mayor Quinton Lucas on the council, or is it bigger than them?

I mean, it's it is bigger than that.

But we certainly can hold them to account.

And city manager Brian Platt that said, his resurfacing of the roads campaign was going to mean that pothole season was not going to be as bad.

And so there is I think this is an issue that that that politicians made promises on, but that is much harder to tackle in reality.

And some people have been saying that then they thought it would be.

Now speaking of Mayor Lucas, he's getting ready to deliver his State of the City address next week.

In between making a new round of Super Bowl bets, he's preparing his speech, which has become a yearly pat on the back for the job he's done.

He will most certainly take credit for the Chiefs being in the Super Bowl for the World Cup coming to town, and the successful opening of a new KC Airport terminal.

Where is he falling short, Dave?

Well, violent crime certainly in Kansas City remains a problem.

The promise of free transportation for bus riders is now really teetering.

As we've talked about on this show.

I'll be interested to see if the mayor talks about that at all.

And but, you know, I think he has a fairly decent record to talk about.

And and he won overwhelmingly last year.

And it wasn't like he was seriously challenged for that seat.

So I think you're right.

You get a lot of cheerleading, some mention of violent crime.

I don't anticipate huge new initiatives from the mayor speech.

Eric.

I think he'll target those things that Dave mentioned, having a lot of women appointed to as directors.

What he'll shy away from is the discrimination lawsuits that are taking place not only still in the fire department, but at city hall, a couple of floors down from where his office is, especially where black women and women in general with that.

But he's made a lot of women appointments.

So I think he's trying to balance it out.

But there's a very serious discrimination problem taking place at city hall.

Well, bringing down the mood account to less than 100 was one of his campaign promises when he first ran.

We know that hasn't happened.

But he also said he wanted to be the mayor for poor people.

And yes, we may be having challenges with free busses, but that did happen.

That was going to help people who had less resources in the community.

And we just had a huge, he will say, a big win because of the income discrimination bill that was just passed and signed by him this week.

So there are victories that that the mayor can claim here.

But I think everything is overshadowed, as Dave said, by violent crime and homicides, which were the highest they've ever been in 2023.

What are the things to think about and to talk about when his when he campaigned in 2019 for his first election, Mayor Lukas called downtown baseball a massage party.

You know, something that he didn't really want.

We will see perhaps this week whether that tune has changed dramatically between that day and this.

It might be now calling it a Rolls Royce of.

High luxury vehicles.

Okay.

Well, sports stars and political leaders get a lot of attention in this town, but sometimes you don't have to kick a football or serve in elected office to win over the hearts and minds of Kansas City.

And so you can sometimes be a plain spoken nun.

This week, Sister Berta Sala was laid to rest.

She's the crusader for impoverished children who co-founded Operation Breakthrough at 31st and Troost, serving more than 700 kids a day.

It is the region's largest low income daycare center.

Sister Berta was not known for sugarcoating issues.

In an interview that she did with us in 2010, she lamented that the polar bears at the zoo were treated better than many of our own kids.

East, an eight year old one day.

What she worried most about in her answer was the rent.

A eight year old shouldn't have to worry about rent, a four year old said to me one day, If I grow up, I want to be a fireman.

And we're coming very close to being a society that saves tin cans and throws out children.

And I think that's the scary part.

Eric We see fallen Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill calling Sister Berta a Mother Teresa of Kansas City.

Others describing her as a living saint.

How many of us would get that type of attention and those types of descriptions?

Very few.

Very few.

I had the opportunity to interview her when I very first got into journalism, and she was like really candid.

And she loved kids and she loved kids, but she hated the fact that we didn't invest a lot in the early childhood development.

And that was one of the things that I always remembered in our conversations.

Yeah, I think it's easy to turn folks like Sister Berta into sort of a Hallmark card filled with love and compassion and caring for people.

But but I appreciate that.

Sister Berta also was, as you say, plainspoken.

She told the truth.

She held the powerful to account, much like Mother Teresa, actually.

And she that that willingness to speak out is really why she had such an impact over her long and good life.

Now, also being remembered this week is Jean Carnahan, Missouri's first female U.S. senator and the wife of former Governor Mel Carnahan, who died in a plane crash just days before the 2000 election.

Dave Helling, many of us may remember the enormous drama of that election and the confusing questions.

What happens when a dead candidate wins an election?

It was too late to take her name, his name off the ballot.

No one seemed to fully grasp how this remarkable set of circumstances would actually even play out.

It was a shock.

It was the most incredible week I've spent in journalism in nearly 50 years.

That whole process.

Jean Carnahan turned out to be a pretty good senator.

She was under enormous pressure right after the election to vote in favor of John Ashcroft, who was appointed, as you may recall, to be attorney general, and she voted against him, which brought her some grief back in the state of Missouri.

But she.

Which may be one reason why she was also not elected to office, losing to Jim Talent at the next available.

Jim Talent was a very good senator as well.

It was just an extraordinary set of circumstances that I hope we never see in any state again.

Now, on the heels of a newly launched campaign to legalize abortion in Missouri, Republican lawmakers began hearings this week on not just one but 12 proposals aimed at making it more difficult to pass such changes at the ballot box.

One bill would increase the votes necessary to pass a constitutional amendment from a simple majority to 60% of the vote.

But given pushback over the idea, your legislators are getting creative, several bills keep the 50% vote for passage, but take on other requirements.

One would require an amendment passing five of the state's eighth Congressional district.

Another requires it to receive majority support, and at least half of the state's legislative House districts.

Do they think, Lisa, that's the secret sauce that will help them win support for this?

I think they're trying whatever they can to get this passed.

This is one of the biggest priorities for Republicans in the Missouri statehouse this year.

And and make no mistake, it is about the abortion amendment.

This is about ensuring that that cannot pass.

And so these different formulas for making it happen, really the issue with making it passed out of five out of five legislative or congressional districts in Missouri does the argument against is that it does weaken the power of cities?

It does.

It means that not every vote is counted the same and it gives disproportionate power to rural or less populated areas of Missouri.

So it is complicated, but but it is only about one issue.

It's about.

Abortion.

When we think about other ballot measures like the recent, you know, marijuana amendment, we've had the minimum wage going to $12 in Missouri.

If we had of use those types of measures, then tightened the rules and said five out of eight congressional districts, more than half of the House seats you have to get a majority with, those are passed point.

It appears they would not have.

Certainly the marijuana amendment, remember, passed with only 53% of the vote statewide.

Only the counties that include the large cities of the state approved it.

It almost certainly would not have passed under this rule.

I mean, look, Nick, a lot of a lot of Democrats and even some Republicans are concerned about the ways this effort seems to be undermining Democratic principles.

Among the requirements in this this bill is also a measure that would say only citizens of the United States can vote.

Well, that's already the case, of course, but they're going to put that on the ballot and people will think that that's what they're voting on.

And a lot of folks are troubled by sort of the dishonesty of that.

But one of the arguments is that it's out of control.

The current process, 170 plus initiative efforts made in this last year, according to the secretary of state's office.

There needs to be some better control over it.

But why do we have initiative positions?

My understanding is because legislators and lawmakers don't listen to the will of the people.

So people have to put these initiative petitions out on the ballot.

The whole idea is to get the legislature out of the way.

That's why.

But even Democrats propose these things.

And the Democratic governor of Kansas, remember, Joan Finney, wanted to do this and she was objected to by the legislators.

It was a Democratic governor.

I wanted it.

I don't think it's fair to say that that the initiative process is out of control in Missouri.

Yes, there were dozens of petitions initially filed, but very few of those get the required number of signatures.

We've never had more than a handful on any one ballot.

I don't think voters are confused.

And and as as Eric said, if that's what the voters want, that's what the voters want.

What's the problem with that?

And that's their job is to uphold the will of the people they kind of have to have legislators.

Are all the public interest vote on all of these issues?

You're not the first to ask that question.

Okay.

All right.

All right.

One of the complaints you hear about the initiative process in Missouri is that it's run by out-of-state interests who pour millions of dollars in to gather petitions.

But in fact, the legislative agenda in Jeff City and in Topeka to some degree, is drafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council, which is out of state money mill ins and out of state money.

So that seems a little empty as well.

Well, recently, Dave Helling mentioned on this program the Missouri has some of the worst paid teachers in the nation now, rather than pay them more, Missouri lawmakers have another solution.

They want to cap superintendents salaries to five and a half times the pay of first year teachers in the state.

Well, according to state education Department figures, a first year teacher in Missouri makes about $34,000 a year.

So what are we to make of the North Kansas City school superintendent who makes $318,000 a year?

By the way, that's small fry compared to some Kansas side superintendents like the head of the Blue Valley School District.

If the law passes, will districts starts jacking up teacher salaries?

Lisa Or will they be a mass exodus of school superintendents who just can't in any way endure a pay cut of any kind?

I think you can make an argument that that the disparity between superintendent salary and teacher salary is not right.

I do not think that tying superintendent salary to teacher's salary is the way to boost teacher salary.

I think the focus is is is misplaced there and should be on raising that base salary for teachers rather than focusing on superintendents.

You know, a superintendent who is doing their job well needs to have the skill set, the leadership, the administration of a of a person who in a different career might be making much more than that amount of money.

I think the problem here is the low teacher salaries.

And there's no reason that lawmakers can't be addressing that end of the equation.

Yeah.

The other thing you could do and this comes up in Kansas all the time, Nick, is eliminate a superintendent by merging districts.

And a lot of times in Kansas, you will find counties with six, seven, eight school districts, each with a superintendent.

And the idea is you could move those people together and eliminate some of the overhead that way.

Try that in a rural area.

They'll go out of their minds because they don't want to lose their school districts.

And that answer doesn't come up very often.

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?

Nearly a year after the opening of the new looking airport, Kansas City getting ready to demolish its abandoned terminals.

The council now voting on a $17 million bid to demolish terminals B and C. The project is expected to take up to ten months to complete.

As we start Black History Month, the statue of baseball legend Jackie Robinson, stolen from a Kansas park, which he told police discovered it dismantled and set ablaze in a trash can.

A new border wall, this time over hospitals.

The Missouri attorney general trying to block Q Health from taking over Liberty Hospital.

He says the deal is illegal.

The humble grocery bag is now at the center of a new divide in Kansas, as the city of Lawrence bans single use plastic bags.

Kansas lawmakers now trying to block cities from imposing restrictions on plastic products.

And as some of our viewers have told me to quit talking about the stadium tax issue because they're bored of it.

You won't hear discussion on this program about the newly released renderings of what a new downtown ballpark would look like.

All righty.

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

I picked one.

I pick different stories.

Negro Leagues Baseball is going to be free during Black History Month.

Because of the.

Royals.

Because.

Well, yeah, they're paying for it.

They're paying for it like they've done for the past couple of years.

But I chose the alleged 20% salary increase for Stacie Graves, who is the chief of police in Kansas City.

I thought that was extremely interesting because a lot of people are saying, how do you reward somebody that's underperforming given the homicide rate?

And if you were in a corporate America and coming out of the back, you had the numbers that she had with homicides.

Would you still get a raise?

You know, we've talked a little bit about education issues like superintendent salaries.

But I would like to focus on the increase in conversations about serious education policy issues.

Below the the Partizan conflict line in Missouri this week.

We saw a vote on open enrollment that passed on a pretty close vote.

Republicans disagreeing with each other, having a serious policy discussion.

There's talk about changes to accreditation methods.

There are serious policy discussions happening in Jefferson City around education this year.

Even if the more controversial topics get the headlines.

Lisa, you.

Know, I was I was at KCI when that first piece of Terminal eight came down.

So I'm feeling a little sentimental and thinking that the demolition of Terminals B and C really will be the the end of an era for the airport.

And, and I, I might sneak up to see those come down to.

You won't be sobbing at the terminals looking at it coming down.

No I don't know that I'll be sobbing watching them but but it's a cool thing to behold.

Okay, Dave.

Election machine manufacturing company sent a letter to Johnson County this week saying telling Sheriff Carl Hayden to stop talking trash about the election processes in Johnson County or the county could face serious liability in court for any alleged defamatory statements that he might make.

It's a good warning for him to listen to.

And he's up for reelection this year if he runs.

All righty.

And on that, we will say our week has been reviewed courtesy of KCUR's Lisa Rodriguez.

And at the helm of next page, KC, Eric Wesson.

KCUR's Brian Ellison and former star news man Dave Helling.

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

Be well, keep calm and carry on.